Monteith Illingworth - Mike Tyson (Text Only Edition)

Jacobs also overstated his status in the team. He told people that he had come to Cayton with an enormous film library and plenty of his own money, and that they had pooled their resources and, as equal partners, made boxing film history. One of the first people in boxing to see through that fiction was Larry Merchant, a boxing analyst for HBO Sports. In 1980, Jacobs came to Merchant with an idea to do a comprehensive fight documentary series on videotape. It required transferring thousands of images from film and using advanced video technologies to create special effects such as slow motion and stop-action replays. Jacobs envisaged selling the series to television, then renting out videocassettes. Merchant would narrate, for which he’d get a fee plus a share in the gross rentals. “When I mentioned to Bill [Cayton] what the deal was, he was shocked. Jimmy never told him about it,” said Merchant. After that, Jacobs never brought it up again.

Jacobs also claimed to Merchant, among others, that his father owned a chain of department stores in St. Louis. In other variations, his father owned a construction business. When his father died, Jacobs claimed to have inherited millions of dollars. “Jimmy talked about all his money. He told me that his father gave him fifty thousand dollars in 1960 to stake him in the fight film business,” said Merchant.

Cayton was aware of Jacobs’s public posturing and outright lies but never confronted him with it. “I found the stories about his supposed wealth very amusing,” said Cayton. “First he told people he had ten million dollars, and when he got away with that the figure went to twenty million, then thirty million.” In Cayton’s value system, they were in business together and as long as they prospered, he didn’t care about Jacobs’s idiosyncrasies. “Essentially, Jim was my employee. I did all the business deals with the fight films and all the boxers. Jim was the front man, the public image. Every deal was made right here, at my desk.”

In fact, Jacobs did have a higher opinion of himself than did his associates in the boxing world. “I liked Jimmy. I was curious about his insights on boxing. So were a lot of other people. But he wasn’t liked as a businessperson. He had a code in a deal. He gave you his idea of what it was worth and that was it—no other opinion was valid. He didn’t negotiate. He said, this is it, take it or leave it,” Merchant added.

According to Cayton, on more than one occasion he had to temper Jacobs in a contract negotiation. “Early on, he was a bit too blunt,” said Cayton. “I taught him everything he knew.”

Perhaps he did. Jacobs was a quick study and a man, once he learned the basics, determined to do it his way to the end. By claiming such high ground, Cayton tried to disguise a measure of envy. Merchant was aware of that: “The ever-popular Jimmy, the astute manager and boxing expert liked by everybody: that’s how Bill perceived Jimmy, and he [Bill] resented him for it.”

Cayton had an almost mirror-opposite existence to that of Jacobs. Besides not ever being athletic, he suffered from recurring back problems and endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart valves. He was lean, and tall, but frail-looking. His personal manner was stiff, formal, unengaging, dispassionate, almost cold. He tried to offset that with frequent smiling, but to no avail. The smile looked forced and far too self-consciously affected. It had a Cheshire cat aspect, as if Cayton were pleased with himself in advance with whatever was about to transpire—probably at the listener’s expense. “Bill was a taker, not a giver,” said Camille Ewald. He avoided social outings, except when it concerned business. Not a single person in boxing claimed him as a friend. “Money and business. He’s all business,” added Ewald.

Not entirely. Cayton had one other abiding interest that may explain part of the reason for his emotional reserve. Every night Cayton would take the 6:40 commuter train to his house in Larchmont, just north of the city. Every weekend is spent at home. One of his three children, a daughter, was born premature in 1947, and then mistakenly given too much oxygen in the incubator, causing blindness and severe retardation. Cayton and his wife, Doris, raised her by themselves at home. “Nothing, no one, could help. Doris devoted herself to her,” said Cayton. Apparently, the younger woman will not eat dinner, or go to bed, until he returns home each night. Whatever Cayton is in business, there must be another, far different man at home. Cayton diligently protected that aspect of his life. He rarely gave out his home telephone number, and he never invited business associates to his house.

Chapter Five

Mike Tyson’s professional career began on March 6, 1985. One year, eight months, and sixteen days later, he would capture the heavyweight championship of the world. The list of firsts which led up to that event in sports history is, by all appearances, mind-boggling.

He would win the title at the age of twenty, younger than any other heavyweight. At that age, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano were still in the amateurs. No other heavyweight ever captured the title in so short a span of time. No other heavyweight ever achieved as high a percentage of first-round knockouts as Tyson—40.5 percent, or fifteen in twenty-seven fights—in his career leading up to the crown.

It wasn’t victory just by brute force. Tyson acquired the subtler though far less recognized distinction of defensive excellence. Due to his training in the D’Amato “system,” he would be hit far fewer times moving forward than had any other notable heavyweight moving in any direction in the ring.

What won’t go into the statistical record books, or the sports lore, is the degree to which those achievements were the product of design. No boxer becomes champion by serendipity. But the careers of some boxers are more intently, and successfully, manipulated than others. In the hands of D’Amato, Jacobs, and Cayton, that manipulation almost reached the level of conspiracy. Recognizing this fact doesn’t severely diminish Tyson’s achievement. But it does put it in proper perspective.

Informing the whole effort was a single, unspoken motive. None of the men could waste any time getting Tyson a shot at the title. Each of them was on borrowed time.

D’Amato was seventy-seven years old. He had little energy to travel long distances, let alone keep up with the punishing regimen of watching over a rising contender. Tyson was his last hurrah.

In 1985, Jacobs entered the fifth year of his leukemia. According to Dr. Gene Brody, the New York specialist who diagnosed and treated Jacobs, in the early years he managed fairly well. Starting in 1982, Jacobs received occasional doses of two drugs—Leukeran and Prednisone—that kept the disease under control. By 1985, the distorting effect of the cancer on his blood cell count made Jacobs increasingly prone to simple infections. He also suffered enlargement of the lymph nodes in his neck. As Jacobs well knew, chronic lymphoid leukemia, or CLL, is incurable. It’s also capricious. He could die with only a few months’ warning.

Cayton, of course, also knew that. Jacobs told him of the disease, and his prognosis, in 1981. Since then Tyson’s success as an amateur, and the prospect of making him champion, had given Cayton a new interest in his business career. He delayed plans for retirement despite recurring attacks of endocarditis, which had been treated successfully with massive doses of antibiotics. Still, Cayton was a sixty-nine-year-old man. He’d probably outlive D’Amato, but it was a toss-up with Jacobs. No doubt, somewhere in the back of his mind, Cayton wondered if he’d be left having to finish (and profit from) the job himself.

With their collectively fragile mortalities as the background, they devised three basic guidelines for developing Tyson’s career.