RIP Ernest M-16 Mateen Dies, A Fighter Without Advice
By Robert Brizel, Real Combat Media Correspondent
New York, NY (January 12th, 2012)– Several years ago, I met Ernest ‘M-16’ at ringside working the Cordon Bleu nightclub boxing event in the corner of his brother, light heavyweight prospect Hamid-Abdul Mateen. We struck up a fanastic friendship immediately, and I worked with mateen as a volunteer advisor on the possibility of making a comeback for a shot at a version of the world cruiserweight title.
Mateen, it should be noted, was always warm, gentle, friendly and kind to me, in the privacy of my home in Manhattan (where I took the above photo in my living room) and out at restaurants and boxing events. Ernest had two problems: One, he told a lot of tall tales, none of which were true, and usually involved women, money, and domestic disputes; and his second problem, family in and out of jail and the courts, for which he claimed his wife put up a lot of money for lawyers, always for a lost cause. One of his family members, Ernest claimed, jumped bailed and forced his mother to forfeit the family house. Another brother arrested for double murder. The story of his dad murdered by the mob in an Italian grocery. The stories of Ernest back in the day when he was John Gotti’s personally owned fighter, the dapper don godfather himself. Ernest claimed after Gotti got locked up, he took a lot of fighters for money, and did not care anymore. Ernest claimed his water bottle was doped before the Antonio Tarver fighter. And so on………..
Ernest was supposed to go to camp in Pennsylvania last year with renowned trainer john Schaeffer, who also saw promise in converting Mateen into a physical conditioning trainer for all sports. Mateen took $3500 in advance from Schaeffer to come from Florida into camp, but strangely never showed and was never heard from again. The money disappeared, like the mysterious M-16 Mateen,…………
I was shocked to hear Mateen had been murdered in the hours of November 6, 2012, at age 46, by his wife in a domestic dispute, shot in the heart while pistol whipping his wife. I personally found the incident, and her claim of self-defense hard to jive with the may I knew. A tall tale liar and stretcher of the truth, yes. Violent, no, though he had a court warrant for domestic violence with his wife pending before he died. Because my computer had crashed ( did not replace it until January) I did not know Mateen’s fate, until a well known boxing trainer and mutual friend of Mateen’s called me several months later.
Mateen finished with a 30-12-3 record. He is not destined for any of the pro boxing halls of Fame, M-16 will probably be forgotten by everyone except me. Another boxer dead by a tragic ending, who had friends but who did not listen to advice, which ironically he actively sought from me as his advisor. Murdered and probably destined to be buried next to his murdered young father in New York City (if he has not already been buried quietly, as no obituary or funeral notice was posted), yet another violent tragedy of the Bed-Stuyvesant Brooklyn ghetto hood who took his culture with him, and it seems could not escape it. Rest in peace, friend, rest in peace.
I was remembering how Mateen told me it cost him a lot of money to escape Federal drug charges, and how he had his Florida property and cars confiscated due to drug dealing at the residence. he had wanted to keep from getting into trouble that one more time, and in the end, Mateen’s greatest fears, in a tragic bad moment, came true. Now there will be no comeback for a boxer who won a ten round decision in his final bout in 2000, who left the ring a winner, but died a victim of himself. The mystery of why Ernest Mateen never arrived at training camp as scheduled with John Schaeffer has final been solved. As I noted in conversation with the famed sports trainer John Schaeffer after the fact, if Mateen had only listened to my and John’s advice and reported to camp, he would still be alive. So sad.
It had been 22 years since Mateen’s 43 year old father, Ernest Abdul Mateen, a father of nine from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, was shot and killed in mid afternoon in a crowded open-air vegetable market in Canarsie. The New York Times account of Mateen’s father’s murder can be found online is at http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/09/nyregion/failed-memories-and-vanished-witness-follow-killing-in-a-market.html
The Atlanta Constiution-Journal newspaper writeup of the murder of Ernest ‘M-16’ Mateen (real name Earnest Mahir-Abdul Mateen) by 37 year old Kia Yvette Jeffies at 4:40 A.M. on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, at the Extended Stay Deluxe Hotel near Duluth, Georgia, can be found online at http://www.ajc.com/news/news/cops-wife-kills-former-pro-boxer-in-self-defense/nSykR/
Ms. Jeffries, it should be noted, had serious injuries to her head and face which were inflicted by her husband M-16 Mateen when she was found by police. The killing of M-16 Mateen by Jeffries was officially ruled to be self-defense, and the case was immediately closed.
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