Monteith Illingworth - Mike Tyson (Text Only Edition)

Tyson became a puzzle to Stewart. If he was such a bad kid, why had he been put in Tryon, a less-then-minimum-security facility? Stewart checked Tyson’s file: all the crimes were petty, the worst being the theft of fruit from a grocery store. In an evaluation by the Tryon teachers, Tyson tested as borderline retarded, but as Stewart discovered, he had been in school a total of two days over the previous year. “Of course he tested badly—he could barely read or write!” Stewart remembered.

Stewart began to see the psychological scars. Tyson didn’t just have self-esteem problems. They were more fundamental. He had no sense of self-worth at all. It was the affliction of the abandoned personality, the unloved. “He felt bad about his body, being so big, and the kids taunted him for it,” Stewart said. “I’d never seen anyone that bad. He was scared of his own shadow. He barely talked, never looked you in the eye. He was a baby.”

They trained together every day, boxed every other. Stewart secretly asked one of the other boys to tutor Tyson. He improved both in the ring and the classroom. Tyson went from a fourth- to a seventh-grade reading level in three months. In the gym he improved too, in strength and in skill. Without any practice, he bench-pressed 245 pounds. His punches also started to become accurate. “He broke my nose with a jab. It almost knocked me down. I had never before been hit that hard with a jab. I had the next week off, so I let it heal at home and never told Tyson what he’d done,” Stewart said.

Emotionally, Tyson did not heal. His size, his prowess, and the aura of inexplicable power made him almost freakish to the other boys. Special treatment by Stewart created suspicions. “To those kids, someone who’s doing well is on the outside,” Stewart said. Nor did Tyson have any desire, it seemed, to use boxing to become a leader. “He didn’t have the confidence to lead.”

Stewart’s support and approval counted for something. But it was Lorna’s love that Tyson wanted most. The boys got to call home every Sunday. When Tyson first called Lorna, he mumbled a few words, then glumly handed the phone to his mentor. “He wanted me to tell her how good he was doing. ‘Tell her, tell her,’ he kept saying. His mother said she had trouble believing that he had changed. She sounded drunk. Mike told me she drank a lot,” Stewart said.

Not once during Tyson’s nine-month stay did Lorna visit the facility, send any Christmas presents, or write a letter.

The boxing gave Tyson purpose and provided a ray of hope about the future. It brought a semblance of order to his feelings, but not resolution—at least not yet. Despite the progress, Stewart sensed the deep-down pain. “I thought his negative self-image could hurt him as a boxer. Everyone always knew he could win, but he convinces himself he can’t.”

Stewart didn’t want Tyson to go back to Brownsville. He could succeed if he had the right help. Stewart knew that Cus D’Amato, a seventy-two-year-old fight manager who lived just outside the town of Catskill, ran an informal boxing camp for boys. Some were from town families. Others, usually the more troubled boys from New York City, stayed in D’Amato’s house. Camille Ewald, his companion, served as den mother. D’Amato was tough, he knew boxing, and he provided a familylike environment. For a kid like Tyson, it was a halfway house back into the world.

Stewart called his own former trainer, Matt Baranski, who had worked with D’Amato since the late 1960s. Baranski agreed to set up a meeting. Stewart prepared Tyson every day for a week. D’Amato didn’t run a charity. He looked for something special in a boy. Desire and determination to succeed impressed D’Amato more than ring skills. Tyson’s glaring emotional problems might put him off. Nonetheless, Stewart gave Tyson a few advanced lessons that he knew would be impressive, like spinning out of a corner and slipping a punch.

For every hour they spent in preparation, Tyson doubled it when alone. He sensed opportunity. “One of the guards went by his room at three in the morning and heard grunting and snorting,” Stewart recalled. “He was working on slipping punches.”

On a chilly weekend in March 1980 they drove down to Catskill. D’Amato had converted a town meeting hall located above the police station into a gym, plopping a boxing ring in the center of a room maybe a hundred feet long and sixty feet wide. There were no windows. Five round Deco-style lamps provided the only light. As in all boxing gyms, the walls were covered with press clippings boasting of the feats of his boys, some fight posters, and a collection of fading black-and-white still photos of heavyweight notables through the ages—Jack Sharkey, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston. Also on the walls were photos of the two champions D’Amato had managed and helped train during the 1950s and 1960s—Floyd Patterson, a heavyweight, and José Torres, who won crowns in two weight classes.

“Mike started to throw me around,” Stewart recalled of the exhibition they gave D’Amato. “He had that incredible speed and power. I caught him with a couple right hands and his nose bled. Cus wanted to stop it. Mike almost cried. ‘No, we always go three rounds. We have to go three.’”

Cus had seen enough. His first words to Stewart would become a centerpiece of the Tyson mythology: “That’s the heavyweight champion of the world,” he said—as if everyone with eyes had to reach the same conclusion.

Afterward, they all went to D’Amato’s home for lunch. D’Amato and Ewald lived four miles outside Catskill in the town of Athens. The house was a quarter mile off the main road in a clearing on a hill. A yellow sign on a tree at the driveway entrance reads Children at Play. The house, built at the turn of the century in a late Victorian design, rose up three stories and was covered in white clapboard. Several dormer windows jutted out from the shale-gray roof. A porch wrapped around three-quarters of the section with the river view. Rosebushes hugged one side. Two towering maple trees shaded part of the well-kept lawn. Nestled back at the edge of the forest sat a barn-shaped coach house. It was the sort of spread, ten acres in all, that once would have belonged to the town judge.

Tyson had never seen anything like it. When they pulled up the driveway, a look of awe spread across his face. “I told him that if he wanted to, he could live here,” Stewart said. “He couldn’t believe it.”

They entered the house through the long, narrow kitchen. The dining room table could seat ten or more. But the heart of the fourteen-room house was the mock-Tudor-style living room. Deep, rich mahogany paneling went halfway up the walls. Broad beams crossed the ceiling. There was a fireplace that had been covered up. The couch looked deep and comfortable; the chairs sported rich leather, and solid, heavy, hardwood frames. One entire wall held a collection of hardcover books. A family lived here. To Tyson it seemed warm, secure, and, with the books, slightly mysterious.

For her guests Ewald cooked a hearty meal. D’Amato did all the talking. To Tyson, he must have seemed an odd old man. D’Amato had a large, round, bald head set on a thick neck and broad, square shoulders. His hair, almost snow-white, was cut short around the sides. His eyes were deep brown and set a bit apart. The nose looked strong. Though only five foot eight, and a bit overweight, D’Amato had an imposing presence. He had a barrel chest, thick forearms, and large hands.

D’Amato’s voice was gravelly and harsh, a voice from some urban New York place that Tyson couldn’t place. The word “champion” came out as “champeen. His eyes was busy. He’d squint, then suddenly his eyebrows would rise up and his eyes would open wide. It made him look alternately skeptical and surprised. He blew air out of his nose in light bursts for no apparent reason and made a “tch” sound with his tongue in the middle of a sentence.