Mr. T and trainer Joe Goossen had a fateful encounter in Chicago.
a bouncer at a Chicago nightspot before a chance run-in with Joe and Dan put him on another path. The Goossens were in town with their fighter Randy Shields, and a few days before the event they decided to go for a brothers’ night out. Here’s Joe telling the story: “Dan and I were in Chicago in July of ’79 for Randy Shields vs. Pipino Cuevas for the WBA welterweight title. And, you know, it was 1979. We were young. We were in our 20s. We had a fight on a Saturday night and we were in Chicago. So we brought our disco clothes with us, of course. “We went out on a Wednesday night, and we had a driver at our disposal in Chicago. Dan and I said, ‘Just take us to a popular nightclub.’ And so we were driving around with the guy. We didn’t know Chicago. I certainly didn’t know – it was probably my first time there. He pulls up to a nightclub called Dingbats. And it was a long, red carpet with a red canopy, and we get out and we walk our way up, and at the front door was the then -not world-famous Mr. T. “He was a local celebrity, you might say. He was very well-known, and his family is very well-known. He had brothers that were in the Chicago Police Department. They were all former athletes. So, we kind of had a lot in common, and he came from a big family like we did. He had, I don’t know, seven or eight brothers like I did. We just kind of hit it off. T was only a year older than me, so if I was 25, he was 26 when we met. Maybe 27. And so he was at the door, and he struck up a conversation, and next thing you know, he’s taking us into the club. And he set us up in a beautiful little what we would call a ‘playpen’ area with couches and tables right near the dance floor. It was a great time. I mean, he was a great host, and we eventually went out after the club closed and spent the rest of the night with Mr. T. “We went out to eat at some hole- in-the-wall, where he came up with the famous line to my brother. You know, because it was kind of a seedy cafe at like four in the morning, and Dan was pretty particular. I was a little bit
rougher about it and didn’t care. Dan was kind of kvetching a little bit. He was complaining about this, and Mr. T goes, ‘Dan, Dan, I said it was open. I didn’t say it was good.’ “You know, the restaurant had pizza. And that’s pretty much what it was. It was just open. It was not very good, but it was the only place in town open, so that was our first night. But by the end of the night, when Dan and I went back to our place, I said, ‘There’s something very, very special about this guy.’ And we both agreed on that. He was entertaining. He was nonstop, full of energy, hilarious. Very smart. He was a very, very sharp guy. He owned properties already. “So we knew we had a friend, and so we had a great time together while it lasted the next few days. And if you look at the tape of the Cuevas-Shields fight, he’s bodyguarding us. He walked us out of the arena – and glad we had him, because a little bit of a fisticuffs broke out at the end of the fight as we were leaving the arena (Cuevas retained his title with a narrow unanimous decision). So, yeah, it was quite an exceptional week. “So several months went by, and we stayed in touch. There was this TV show being filmed, and it was called the America’s Toughest Bouncer competition. It was kind of based off the Urban Cowboy movie with John Travolta and Debra Winger. [The movie takes place] at Gilley’s Nightclub [in Texas], and one of the bouncers in the movie I guess hit it, you know, was very popular. And then they kind of centered this show around him. Killer [was the bouncer’s name]. “And so the show was being filmed at a club in Chicago, funny enough, on NBC. It was a two-part show. One Saturday followed by another Saturday. This competition included all sorts of things that would happen in a nightclub, where a bouncer would have to do it, ending after the second week with a boxing match between the two last- standing guys in the tournament. “Well, Mr. T lived in Chicago. The show was gonna be filmed in Chicago.
He caught wind of it, but we didn’t know anything about it. We were doing our boxing thing. And T said to Dan, ‘Hey, Dan, they said the roster’s closed up. There’s no room for me on it. Can you do something for me?’ And Dan got a hold of [an executive at NBC] and somehow got Mr. T on the roster to participate in this TV show. And this is probably 1980 in January or February – certainly months after we met in Chicago in July of ’79. “So the first TV show of the two- part series aired, and Mr. T was a smash hit right off the bat. He did great. His personality was something, and he was very fierce in his training for it. And sure enough, he caught the eye of Rhonda Young, the casting agent for [Sylvester] Stallone. And they were very excited, because they were casting Rocky III at the time, and they still did not have the replacement for Apollo Creed yet, for the nemesis. They contacted Dan and T, and they wanted him to come in after the show was over, which would have been the next weekend, and come in and audition. “So, you know, their whole idea, the casting department, was ‘how are we gonna find an actor who can fight or a fighter who can act,’ right? And so the second week happened, and they were a little disappointed in the boxing match with Mr. T and the opponent. So they lost a little bit of enthusiasm. They said, ‘Look, we’re not gonna bring him out. We’re not gonna pay for it.’ And so Dan sponsored Mr. T., and he came out for the audition, came out for a couple of more, and then won the part. And I know there were hundreds of guys that tried out for this role. And T got it, and the rest is history.” I asked if he’d heard that Joe Frazier was considered for the role. “Yeah, that’s what I heard. But as it turns out, it doesn’t really matter if you have a background in boxing, because if you’re athletic enough, it’s all choreographed for the movie, and Mr. T acclimated very quickly to the environment. And, you know, the performance speaks for itself. Number three was my favorite.”
founded a promotional company called Ten Goose Boxing (a reference to that sizable brood of Goossen kids) in 1982, and Joe became its flagship trainer. Out of his gym in Van Nuys, Goossen would develop brothers Gabriel and Rafael Ruelas on their roads to junior lightweight and lightweight titles, respectively. Michael Nunn would obtain the IBF middleweight title under his tutelage. Goossen was in the corner of another longtime charge,
Diego Corrales, in 2005 when he delivered an eight- word motivational speech (“You gotta fuckin’ get inside on him now.”) that preceded perhaps the most spellbinding comeback in boxing history, with a battered Corrales stopping Jose Luis Castillo in the 10th round of
A lot of boxing’s top trainers are Californians. Rudy Hernandez and Robert Garcia were born in and still live around Los Angeles. Abel Sanchez and Joel Diaz moved to SoCal from Mexico as children and never left. Virgil Hunter calls the Bay Area home. Freddie Roach is from Massachusetts, but he opened the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood more than 30 years ago – long enough to be considered a native. But no one is quite so Californian as Joe Goossen. Goossen was born in The Valley in northern Los Angeles County. His father was a homicide detective who worked on some of the most notorious cases in L.A. history, including the Black Dahlia murder in 1947. Joe and his nine siblings would grow up amid some of the culture booms that defined California, from beach movies to hippies to disco, and at 74 years old he still rocks a distinctively West Coast style – wing- collared shirts with buttons that have never met at the top and a pompadour that only seems to get taller and more surfable with age. He’s a very cool, authentically friendly guy, and listening to him spill knowledge in his easygoing baritone is a pleasure. And he’s also an unmitigated builder of champions. Joe’s older brother Dan NIGHT CLUBBER By Brian Harty
the Ring Magazine Fight of the Year. There have been countless others over the years and Joe is still going strong, both as a trainer and commentator. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2023, joining Dan, who passed away in 2014. With a backstory and professional credentials like these, it’s only natural that Goossen was involved in the creation of one of Hollywood’s most iconic boxing characters. I called him up to get his take for a story I was writing about training montages in Rocky movies (October 2026 issue), thinking he’d pooh-pooh the Siberian logs and chicken chases used to prepare The Italian Stallion for battle. Goossen was surprisingly mild about those methods, admitting that they seemed pretty reasonable. “Nature can teach you a lot of things,” he reflected. “But that being said, I don’t employ many chickens in my gym.” What he did offer was the origin story of Clubber Lang, the antagonist of Rocky III . The character was played by Mr. T., who was
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