The Black Rhino

Woody Overton and Jim Chapman of Bloody Angola Podcast tell the story of Clifford Etienne and the Louisiana Prison Boxing Program at Louisiana State Penitentiary and other prisons.#cliffordetienne #theblackrhino #bloodyangolapodcast #podcastFull TranscriptBloody Angola Podcast ( THE BLACK RHINO)Jim: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Welcome, y'all, back to another episode of Bloody Angola. And we appreciate you listening and liking, subscribing, and all that good stuff.Jim: Yeah.Woody: We want to thank our Patreon members who are very instrumental in the show. Y'all stay tuned at the end of the show and we're going to talk about that some more. But, Jim, today we've got something-- We always said it'd be different. Today, this is a very, very interesting story, which I do have a lot of personal connection with.Jim: I think we can title this one The Black Rhino.Woody: The Black Rhino. Absolutely. I knew the Black Rhino when he was becoming the Black Rhino. This guy's name was Clifford Etienne. And that's, y'all, not from South Louisiana. It's E-T-I-E-N-N-E. Clifford Etienne grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana, home of tabasco. We call it affectionately the Berry. If you're from South Louisiana, they just call it the Berry. I got paternal brothers from down there and Bobby [unintelligible 00:03:03], if you're listening, shoutout, Probation And Parole, State of Louisiana.Jim: But there's not much out there either. It's the tabasco plain if you're going to New Iberia pretty much.Woody: It's growing up a lot over the years, but back then, and specifically in this time frame that I'm going to be talking about, Clifford Etienne was coming up and he was truly, basically a stud.Jim: Yeah. He dominated in wrestling. He played baseball. Woody: Linebacker in football.Jim: Track and field. He threw the disc and the shot. Woody: 6'2", 290 pounds.Jim: Big boy. And was recruited by LSU, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, which these days are dominant, but back in those days were extremely dominant.Woody: And recruited as a linebacker. And he just was a stud-stud. But sometimes, life happens and people try cocaine or different things or they hang with the wrong crowd. And that's what Clifford started to do. He could have had the world as his oyster, and he would it in later years and seems like history repeats itself, unfortunately. Back then, on a certain day in Lafayette, Louisiana, when Clifford was a young man--Jim: Yeah, he was 18. As most 18-year-olds do, he was getting away with what he could, and him and four friends decided it would be a good idea to rob some customers at a shopping mall in Lafayette.Woody: It was the only shopping mall in Lafayette at the time. And that was in 1988. I was there in 1989. And when USL was USL, now it's ULL. Go, Cajuns.Jim: Yes.Woody: But they robbed some people. And ultimately, he got busted.Jim: Yeah, he got sentenced to 40 years. The first stint was Bloody Angola. That was where he first went.Woody: And 40 years, y'all, would have been the minimum on armed robbery. It carries up to 99 years in the state of Louisiana. I think he was like 18 years old, he gets sentenced and they ship him to Bloody Angola.Jim: That's right. Eventually, after a few transfers, he ends up at DCI.Woody: That's Dixon Correctional Institute, y'all. That's where I would come to know him. What happened was I was working the working cell block, which y'all heard me talk about before. It's different than admin seg, because there's two men to a cell. But working cell block is where you only get sent for major rule violations. Basically, for street charges, whether you're smuggling, dope, you attack an officer, you rape somebody, or you fight with weapons. Now, I had two tiers of the working cell block that I ran and I can remember distinctly, Clifford Etienne was in the cell with a guy from Livingston Parish, a white guy from Livingston Parish. Now, Clifford Etienne is a black man, and they were in the next to the last cell at the end of the tier. The tier only had cells on one side, y'all, face the screen windows. They had a couple of black and white TVs down the tier.But I would stop and talk to them all the time because the guy from the LP, I knew him from the street, and I knew him back from the club days. We knew some of the same people. You're not supposed to become friends and stuff with the convicts, which I submit to you that when you are working 12-hour shifts in two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off, but even on my days off, the Department of Corrections was always short and they had an on call list. Basically, I could work 30 days a month.But I'm doing time just like they're doing time. I was doing time just like they were doing time. They locked those doors behind you on that 12-hour shift, you can only shower them and feed them and have nurse calls so much and shit gets a little boring. So, I would stop, and I did a couple of years back there-- and I say it, I'm like a convict, but it [Jim chuckles] really was like doing time. Did a couple of years back there. When you get locked up on the working cell block, once you get locked up, you have to do 90 days without a low court or a high court write-up. You go back before the board and they basically hear your case as to whether or not you can be released in general population. Well, the problem with that is, y'all, in the working cell blocks, basically, they're worst of the worst because these are people that can't even follow the basic rules in prison, even the small rules, and the ones that, like I said, were back there for serious charges. Now, the white guy in the cell was back there for having or suspicion of having sex with a female guard. That's a no-no, but it is what it is, right?[laughter]Woody: If you can get over and do what you do, that's what they're going to do. Now, his cellie was Clifford Etienne. So, I began to talk to him. Look, this is a massive dude. Now, I was 6'2", probably 250 at the time. And he's 6'2", 300 pounds but he was all muscle. I mean, like solid as a rock. But he was a really cool dude, and I say that. I know he robbed people and shit like that, but he could have been an asshole to me or anything else, but I would hang out and stand in front of the cell late at night and shit. I'm entertainment for them also. We were talking and I found out that Etienne was a boxer, and he was actually on DCI's boxing team, but also found out that he was an accomplished artist.He asked me when we're talking one night, said, "You married? You dating someone?" I said, "I'm dating someone." "Can you give me a picture of her?" "Bro, I'm not bringing you a picture of my girlfriend." [Jim laughs] He said, "No. I'm an artist. I'm going to draw a picture and you can give it to her." So, the next time I came back to work, I got a little snapshot and I gave it to him. The next evening, I came back to work, and he had hand sketched an exact likeness of this girl. And I can't remember her last name. I think her first name was Debbie. It was just fucking piece of artwork and I was blown away. It's on a basic piece of paper done in pencil. I'm like, "Bruh, you got talent." I didn't know what I would come to find out later on and what we're going to talk about.Also, I talked to him about boxing because I like boxing, and I like to box. Both of my grandfathers went to college for boxing, one at USL and one for LSU. They boxed on the college boxing teams. I asked him, I said, "You get into a fight--" just more like bullshit. I said, "If you're going to hit somebody." He said, "Woody, if you're going to hit somebody, I want you to hit him hard as you can in the stomach. Don't let him know it's coming. You rear back, full body swing. Hit him in the stomach." And I said, "Why is that?" He said, "Because if you do it right, you're going to knock the air out of him. Then, they're defenseless. You can just beat him to a pulp."Jim: Yeah.Woody: He would go on to become the Interprison Boxing Champion for the state ofLouisiana. Y'all, each prison has their own boxing team, and it's big shit.Jim: Yeah. I'm going to tell you about his reputation in prison and a little bit about a trainer that had actually started working with him in prison. There was a guy named Valrice Cooper. And Valrice Cooper had a nickname. It was Whoop. They called him Whoop because of boxing. Whoop, whoop. That's how he would say when you punch. It was a whoop. Everybody knew Whoop in the prison system. He was a steward of the Louisiana prison boxing scene. He was an inmate himself. Whoop, he didn't have the pleasure of meeting Etienne until after the boxer-- He was already the most dominant prison fighter in Louisiana. As Woody said, these different prisons have their own boxing teams. Angola has one, DCI has one. There's one in North Louisiana.Woody: Hunt.Jim: Hunt has one. This is a big deal in prison, these boxing teams. Whoop was the guywho kind of managed that, even as an inmate.Woody: Basically, helped Etienne perfect his craft better.Jim: Absolutely. He had heard about this guy, this 6'2", 290-pound fighter, and he started working with Etienne. From the first second he saw him, he could tell from his movement, he had a ton of natural talent. He countered right, he stepped back right, he circled correctly. As a matter of fact, Whoop would describe him as a prison version of Muhammad Ali, y'all. That's how good he was. Anybody describes you as Muhammad Ali, you're good. But theprison version of Muhammad Ali from a guy who really knew that sport was amazing. Etienne continued to dominate in the prison world. He actually won 30 bouts, never lost.Woody: Y'all, real quick. Certainly, they would practice amongst themselves at Dixon Correctional Institute, etc.Jim: Shadow box.Woody: Right. W