From Survival to Longevity: How Ed Latimore Rebuilt His Body, Mind, and Future at 40

Professional heavyweight fighter, author, and influencer Ed Latimore plans to live to 100. In order to do that, he’s back in the ring, at 40, and still getting lighter, leaner and wiser.
The words “heal” and “health” both come from the Old English word “hale,” meaning “wholeness,” but they’re often used to describe two very different things. That can be especially true for boxers, who often come to the sport to heal the wounds of a rough childhood. The paradox of hitting and being hit in order to heal psychological trauma is that few leave the sport very healthy from a physical perspective. While boxers often develop the mental strength to overcome their past, the pursuit of healing rarely leads to long-term physical health. But that doesn’t mean it can’t.

For professional heavyweight Ed Latimore, his reason for entering the ring was the same as so many fighters before him: he was seeking to free himself from the shadows of a violent past. But, unlike so many fighters before, he’s returned to the ring — at age 40 — seeking the sort of holistic health few fighters find in their second phase of life.

He’s also coming back to boxing as much more than a fighter. First and foremost, he’s a devoted husband and father, and has spent most of the last few years handling the day care of his 3-year-old son while writing his third book, Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business, which he’ll tell you is his first good one.

The rest of his writing has gone toward his ever-growing newsletter, Stoic Street Smarts, or his stream-of-conscious posts on X, where he has built a following of more than 200,000 and is a certified influencer, which is clearly not something he set out to be nor part of his identity. The term itself lumps him in with a rather unauthentic crowd that hasn’t lived the life he has or experienced his pain — something he’s formed a unique relationship with.

Trauma, Survival, and the Psychology of Pain

“Pain isn’t real. It’s no different than the feeling of being tickled or having an itch. It’s just that — a feeling.” — Ed Latimore

Such a distinct take on being hurt is a necessity for a heavyweight boxer, but it’s a sentiment that’s typically developed well before they ever pull on gloves and start swinging back. In 2012, USA Boxing President Hal Adonis made worldwide headlines when he said: “When kids call me up, I say, ‘Let me ask you an honest question… have your parents ever hit you? If they say ‘no,’ I say, ‘I don’t think you belong in boxing.’”

There were outcries for Adonis to step down, especially after he doubled down on his statement, and amateur boxing in the U.S. was even suspended for three months by the international governing body because the USA Boxing board stood by him. (He eventually resigned later that year to prevent further suspensions.)

The reason Adonis and USA Boxing stood their ground so firmly is that they didn’t see it as condoning domestic violence; as so many who had never been around the ring made it out to be. Among the fighting community, it was just a harsh truth that they’d seen play out on repeat thousands of times over.

Latimore was no longer a kid by the time he found his way to the ring, but his path to it began where so many others had: getting his ass kicked in the projects. For Latimore, it was Pittsburgh’s Terrace Village Housing Projects in the 90s, where crack was king and domestic violence was a part of everyday life. The punches that would eventually lead Latimore to the ring were landed by his mother and her boyfriend, Fred. An annual visit from his father, who lived in Philadelphia, was free from violence, but it only led to more resentment for leaving him and his younger sister to suffer in the projects with mom. For Latimore, day-to-day life in Terrace Village revolved around two very specific goals: Avoid catching a beating, and figure out a way to get out of there.

Changing Trajectory Through Discipline and Environment

“If you walk the same path as everyone around you, you’ll end up at the same destination. However, if your trajectory is just one degree different from everyone else’s, you’ll eventually be in completely different places.” — Ed Latimore

By the time Latimore was in fourth grade, all he could think about was how to change his surroundings. It was 1995, and “Congo” was the summer blockbuster, so the bullies decided it was the perfect nickname for Latimore, whose body had yet to grow into its very long arms. This led to dozens of fights, although he was careful enough to let the bully lob the first punch, because it was always the kid who started throwing fists who got suspended. By Latimore’s count, he was “only” suspended 15 times throughout grade school.

Even with the occasional three-day break, he was one of the smartest fish in a decidedly below average pond, so he was sent to Banksfield Gifted Center once a week with promising students from other low-performing Pittsburgh Public Schools. Banksfield was something of a sanctuary for Latimore. There were no gangs, no drug deals before and after school, no fights, and no one calling him “Congo.” It also exposed him to the concept of magnet schools, where most of the gifted students were headed, and for the first time in his life, he saw a way out of Terrace Village.

Between conversations at Banksfield and the limited internet research he could do in 1998 without a home computer, he identified Schenley High School as his target. He didn’t ask his mom for much growing up, but on the day they opened applications, he made sure they were the first ones in line to hand it in. Three days later, a letter in their mailbox at Terrance Village informed Ed of his acceptance, and his trajectory finally pointed away from the projects.

From age 14 to 22, Latimore didn’t take or throw a single punch. It’s very possible that he’s the only professional boxer on earth who can say that. His mom did her best to keep him away from organized sports as a kid, thinking he’d be just another black kid from the projects who could only play basketball, but after he was forced to do a physical assessment for freshman year gym class, the football coaches and players at Schenley demanded he join the team as a sophomore. Without ever having seen a weight room, Latimore could clear 225 with ease on the bench press and ran his first-ever 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds, which is slightly faster than the average NFL player. He was barely 15. The idea of being talented had never crossed his mind up until that point. That’s the psychology of a kid from the projects with an abusive mother and no father. No kids from Terrace Village felt exceptional. That is, until one of them changed their bearing ever so slightly.

Though the classes at Schenley were often a challenge for Latimore, who got by with a few Bs, mostly Cs and a handful of Ds, it opened his eyes to a world beyond the projects and the idea of having goals. He became best friends with a Jewish kid from the suburbs whose parents both lived in the same home — something he had literally never seen before. He saw upperclassmen on the football team graduating with Division I scholarship offers. Schenley graduates had even gone onto the NFL, including 1972 MVP Larry Brown of the Washington Redskins. From Schenley, the sky — in Lattimore’s case, the NFL — was the limit.

His first goal was just to get out of the projects; to change his heading. His second goal was even more ambitious and unlikely, but it had a very straightforward path: Get a D1 scholarship and get to the NFL. Latimore had two things working against him, and neither were small: First, your odds of making it to the NFL are about equal to being struck by lightning, even if you spent every waking minute of your life trying to get struck by lightning. Second, he didn’t step onto a football field — or even watch a football game — until he was a sophomore in high school. Most of the kids fielding D1 offers were pulling on pads by age 10.

Three years isn’t a very long time to garner D1 attention. Even though his physical attributes were off the charts, his football skills at linebacker and defensive end were very much a work in progress by the end of high school. His only D1 scholarship offer came from Georgetown, which was revoked because he couldn’t meet the minimum SAT and GPA requirements. His only chance to continue playing football and going to school was from Division III University of Rochester, which could only offer financial aid and no scholarships, per the DIII bylaws. He’d have to take out federal loans for the rest, and worse yet, Rochester had produced exactly one NFL player in its lackluster football history. But, one was still better than none. It meant a roadblock on his way to the NFL, not necessarily an impasse. And any college was better than none, as his friends parents’ at Schenley reminded him until he agreed to go.

If Schenley was the switch that got Latimore on the right track, Rochester was the broken rail that nearly derailed it all. It had nothing to do with the University of Rochester, in particular, and it’s probably the most relatable part of Latimore’s story for many. He got to college and began drinking — a lot. Like many American college campuses, at Rochester, binge drinking isn’t viewed as a problem as long as it’s relegated to Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and maybe a sprinkle on Sundays.

“It was like the premise of the horror movie The Purge,” he writes in his first good book. “Except instead of all crime being legal for twenty-four hours, all levels of intoxication were acceptable during those days.”

Latimore played by those rules for his first two semesters, barely keeping his GPA high enough to stay on the team and in school. But by the middle of sophomore year, he’d quit the football team, failed out of school and was drinking nearly every night until the University kicked him out of his housing. While his body may have been 300 miles away, his mind was right back to where it was in Terrace Village: Without a goal and trying to avoid going home at all costs.

Boxing as Structure, Identity, and Self-Reconstruction

“Fighting is a bit like joining the Army to learn how to fold sheets. You’re going to learn how to fold sheets, but it’s also going to teach you a whole bunch of other things you can use in your life.” — Ed Latimore

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Eighteen months in Rochester left Latimore with two things: A serious drinking problem and a contempt for higher education, which he perceived to be the reason for his circumstances. Those circumstances became working at Game Stop and Starbucks for minimum wage and living in a tiny apartment with two other guys. He only had enough money to get drunk or eat, so his expendable income went toward booze while he took all his meals at his girlfriend’s house. Her mother happened to be a professor of higher education at the University of Pittsburgh, so as long as Latimore kept his scorn of the American college system to himself, there wouldn’t be any problems. Of course, a 22-year-old frequently under the influence isn’t great at keeping things to himself, so it was only a matter of months before he was banished from her home (and food) and cut off her family phone plan.

In banishing Latimore from her home, Professor Roberts berated Latimore with a series of ruthless truths that proved as pivotal to his life’s trajectory as the decision to attend Schenley: He had regressed since high school. He had zero goals other than getting drunk. He was fat — 280 pounds to be exact — thanks to her cooking and his drinking. Without the harsh scolding from a professor of higher education, it’s possible Latimore never would’ve found his way to a boxing gym.

In 2008, YouTube was king of social media, and Latimore’s favorite activity while downing his nightly box of wine was watching videos of old fights. It didn’t matter what kind of fight — Boxing, MMA, illegal street fighting — he consumed it all and the amount of fights being uploaded every day meant he’d never come close to running out. Until Professor Robert’s admonishment, the thought of fighting never really crossed his mind. He certainly wasn’t in shape for it any more. It was just something he enjoyed watching to pass the time. Just about any guy enjoys watching a couple of other dudes fight, and it’s especially fun after a few drinks. Latimore wasn’t ready to give up on drinking just yet — he was only 23, after all — but being called fat by your girlfriend’s mom as she kicks you out of her house is enough to drive any young man back to the gym. And the boxing gym was the only one that made sense.

Health, Aging, and Training Beyond Brute Force

I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t take care of themselves. I don’t buy that it’s genetic. Sure, there are genetic components, but that’s not what kills most people. I don’t want to be that guy.” — Ed Latimore

Amateur boxers fight a lot. Way more than professionals, especially at heavyweight, where the punches take the biggest toll. If you’ve ever seen a street fight between two drunk guys, you’ve pretty much witnessed amateur boxing. It’s a clusterfuck of swings, with each fighter hoping to get lucky with one knockout blow. Amateur boxing matches are often scored by how many punches each fighter lands (say 33–12), instead of how many rounds each fighter wins, as in a professional fight, with 10 points going to the winner of each round, nine to the loser, and deductions going from there.

Latimore’s introduction into boxing was baptism by fire, which is the only way to see if an amateur has what it takes to even fight on the regional level. Golden Gloves were and still are the gold standard in amateur boxing, and fighters start by taking amateur fights within their city before advancing to regional and national tournaments, if they’re any good. Pittsburgh, along with other rustbelt cities like Detroit and Cleveland, has one of the strongest Golden Glove scenes in the country, so if you can make it out of the toughest cities in the country, you probably have a shot at the national level and what lies beyond that.

He had his first amateur fight at the sub-amateur level of Golden Gloves just before his 24th birthday, in January of 2009. He’d been training steadily for three months and the weight was starting to come off, but his drinking habits hadn’t changed all that much, even if the rest of his patterns were starting to. He had a goal and he was back in training mode, and he was able to take everything he’d learned in football training and focus it into the two hours a day he spent in the gym. It often took a lot more than two hours out of his day, involved considerable risk, and is one of his favorite stories to tell.

“The first real gym I started training at was 30 miles away, on the other side of Pittsburgh. I had a car, but it was a piece of junk and couldn’t come close to passing inspection, so it couldn’t get insured. And my license was suspended from parking tickets I never thought about paying. So I knew that if I got pulled over, I was probably going to jail for at least a night, probably longer. I spent 30 miles each way looking two cars ahead and two cars behind for the police. I was literally driven by fear. But sometimes you need fear to get things done.”

He talks a lot about fear and it’s a recurring subject in all three of his books, the first two of which you don’t need to add to your list of must-reads. Writing was always part of Latimore’s long-term plan, and from his endless hours spent guzzling shitty wine and watching YouTube, he understood a basic premise of social media: The best way to have your content seen is to build an audience first. Twitter was just taking off, and he finally had a place to put his words into orbit. Over the next few years, the whirlwind changes of his life gave him plenty to post about, and the following came naturally the more he shared.

Latimore blitzed through the Golden Gloves ranks, reaching the quarter finals of the national tournament before being eliminated and thinking that may be the upper limit of his boxing talent. But in getting to the quarter finals of that tournament, he’d beaten an up-and-coming fighter named Dominic Breazeale. If you know boxing, you know that name. If you don’t, all you need to know is that Breazeale is an Olympian who twice contended for the IBF Heavyweight world title, losing those fights to boxing legends Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder. Breazeale was training with an elite heavyweight development group in Los Angeles, and after beating him, Latimore got the call to join. His dream of becoming a professional athlete was back on.

You have to understand how young, athletic men think. If they’re going to start a sport, the goal is always to get to the highest level, no matter what. Any guy getting into a sport in his early or mid-20s has fleeting thoughts of doing it professionally, some just have more talent and better genetics than the rest, and sometimes it takes those guys a little longer to find the sport their calling. Sometimes they never do. There’s a world in which Michael Phelps sticks to golf and Usain Bolt is just the fastest guy on the soccer pitch. It takes the right confluence of events for an athlete to find his or her craft, and the timeline is often beyond their control.

It’d be easy for Latimore to wonder what his boxing career could’ve been if he’d gotten into it earlier, but it’s not a thought he entertains, and if he’d started any sooner, it’s unlikely anyone would be writing about a comeback right now. A fighter only has so many fights in him, or her, and even though he’s had a total of 73 fights in his career, 59 of those came at the amateur level (with a record of 48–11). By returning to pro fighting, his biggest risk is putting a blemish on his nearly perfect 14–1–1 record, but it’s another idea he doesn’t give any air to. As he likes to put it, “I still got time to beef up my obituary.”

Were it not beating Breazeale as an amateur, it’s unlikely that Latimore’s obit would have included “professional boxer,” along with everything else that has come with it. He relocated to Carson, California, to train with All-American Heavyweights at a gym called “The Rock,” which was started by tycoon boxing promoter Michael King. It was a true pro experience for the most promising heavyweights in the country, and it became to him what Schenley had ten years earlier: A change of trajectory toward a more promising future.

Before California, it was a struggle to get fights and move up the ranks. With King’s money and a supportive training environment around him, he was being sent all over the country to fight real boxers, and real boxers were being brought to LA to fight King’s group. Best of all, he was winning — a lot. He fought 24 times in his first year at The Rock and only lost four times, all of which he remembers more vividly than any of the wins. One of those was to Breazeale, at the 2012 Olympic Trials, where Breazeale went on to win the tournament and represent USA at heavyweight in London.

In boxing, the Olympic tournament is contested only by amateurs, and while it would’ve been cool to represent his country in the ring, it was never the goal. He was still laser-focused on making it as a pro, and he still had a long way to go, both in and out of the ring. He was still drinking during the 18 months he spent in LA, but living with other fighters, it was no longer a cornerstone of his lifestyle. The big nights were always reserved for after his wins, so there were still plenty of nights he doesn’t remember.

As unlikely as it was, he didn’t truly straighten out until he returned home to Pittsburgh and no longer had the support of a big money promoter. His time at The Rock had run its course, but it’d given him the direction to tackle a few goals he’d put off during his last stint in the Steel City. Namely, getting a degree in something that would make money. Yes, higher education in Pittsburgh for the man who’d once been kicked out of a Pittsburgh apartment for chastising it. In order to pay for school, he’d join the Army, something he’d considered doing a few years earlier, but the height of the Iraq War seemed like a worthy reason to delay.

Things happened fast as soon as he got home. He enlisted in the Army the first week of 2013 and had his first professional fight three weeks later. That summer, he was sent off to Basic Training in Missouri and experienced his first six months of sobriety as an adult. It was the physical and mental boost he needed to further his boxing career and get started on a degree. After learning electrical engineering basics at Basic, he decided that was the goal, but like most good ones, it evolved. He took a physics prerequisite at community college and thought the experiments were the closest thing to magic there was in the real world. Three years later, the kid from Terrace Village had four years of service in the Army and a degree in physics from Duquesne University.

A few years and fourteen professional wins later, that kid was also a man with a wife, his first kid and first good book on the way, and massive social media following based mostly off writing about his past. At 40, traditional boxing wisdom said he was done. But traditional boxing wisdom was in the stone age; Latimore had thought that all along. Fifteen years of boxing and 25 years of training had him believing that he could fight lighter and smarter than ever before. And the fear of what would happen if he didn’t get back in the ring meant it was never really a choice.

Legacy, Fatherhood, and the Fight Against an Early Death

“The only fear I have now is dying. That’s it. Everything else; I feel like I have agency over. Even the dying part. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. I know what happens to kids without their fathers.” — Ed Latimore

When chasing a dream, you need proof to keep believing. Throughout Latimore’s life as an athlete, he sought validation that his unreasonable objectives had been accomplished at least once before. The miniscule chance of making it to the NFL was enough to get him on the team, first at Schenley and then, for better, worse, at Rochester. The prospect of making it as a professional fighter got him out to LA and gave him a brief and modest career scratching the surface of the top-end of the heavyweight ranks.

Proof comes in many forms, and in Latimore’s case, reason to believe his best boxing days are still ahead came from a two-time convicted felon. Amir Mansour is another name boxing fanatics will be well familiar with, both for the devastating left hooks he landed in the ring, and the nine-year break between them because of a felony drug charge. He returned to the ring at 38 and immediately shot back to the top of the heavyweight ranks, alongside others his age like Bernard Hopkins. Traditional boxing wisdom was and is changing in a lot of ways, and the idea that 40 is the fighters’ graveyard — where they merely take fights to lose to up-and-coming boxers and boost their record — was becoming an ancient ideology. At least Latimore had enough proof that it could be.

For his return to the ring, which began with a first round knockout of a few months after turning 40, Latimore returned to his former coach, Tom Yankello. If there were a Mt. Rushmore of boxing coaches, it would no doubt be built in Pennsylvania and Yankello would be one of the four heads etched somewhere in the bluestone hills. Traditional boxing wisdom has never really been a roadblock for Yankello, because he’s always been a bit ahead of the science of the “Sweet Science.” The skills, form and technique of what makes for good boxing haven’t changed all that much over the past 50 years, and with good reason. Human beings have been fighting for at least 15,000 years. It’s one of the things we’re best at, and our bodies have literally evolved to fight, even if that phase of homosapien Darwinism is likely nearing its end. The point is, we’re not about to unlock some new secret about what makes for a good punch.

What human beings, athletes, and boxers in particular, are unlocking now is a smarter way to train the whole system. It just takes a wiser — and often, older — athlete to embrace what’s new. Latimore’s first stretch with Yankello taught him a smarter way to train as a boxer. Sparring sessions were for muscle memory, not getting hurt. Training under fatigue was minimized. He was taught to leave something in the gym each day; something that goes against every fighter’s instinct.

But throughout the opening act of his pro career, Latimore was still coming down from the 280-pound alcoholic who got kicked out of Professor Robert’s apartment. Now, in his final round as a fighter and second turn training under Yankello, he’s teaching himself how to train and live smarter as an athlete. He’s never been one to put all the trust of his health in his doctor, but he’s learned to believe in his blood and regular bloodwork has been as big of a change for his physical health as going to Schenley was for his mental health. He’s found even more autonomy over the one thing he’s always been able to control: his body. When a test revealed a thyroid deficiency — something very common among heavyweights — the simple addition of selenium had him feeling 10 years younger within a month. Latimore loves proof, and, like many men his age, he’s learning there’s a lot of proof in his blood, something he’s been pouring out his entire life.

This time he’s pouring it all out on social media, including a new venture on YouTube, which is somewhat responsible for starting him on the boxing path. These days, it’s where he’s back to dedicating much of his free time, which is essentially nonexistent since his son has started moving. He’s also jumped headfirst into competitive chess, with a rating of 1800, which is something that typically takes a decade of playing. Luckily, the chances of making it as a professional chess player are so fictitious that even he won’t entertain it. He’d rather try his hand at writing fiction next, a process he’ll no doubt document on the internet.

“I think about social media like the movie Arrival,” he says. “The Aliens were trying to give humans this gift, and we almost fucked it up. “Social media is a gift to humanity — there’s so much learning we can do — it’s up to us not to fuck it up.”

Whether intended or not, his following on social media has given him influence and a platform, but it’s not what brings authenticity and certainly not part of his identity. That starts and ends with one thing: The square thing they call a ring that makes him whole.

“It’s like boxing adds this little air of legitimacy to everything else I do. Yeah I served, yeah I got this physics degree, yeah I wrote a book. But I’m a fighter. That’s what I do, and it’s not what most guys do. It makes everything else easier and makes whatever else I’m going to do next possible.”

Written by Brad Culp

Brad Culp is a sports journalist, former Editor-in-Chief of Triathlete Magazine, Media Manager of the International Triathlon Union, and LAVA magazine.