CUS D'AMATO: starring Floyd Patterson and The Mob.

I know there are many others who also love the 1960s era of boxing,and to me Cus D'amato, although a flawed character,was a massively influential character throughout the decades and deserves a place in any boxing Hall of Fame.

Sugar Ray Robinson was passed a newspaper article about the upcoming Floyd Patterson –Tom McNeeley fight ,quietly read it ,and shook his head.It was 1961.
“Cus D’Amato”,he said. “Man,he’s got to be the greatest fight manger.Look what he’s done for his fighter.He gets him McNeeley.And he gets paid for it.Cus got to be the greatest.Common sense tells me so-I had to fight Artie Levine,and a Jake La Motta and a Tommy Bell!
Then they gave me a Turpin and Joey Maxim.” He shook his head.”Look what D’Amato gets for Patterson.He gets him Rademacher,Brian London and that boy Roy Harris.And now McNeeley. A manager is supposed to protect his fighter. That’s all he is doing.

“Don’t tell me about fight managers.He got to be the greatest.All I know is I had to fight guys that could kill you and Patterson has to fight hardly nobody.And he gets paid money for it,too.I’m going to tell you something, I wish Cus D’amato managed me!”
The listening reporter thought it a strange a theory as had been put forward for some time,after all, Cus had been made out to be a sterotypical villain in the game.Almost everybody in boxing agreed,he was an oddball,and not only that,was ruining the game.Since 1960 he had seemed to set about alienating almost everyone in and around boxing at one time.

Cus was born Constantine D’Amato,and his Gramercy gym in New York was three long flights of stairs up.Most newcomers never made it past the second flight, as the sounds of the gym became more and more intimidating.
He said,“The first thing I want to know about a kid is whether he can open the door and just walk into the gym.I look at him, try to see what he’s seeing.Most of them stand at the door.They see these guys skipping rope ,shadowboxing,hitting the bags.Most of all,they see guys in the ring.Fighting.And then they have to decide,do they want this or not? If they want to stay,they ask someone what they should do.Most of them are shy.They whisper.You tell them to come back ,and you’ll see what can be done.They have to spend at least one night dealing with fear.If they come back a second time,maybe you’ve got a fighter”.

Floyd Patterson, the fighter he implausibly steered ,indeed nursed,from 1954 to 1956,from a 165 lb fighter ,was riddled with fear and doubts.He was trained by Cus D’Amato from the age of eighteen years old,and made over one million dollars over a four fight period.Yet Cus had to exert a tremendous influence over his psyche,knowing how sensitive a soul Patterson was.Only Cus could nurture a fragile guy like Patterson and help him become the holder of sport’s most coveted prize. When meeting journalists in 1954 and telling them, “Floyd Patterson will weigh 184 pounds the night he wins the heavyweight championship of the world”,they told him that he must have been drinking too much, as at that time he barely weighed 165 poundsand he was fighting nobodies.To picture him against Marciano or Ezzard Charles or any top heavyweight was ridiculous to them.


D’Amato believed that the two main priorities for a good partnership between fighter and manager were these.Did the fighter earn as much money as possible?And did he leave the sport with his face as unmarked as possible?Well,His fighters were rarely marked and Patterson’s earning were tremendous until ,that is,until he insisted on taking a fight with Sonny Liston. D’Amato certainly knew how difficult it would be for his man to beat Liston, and with a heavy heart witnessed the wheels coming well and truly off of everything they had achieved... Patterson beat Archie Moore for the title in November of 1956,and Cus used his share of the purse to make Floyd an elaborate $35,000 jewel encrusted crown; but only a few years later Floyd was so bitter that wouldn’t even talk to his old manager.D'Amato just had the habit of bringing out strong emotions in people,and it was observed that he himself gave away money as if he hated it,saying,”Money is something to throw off trains.”
Cus’ own personality was a mixture of Victorian values, self-denial mixed with suspicion and fear,fierce concentration.He never revealed his home address,and always avoided subways because he fears someone might push him on the tracks! This explains that when Sugar Ray Robinson read the article in1961 D’Amato was becoming less popular and more and more marginalized as an “oddball”,but he was less concerned with making friends than he was supporting his own fighters, come what may.

It can't be underestimated how outrageous it was that,once Floyd had his hands on the title,Cus ran away from Madison Square Garden,the New York cradle of boxing,and launched his one-man crusade against the “bad elements in the business”, The Mob,and his harangues against racket guys fast became a bore.Taking on the ruling body in the sport,then the International Boxing Club,which was a corrupt ,Mob-influenced organization that controlled the matchmaking process.So with control of the heavyweight division he took on the IBC by refusing to match his fighters with any IBC- controlled opponent.He also took his fight against them to court.

Some called him a hero and a crusader bent on cleaning up the sport,while others, particularly the media, saw him as manipulative and power hungryand ,not much better than the scoundrels he was fighting.Whatever the truth, he was mostly successful in his campaign and the IBC was ultimately deposed.
Although prevailing in this fight, he suffered personally by retreating into paranoia. Cus’ involvement in behind-the-scenes maneuvering with an eye towards improving his own fighters’ lot landed him in hot water with the New York State Commission ,which not only accused him of trying to control the heavyweight scene,but also made pointed references to his assocation with Charlie Antonucci, a known associate of the mobster Tony Salerno. From 1959 he never worked a corner for any of his fighters,not even holding a manager’s license,as a result of the botched promotion of the Patterson-Johansson fight, because of his assumed association with Salerno.It was never proved that Salerno was Cus’ money man but many people in boxing were eager for D’amato to be humiliated.
When Cus failed to appear before the commission,claiming his absence a matter of principle,his manager’s license was suspended and ultimately revoked. Cus carried on training.
“I must keep my enemies confused," he said."When they are confused, I can do a job for my fighters.What I do not want in life is a sense of security;the moment a person knows security his senses are dulled-and he begins to die.I Also do not want many pleasures in life;I believe the more pleasure you get out of living,the more fear you have of dying.”

Not even his detractors would dispute that Cus D’Amato was close to genius as a trainer.He was an innovator, and came up with ,amongst other things ,the peek-a-boo style that Floyd Patterson made famous,in which both fists were held high and tucked in alongside each cheek,with the elbows and arms tight to the ribs).He also devised a punching-by-numbers system ,each punch corresponding to a part of the body .He would drill fighters with numbers in the combinations of punches he wanted them to throw.

What really separated him from other trainers was his focus on the mental aspect of boxing.AS well as talking a lot, he asked questions.”To find out what I need to do with a guy, I have to find out about his background,learn what makes him tick,keep peeling away the layers until I get to the core,so that he can realize as well what is there.”
“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any arena,but particularly boxing.The kid in the street will fear most of all being called a coward.Sometimes a kid will do wild and crazy things to show he’s not scared…”

As he aged, becoming a more peripheral figure in the sport, he still cherished great fighters-Ray Robinson,Joe Louis,Muhammad Ali,Sandy Saddler,Willie Pep,Tommy Loughran .In the 1970s, by now with a reputation as a legendary gun-slinger who had long since retired, an eccentric old uncle.

His ideal of the ideal fighter was of someone who had heart,skill,movement,intelligence,and creativity.
"You can have everything,but if you can’t make it upwhile you’re in there,you can’t be great.A lot of guys have the mechanics and no heart;lots of guys have heart and no mechanics;the thing that puts it together ,it’s mysterious ,it’s like making a work of art,you bring everything to it,you make it up when you’re doing it.”

Although he said he didn’t like to look back too often,he liked to talk about the fighter that existed in his imagination;the perfect fighter,Cus’ masterpiece, the missing piece of his career. He couldn't have forseen that into his seventieth year, was going to be given another roll of the dice with Mike Tyson;he had hoped that Tyson would be the full stop of his career;posthumously, Iron Mike would be the most successful fighter that Cus trained, and yet the handling of him would ultimately undermine all the values and ethics that Cus D'Amato had purported.

Great stuff, as usual, andy. Thanks.

He is a pretty interesting character and will always be intrinsically linked with Tyson. He is often portrayed as the saviour of Iron Mike and people claim that Tyson wouldn't have gone off the rails had D'Amato not died when he did. The truth is, he is probably guilty of covering up much of Mikes' early misdemeanours as he clung on to his dream of having another HW Champ. Mike was Mike, with or without D'Amato.

A great trainer, but certainly has some skeletons in his closet.