Plaxico Burress and his wife, Tiffany, sat down for a revealing interview on HBO’s Real Sports set to air on Tuesday, Aug. 16.  Read more after the jump.
The Jets’ wide receiver touched on everything from not knowing who Michael Bloomberg was before the shooting incident that landed him jail to losing count of how many times he cried in prison to his current road to redemption. Burress, who spent two years in jail after pleading guilty to criminal possession of an illegal firearm on Nov. 28. 2009, was honest and forthright about the past few years of his life.
“I don’t take no s— from nobody,” Burress said about his perceived public image. “You got earn my respect as a person. You got love for me. I got love for you.”
Burress admitted that “I lost count” of how many times he cried in jail. “You work your whole life to get to a certain place and tear it all down just making a bad decision,” Burress said.
Burress said that he hadn’t even heard of Michael Bloomberg before the mayor of New York City weighed in on the case. Burress’ attorney Ben Brafman told Bryant Gumbel that there was $10,000 bail agreement on the morning of the wide receiver’s surrender. “Plaxico was going to be released either on his own recognizance or $10,000 bail,” Brafman said. “Twenty minutes after the Mayor held his press conference, the prosecutor called me and said they’re going to be asking for $250,000 bail. And I said. ‘This is outrageous. We had an agreement.'”
“I came out from the little holding cell… I sat down with Ben and he was like, ‘We got a problem,’ Burress recalled. “I said, ‘What you talking about?’ He said Mayor Bloomberg just went on TV and said you should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. And you know what I said after that? I said, ‘Who is Mayor Bloomberg?” … Dead serious. ‘Who is Mayor Bloomberg?'”
His plea to the grand jury to avoid jail time didn’t work.
“I’m saying to myself, I’m going to talk to some regular people out here… and they’re going to sit here and listen to me and say the guy was just not smart, made a bad decision and the guy shot himself,” Burress said. “Nobody else was harmed. He’ll just learn a lesson from that in itself. I was wrong again.… My name is Plaxico Burress. My life, my career hasn’t always been squeaky clean. You get portrayed of being a certain type of person or certain type of individual. (By) what the media says… the kind of car you drive… how you dress… That’s just the reality of society.”
Life behind bars was humbling and surreal for the former Giants receiver.
“To be living in that cell 16-17 hours a day, you go from being able to do just about anything that you want to do to basically putting you in a cage, putting you in a box,” Burress said. “It’ll get your attention.”
The 34-year-old Burress, who will not play in the Jets’ preseason opener in Houston on Monday night due to a left ankle sprain, said his jobs in prison were to “mop floors, mop stairwells, serve meals on the line, clean showers (and) clean toilets.”
Rex Ryan also made a brief appearance during the segment and reiterated his expectation that Burress will be a good teammate.
“We wouldn’t have taken Plax if we didn’t think he’s going to be successful,” Ryan said.
Burress, whose MRIÂ Friday revealed nothing worse than a left ankle sprain, hasn’t lost his confidence despite being out of the league for more than two years.
“I just have that confidence and belief in myself that I’m going to go out there and play at a high level,” Burress said. “Then, everybody is going to go back to scratching their head again. How does he do it? How did he not practice and do it? He’s been away for two years… How does he do it?”
“I’ve already had a great year,” he added. “Everything else is going to be the icing on the cake.”
Burress also doesn’t own any guns anymore.
“I just don’t want to be around nothing negative,” Burress said. “I walk around every day with my head held high. Yeah, I’m the guy that shot myself. People always ask me, ‘Would you change that situation?’ I say, man, hell yeah… Nobody wants to go to jail. But the person that I am… and where I’m at at this time. I wouldn’t change the person.”
