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The mental game is even tougher. It’s a game of chess; your opponent can literally make an infinite number of moves and you have to predict and respond in real time to what they’re doing.
Constantine ‘Cus’ D’Amato began as an amateur boxer but his career was cut short because of an eye injury that was suffered in a street fight. Instead of boxing, he made a career out of teaching people how to box. D’Amato opened his first gym at the age of 22 and he worked, lived, and slept there – literally. Mike Tyson will always be a fascinating character in the annals of sports history. Those who know his story know that trainer/mentor Cus D'Amato played a big part in his rise to heavyweight champion of the world. As such, one would think that a book about Cus from Tyson's point of view would be a pretty solid investment. Unfortunately that does not happen, as Tyson's rapid-fire, unorganized approach make for a scattershot read. Lccn 2017007907 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9630 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200079 Openlibrary_edition Tyson, Mike (May 30, 2017). Iron Ambition: My Life with Cus D'Amato. Blue Rider Press. ISBN 978-0399177033.
Who was Cus D’Amato?
While boxing and swordsmanship may appear very different there are underlying theoretical principles, and technical elements can be found in both disciplines. Dr. Maltsev through his research located treatises from the 17th and 18th centuries which contained much of the information contained within Cus’ style.
Even as he lay dying, Cus was adamant about giving Tyson boxing tips so that the young man could fulfil their shared quest of winning the heavyweight championship of the world. La Autoridad Criminal De Cus D'Amato, El Libro "Parar El Rayo Con El Pararrayos" ". Aebox . Retrieved 24 September 2018. Do you know what Cus’s last words to Tyson were? It wasn’t something loving like, “I love you, son, you’ve done me proud.” Cus’s last words to Tyson were: “Move your head, move your head.” When Mike Tyson was released from the Tryon School for Boys, he moved in with Cus D’Amato. They developed a strong bond, one that went beyond boxing. He became Tyson’s legal guardian after Tyson’s mother died. He was the father Tyson never had. When Mike was 13 years old, Cus D’Amato watched him spar for 10 minutes and proclaimed that he would be the youngest Heavyweight Champion of the World. After training with Cus for 3 years, Tyson’s mother died and Cus adopted Mike and became his legal guardian. D’Amato became a lot more than his trainer; he developed ‘the thinker’ within Mike. He believed that boxing is as much as or even more of a mental pursuit than it is physical. We see this influence when we revisit many of Tyson’s interviews in the middle of his career, where he talks about breaking his opponent before the fight even starts, and even when he adopts “The Baddest Man on The Planet” moniker. Cus is also credited with developing the ‘peek-a-boo’ guard, a variation very rarely used on the heavyweight scene to that point.Gonzalez, Martin. "Martin Gonzalez nos dice sobre el libro "Un péndulo intransigente" ". Boxeo Mundial . Retrieved 20 October 2018. Cus D'Amato and Camille Ewald (1905–2001) met in the 1940s and entered into a common-law relationship. Ewald was born in Staromishchyna, Ukraine, to Hnat and Anastasia Pershyn Ewaschuk, and adopted the surname Ewald after her family immigrated to Canada. [8] Ewald supported D'Amato in his dedication to training socially challenged youths, and she allowed her home to function as a halfway house for D'Amato's pupils, often fulfilling the role of a mother figure to them. Most notably, D'Amato and Ewald, in anticipation of Mike Tyson's future athletic success, established legal guardianship over the young man in an effort to protect him both personally and financially from the cutthroat boxing establishment. D'Amato and Ewald never married, although their close friendship lasted for decades, until his death.
Tyson asks how this boxing manager and trainer watched him spar for less than ten minutes when he was thirteen years old and correctly predicted that he would become the youngest ever heavyweight champion of the world and then proceeds to answer his own question by showing that D’Amato was much more than a great boxing coach, who developed the ‘peek-a-boo’ style of fighting (where both hands are kept in front of the body rather than adopting a stance in which one arm and one foot are placed forward). Iron Ambition] spells out D'Amato's techniques for building a champion from scratch.” – Wall Street Journal
I grew up watching boxing during the 1970s and remember Mike Tyson’s rise to world champion in the 1980s. I was in awe of skill and power yet completely unaware of the role Cus D’amato played in shaping his life and career. After my military service, I started to study weapons based martial art from the Philippines called Kali which is very much influenced by Spanish swordsmanship because of years Spain occupied the islands.
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