Mike Tyson (Text Only Edition). Monteith Illingworth

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ whatever, he’d be remembered forever for that one last champion,” said Atlas.

      Shortly after the Scranton incident, Tyson went to the National Junior Olympics Tournament in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This time only Atlas accompanied Tyson, who stood out from the other fifteen-year-olds. Their muscles had barely begun to form through the layer of adolescent baby fat; Tyson’s bulged. He also kept to himself mostly, which soon created a mystique about his background. In his first fight, Tyson scored a first-round knockout of a 265-pound Hawaiian boy with a textbook left hook to the liver. Some boys intentionally lost their fights just to avoid meeting Tyson and possibly suffering permanent physical damage. Tyson won the Junior Olympic heavyweight title, his first major victory.

      Tyson’s success got big play in the Catskill newspaper. It made him a minor celebrity and, to officials at the junior high school who watched him attend dutifully but learn little, a greater distraction. They decided to matriculate Tyson into the high school without testing. When Tyson’s caseworker, Ernestine Coleman, found out, she was enraged. “They wanted Michael out of their hair and he knew it,” she said. “I think that hurt him, which caused Michael to act out more. He was feeling that if that’s the way they wanted to be, he didn’t need school anyway; he’d be a boxer.”

      The principal at Catskill High, Richard Stickles, was far less patient with Tyson than his counterpart at the junior high school, Lee Bordick. The teachers there also decided from the outset to cut Tyson down to size. The racial tensions of the previous year had persisted and they were concerned that he might become a lightning rod for the black students.

      Tyson began to be victimized by some of the other boys in the house. “They baited him,” said Tom Patti, who was seventeen years old when he moved into the house that fall to train with D’Amato. “Mike talked back in class, sure. Once a teacher threw a book at him, called him intolerable. He misbehaved. He was never intolerable.” Atlas, however, felt that Tyson exploited the fact that others—namely D’Amato—considered him special. “Cus told Mike he’d be world champion. Mike didn’t believe it, but he knew that whatever he had was letting him do things other people couldn’t do,” said Atlas.

      The situation fed on itself. Labeled a miscreant, Tyson increasingly acted like one. He was still being taunted by the black students for living with white people, which led to a few schoolyard scuffles. One day, he asked for milk in the cafeteria just as it closed. He was refused and threw his tray against the wall. He was suspended for a few days. It was the first of several suspensions.

      During those suspensions Tyson would disappear from Catskill. D’Amato figured that he had gone back to Brownsville, which was exactly right. D’Amato would ask José Torres to bring him back. “He wasn’t at home. He’d be out on the streets, stealing, mugging people, screwing around,” remembered Torres. When he returned to the house, Tyson would be meek and apologetic. Yet, without provocation, he could turn nasty. Once housemother Ewald asked Tyson to try and shower more often and to keep his gym clothes clean. Tyson angrily called her “a piece of shit.’ Another time, in an argument over one of his Brownsville trips, Tyson spit at D’Amato.

      Atlas understood how someone with Tyson’s background—which after all was similar to his own—could have difficulties in a small-town school. But he believed in the principles D’Amato preached in such situations: rise above the other man and control your emotions. Tyson wasn’t doing that. As the conflicts worsened, Atlas realized that D’Amato preferred to contradict his own principles rather than undermine Tyson’s focus on boxing. “I told Cus that if we teach Mike to control himself in the ring, but not out of it, he won’t develop into a responsible person,” said Atlas. “That’s what Cus always taught me: develop a boxer in ways that make him successful in life, whether he becomes a champion or not. With Mike, Cus wanted a champion first, a good person last.”

      When other boys in the gym got in trouble at school, Atlas barred them from training for a few days. He did the same to Tyson. D’Amato vetoed that by bringing Tyson in himself. Atlas relented. “I was loyal to Cus. I didn’t want to see what was happening.”

      By late fall of 1981, the school administration decided to expel Tyson. D’Amato didn’t protest this time. He contacted Coleman and convinced her that Tyson had been victimized at school, that boxing was still his best form of therapy. He sent her newspaper clippings of his successes in the ring. Clearly, D’Amato knew that Coleman had the power to take Tyson back into state care. He couldn’t risk losing his future champion. D’Amato asked if she would find a tutor. Coleman agreed, and in January 1982, Tyson left the high school.

      The tutoring failed. Again, Tyson sat down for the instruction but didn’t apply himself. D’Amato promised the tutor that Tyson would work harder, but he never did. The 1982 National Junior Olympics Tournament was coming up and Tyson had to defend his title.

      The mystique about Tyson built. Professional fight promoters who stalked the amateur tournaments looking for prospects talked about Tyson as a sure bet to win the gold at the upcoming Olympic Games in Los Angeles. One manager, Shelly Finkel, had already approached Tyson about his future plans. D’Amato refused to even discuss the matter with Finkel.

      At the 1982 Juniors, Tyson again kept mostly to himself, or with Atlas, instead of mixing with the other boys. He knocked out his first four opponents with ease. On the night of the final, as he waited to enter the ring, Tyson broke down in tears. “I’m ‘Mike Tyson,’ everyone likes me now,” he uttered. Atlas did what he could to buttress Tyson’s will and took him to the ring. Tyson let loose a flurry of punches that sent his opponent into a corner, trying desperately to cover up. The referee stopped the fight. Tyson won by a technical knockout.

      Tyson’s flaw, his passivity, seemed in control—barely. Atlas didn’t know it, but what had happened at Scranton was only the symptom. Before the Junior Olympic finals, the cause of Tyson’s passivity, of the flaw that drained his willingness to fight, had once again peeked out.

      In Scranton, it was not just the prospect of losing the fight that had paralyzed Tyson. It was that in defeat the emotional attachments with D’Amato, Ewald, the other boys in the house, and Atlas would be severed. Fighting, and winning fights, made those bonds possible. Losing confirmed the fear he had lived with since childhood: that he was alone, unloved, and quite possibly unlovable.

      So much of Tyson’s behavior from the day he entered Tryon and wanted to see ex-boxer Bobby Stewart sprang from that fear. Boxing was his only way of controlling the intense feelings of isolation, helplessness, and rage. What D’Amato tried to do was make boxing an all-encompassing gestalt: a way for Tyson to recognize and then order his emotions, to use his body as an instrument of his will, and ultimately to situate himself in the world.

      The problem for Tyson was that the world—from Tryon to D’Amato’s house, the gym, tournaments, and the Junior Olympics—kept getting bigger and more foreign. It was certainly far different from what he came from and where he expected to end up. It was like being cast in a dramatic narrative as the lead player; they were writing as they went along and Tyson never knew what would happen next, only that one day the climax was supposed to be his coronation as heavyweight champion of the world.

      It was a difficult role to play, especially when the leading man felt hollow. Tyson could never see himself becoming champion, because he couldn’t make purchase on his own core identity. That is the affliction of the unloved: without the basic human attachment of love, one comes to doubt that a self exists, and comes to believe that even if it does, it’s probably not worthy of being attached to anyone else. The impulse is toward self-annihilation; the “I” doesn’t exist and so it’s willfully converted to an “it.” The “it,” as Tyson demonstrated during his Brownsville childhood, robs, steals, fights, and ends up in prison. The “it” dies an early death.

      Of course, Tyson had already СКАЧАТЬ