My grandfather wraps my hands before every fight. And every time he does, as he weaves the tape through my fingers, he tells me the same thing.
“It’s that time,” Pop-Pop will say. “It’s that time to be great.”
Then he’ll cut the roll and look up at me.
“You’re great. Now perform.”
To be honest with you, where I’m from — Newark, New Jersey — there’s not a lot of people making it out of our city. So we’re not hearing that all too much.
That we can be great.