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JANUARY is a traditionally slow month in the annual calendar. It’s a time of renewal, rebirth and re-evaluation for many.
Relationships, friendships, careers, health, life goals all are placed under the microscope at a time when the inclement weather induces us to sit still and think more deeply about aspects of our lives we perhaps previously took for granted.
One man who made his profession out of thinking deeply was legendary boxing trainer and philosopher combined, Cus D’Amato.
Born on January 17 1908, D’Amato’s was a life that took in the most seismic events of the 20th century before his death in 1985 at age 77.
The first world war, the Great Depression, the second world war, Korean war, Vietnam, Reagan — how many of his generation could claim to have lived through all of the above?
A product of the equally legendary Bronx in New York, this Italian-American second generation immigrant learned early on that violence was a daily companion, both at home in the shape of an abusive father, and also out on the tough uncompromising streets of this infamous Italian-American neighbourhood.
Violence stalked D’Amato wherever he ventured as a lion stalks its prey, and ultimately put paid to him achieving his dream of garnering a licence to fight as a professional, due to an eye injury sustained in a street fight.
But with boxing by then well and truly in the blood of this austere young man — so austere that he’d harboured, for a spell, the notion of becoming a Catholic priest — D’Amato at age 28 in 1936 opened the Gramercy Gym in Manhattan with a view to managing and training future world champions.
D’Amato’s initial years as a gym owner and manager were a struggle. Established managers and trainers routinely poached his fighters at a time when the mob had its claws into the sport to large extent.
In his fine profile of D’Amato, published in the late 1950s, esteemed US sportswriter Pete Hamill revealed D’Amato’s thinking when it came to identifying future potential prospects: “First thing I want to know about a kid is whether he can open that [gym] door.
“Then when he walks in, I look at him, trying to see what he’s seeing… They see guys in the ring, fighting. And then they have to decide. ‘Do I want this?’.”
D’Amato’s early years as a trainer, manager, and gym owner were so tough that he lived in the gym — ie literally worked and slept in the place at the same time.
Just on that, sleeping in the gym is part of boxing folklore, emphasising the commitment required to achieve success.
I recall the time back in the mid-’90s when Freddie Roach, who would go on to achieve huge success as a trainer, slept in the back of his gym in Hollywood. Hard times can either make or break a person, which in the context of boxing is a rite of passage.
D’Amato’s spartan attitude to life is encapsulated in his own words: “You can’t want too many things,” he once said. “The beginning of corruption is wanting things. You want a car or a fancy house or a piano, and the next thing you know you’re doing things you didn’t want to do, just to get the things.”
D’Amato went on to train and manage three world champions in his time — Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres, and Mike Tyson.
Patterson he guided to a world heavyweight title in 1956 against veteran campaigner Archie Moore. It came four years after D’Amato had trained Patterson to take the Olympic gold medal at the Helsinki Games in 1952.
Here’s Pete Hamill again: “Cus used his share of the purse [from Patterson’s world title victory] to make Floyd an elaborate $35,000 jewel-encrusted crown. A few years later, Patterson wouldn’t even talk to Cus.”
The fighter most associated with Cus D’Amato’s legacy is of course Mike Tyson. This is a story which has been told over and over. It has the distinct flavour of a James T Farrell novel about it — the bad kid headed for nowhere who falls into the care of a mentor and is set on a different path.
Tyson was made for Cus D’Amato and Cus D’Amato was made for him. His last boxing project, in Tyson, contained all of the boxing attributes D’Amato had been seeking in his quest for the perfect fighter.
While Patterson deployed the peek-a-boo style the old veteran trainer believed in as the best way for a fighter to avoid punches while setting up his own, Patterson lacked the aggression and raw power to turn the old boxing mantra of “make ‘em miss and make ‘em pay” into reality.
Tyson was the blank slate upon which D’Amato was able to turn his ideas and philosophy of the sport into reality.
Short for a heavyweight, Tyson under D’Amato’s tutelage turned a physical disadvantage into an advantage. Moving in against his taller and heavier opponents while moving his head from side to side to avoid the jab, he was able to unleash sickening hooks to the body and uppercuts to the point of knocking out one after the other of his opponents like skittles in a bowling alley.
In the last analysis, Cus D’Amato was the very embodiment of an old school morality and approach to this most immoral of sports.
He eschewed the pursuit of money. He lived a spartan life. And he believed in the virtues of self-denial.
He also cared about his fighters. He once also famously said the following on the emotion of fear, which we all experience at various points: “You must understand fear so you can manipulate it.
“Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy.
“Let it go out of control, and it can hurt you, even kill you …”
If this is not a recipe for life, what is?