Blood in My Coffee: The Life of the Fight Doctor

Ferdie Pacheco

Nob 2012 · Ibinebenta ng Simon and Schuster

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Best known as the Fight Doctor, Ferdie Pacheco has lived a dreamer’s life. Instead of finding success in just one career, Pacheco has excelled in numerous fields. He’s been a successful pharmacist, doctor, boxing cornerman, television commentator, screenwriter, author, artist, and more. Now the life of this extraordinary Renaissance man is captured in his one-of-a-kind autobiography, Blood in My Coffee.

With wit and candor, Pacheco chronicles his life from his childhood days spent growing up in the Spanish section of Tampa, Florida, to patching up Muhammad Ali while sitting ring-side. Within these pages, Pacheco offers an inside look at the world of boxing, including characters from Miami’s famous Fifth Street Gym, the Ali circus, and working behind the microphone with Marv Albert. He takes off the gloves as he recalls his dealings with the likes of Don King and the Showtime Network. But Blood in My Coffee is more than just a boxing book. It’s Pacheco’s personal journey of realization and growth—from opening a medical office in Miami’s Overtown ghetto to campaigning for better safety regulations in boxing. It’s proof positive that with a little luck and a lot of perseverance, dreams really do come true.

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Ferdie Pacheco was born in Tampa, Florida on December 8, 1927. He received a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the University of Florida and a medical degree from the University of Miami. He worked as a general practitioner and often treated poor patients for nothing or a nominal charge. In the early 1960s, his love of boxing drew him to the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach, where Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, was among the young fighters honing their skills under the trainer Angelo Dundee. Pacheco became Ali's fight doctor as he rose in the pro ranks and remained with him during most of his reign as the heavyweight champion. Pacheco later became a ringside television analyst. Pacheco wrote several books including Fight Doctor, Muhammad Ali: A View from the Corner, Ybor City Chronicles, and Tales From the 5th Street Gym. He died on November 16, 2017 at the age of 89. Budd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall,and the story On the Waterfront, which he adapted as a novel, play, and an Academy Award–winning film script. Born in New York City, Schulberg grew up in Hollywood, where his father, B. P. Schulberg, was head of production at Paramount, among other studios. Throughout his career, Schulberg worked as a journalist and essayist, often writing about boxing, a lifelong passion. Many of his writings on the sport are collected in Sparring with Hemingway (1995). Other highlights from Schulberg’s nonfiction career include Moving Pictures (1981), an account of his upbringing in Hollywood, and Writers in America (1973), a glimpse of some of the famous novelists he met early in his career. He died in 2009.