Mike Tyson (Text Only Edition). Monteith Illingworth

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СКАЧАТЬ out and then into the side of the head or body, crosses, and uppercuts.

      The fundamental problem for all boxers who used that form, no matter what punch they threw, was exposure. Throwing a punch, almost by definition, left one open to a counterpunch. Defenses were concocted—stopping the punch with an open glove, crossing the arms in front of the face, and of course moving back or away—but they didn’t help much. In order to inflict pain, a boxer had to take it.

      D’Amato didn’t accept that premise. He devised a style for Patterson that limited risk yet at the same time delivered maximum punishment. D’Amato called it his “system,” and it was described in detail by A. J. Liebling, who wrote on boxing, among other subjects, for the New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963. In the system, both hands were up around either side of the head, the elbows tucked against the body. That created, in Liebling’s words, a defensive “shell.” D’Amato then put Patterson in a crouch, with the feet along a horizontal line. Movement looked awkward, off-balance, like “a man going forward carrying a tray of dishes,” Liebling observed.

      Fariello disputed D’Amato’s claim to sole authorship of the “system.” D’Amato had taught him to box in the traditional style. Then, as Fariello became a trainer in the late 1950s, one of his fighters, Georgie Colon, said he felt more comfortable putting both hands up around the head. “D’Amato got pissed off with me about using that style,” Fariello said. “But it caught on with the other fighters. Even Torres used it.” Charlie Goldman, who trained heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, ridiculed it as the “peek-a-boo” style. When Life magazine did a feature on D’Amato and his stable of fighters, and the distinctive peek-a-boo, D’Amato claimed authorship. “It got so much publicity he had to endorse it. That’s when Cus started teaching the peek-a-boo to Patterson.”

      Whatever the origins of the hand placement, D’Amato took the basic idea and made a variety of tactical and strategic additions. He realized that the stance, though awkward, was potent. It baffled opponents. Patterson didn’t telegraph his punches. He could shoot out just as easily with a left or a right. Still, there were risks. Patterson found it awkward to move backward in his shell. He had to go forward, and he had to get close enough to deliver.

      D’Amato didn’t want Patterson to get hit doing either. He drilled Patterson on how, while keeping his hands up around the head, to move the whole upper body from side to side as he went forward to elude the jabs—in other words, to “slip” (the sideways motion) and “weave” (the duck-and-move-forward motion). Once that series of elusive movements brought him in close enough, Patterson attacked. D’Amato taught him to exploit the moment by throwing a combination of two or more punches.

      The system had drawbacks. It was a highly mechanical, robotlike technique that required intense training to master. A fighter could go in only one direction, forward, and to do that without getting hit he had to have naturally good reflexes. Combination punching also required fast hand speed. And then there remained the problem of exposure as the combinations were being thrown. That posed a dilemma. Moving back gave up the offensive opportunity, but staying in risked getting hit by straight rights and uppercuts.

      In order to resolve that problem, D’Amato insisted that Patterson should attempt the nearly impossible: once in position, to attack and defend in a continuous motion. In almost the same instant that he threw a punch, he had to anticipate the counterpunch and elude. One moment’s lapse of concentration and he could get hit, easily and at close range.

      D’Amato’s most interesting wrinkle had nothing to do with technical training. He believed that training alone, no matter how diligent, wasn’t enough to master such a ying-yang synthesis of offense and defense. It had to be instinctual. He tried to teach Patterson to see the counterpunch in his mind before it happened. It was almost a spiritual thing for D’Amato. Years later, he discovered that what he tried to teach Patterson also lay at the foundation of Zen archery.

      In the “Brujo” interview, D’Amato described how in the late 1950s he once saw a Texan named Lucky Daniels shoot a BB pellet out of the air with another BB, a seemingly impossible task. Daniels challenged D’Amato to a mock gunfight. D’Amato got to hold his gun pointed and cocked; Daniels’s gun stayed in its holster. As D’Amato pulled his trigger, Daniels was able to draw and shoot first. D’Amato picked Daniels’s mind and found out that he had been applying the same principles to boxing. When, in the late 1960s, he told the story to Norman Mailer, he was given a book on Zen archery. “I was doing what the guy said in the book!” D’Amato said.

      First, then, the concentration. Second, detachment. “Eventually a pro becomes impersonal, detached in his thinking while he’s performing. You separate and watch yourself from like the outside the whole time,” D’Amato said.

      D’Amato believed in out-of-body experiences. “Everything gets calm and I’m outside watching myself. It’s me, but not me. It’s as if my mind and body aren’t connected, but they are connected and I know exactly what to do. I get a picture in my mind what it’s gonna be. I can actually see the picture, like a screen,” D’Amato said.

      He also believed that this gave him immense power over others. “I can take a fighter who’s just beginning and I can see exactly how he’s gonna end up, what I have to teach him and how he’ll respond,” he added. “When that happens, I can watch a guy fight and I know everything there is to know about the guy. I can actually see the wheels in his head. It’s as if I am the guy. I’m inside him!”

      Presumably, that’s what D’Amato had in mind for Patterson. He should see the punch coming before it came, through some kind of spiritual detachment. In other words, he was taught, don’t look at the man’s hand or it will hit you. Instead, see a concept of the fight in which you know all the things your opponent might do and use that knowledge to advantage.

      In precisely what terms D’Amato explained those ideas to Patterson, or if he explained them at all, is not known. Clearly, after first reordering Patterson’s psychic furniture—via the lessons on fear—he instructed him in the basics of the system. The advanced lessons on spirituality would seem heady stuff for anyone, let alone the young Patterson. He did well enough with the basics. As a middleweight with naturally quick reflexes, Patterson managed, far better than his peers, to hit without getting hit. But the heavyweight division posed new challenges and increased risk. The added bulk on his own body slowed him down. And a true heavyweight opponent, close to or above 200 pounds, would hit with bigger punches. The question was whether Patterson could make the system work as a heavyweight. Not just with his body, but also with his mind.

      D’Amato’s public challenge to the heavyweight division was, at most, a thorn in the side of the I.B.C. Norris and Carbo had no reason to put their franchise fighter, Rocky Marciano, at risk, so D’Amato started to play the ends against the middle. Publicly, he bombarded the I.B.C. with accusations about its monopolistic practices. Privately, he borrowed money from Norris: $15,000 on June 7, 1956, and another $5,000 two months later. D’Amato wanted to lull Norris into thinking that he had fallen into line with all the other managers who served their fighters up to the I.B.C. The debts, in other words, would obligate D’Amato to keep Patterson under I.B.C. control should he beat Marciano.

      In April 1956, Marciano unexpectedly retired from the ring as an undefeated champion. An elimination tournament was set up by the I.B.C. to fill the vacant title. D’Amato entered Patterson, who beat “Hurricane” Jackson, barely, in a split decision. On November 30, Patterson fought Marciano’s last victim, thirty-nine-year-old Archie Moore, and won. At twenty-one he became the youngest heavyweight champion ever.

      With the title in his grasp, D’Amato felt no obligations to Norris and the I.B.C. He agreed to a rematch with Jackson in the first defense eight months later, then took Patterson off into a series of independently promoted bouts. That snub, he insisted later, broke the I.B.C. monopoly. СКАЧАТЬ