Tyson's heavyweight adulation

Book review of 'Iron Ambition: Lessons I've Learned from the Man Who Made Me a Champion'

Iron Ambition: Lessons I’ve Learned from the Man Who Made Me a Champion

Mike Tyson with Larry “Ratso” Sloman 

Hachette India 

465 pages; Rs 699

In November 1986, a few days after becoming the youngest-ever heavyweight champion of the world, Mike Tyson emptied a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne on the grave of Constantine “Cus” D’Amato. That same week, he made his way down to Brownsville, the treacherous, crime-infested Brooklyn neighbourhood where he was born. There, he and his buffoonish, weed-smoking mates mugged visitors in an elevator.

If the first came as a form of belated homage to the man who made him champion, the latter was an alarming testimony to how Tyson’s life had spun menacingly out of control after D’Amato’s passing; here was the hardest hitter in boxing since Rocky Marciano robbing people just for the thrill of it. But then, that’s the kind of calming influence D’Amato had on the young Tyson. 

Had it not been for D’Amato, Tyson would have probably got killed by a bullet or got battered in one of those gang tussles that routinely sprung up in Brownsville. Before D’Amato met Tyson and became obsessed by the desire to make him the youngest world heavyweight champion ever, Tyson had been to prison several times — he spent most of childhood in juvenile detention centres. If you were to desperately look for a consolation here, the only boxer who was dragged to jail more times than Tyson was probably Sonny Liston. And we all know what a terror he was in the ring. 

Liston died from a suspected heroin overdose in 1970. Tyson’s obsession with becoming a fighter — all because he was egged on by D’Amato — prevented him from meeting a similar fate. No surprise, then, that Tyson has much to thank D’Amato for in his new book, Iron Ambition: Lessons I’ve Learned from the Man Who Made Me a Champion.

Legally, D’Amato was the man who adopted Tyson when he was 16. Professionally, he was his trainer and the genius who taught him to spar. Emotionally, he was all that Tyson ever had. 

D’Amato took an insecure teenager with awfully low self-esteem and moulded him into the most feared fighter the world had ever seen. A Tyson fight was more often than not was like an apocalyptic event that forced ringside luminaries to sit wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The adrenaline rush that Tyson, in his black gloves, trunks and shoes, triggered by charging across the ring remains unsurpassed even today. In Bert Sugar’s cigar-kissed words, “He was out to kill you. And you knew it.” 

In Iron Ambition, Tyson paints an affectionate portrait of D’Amato, recollecting stories of the two reading Boxing Encyclopedia, watching grainy fight films of old masters like Jack Dempsey and Henry Armstrong, and eating ice cream together. It is so genuinely kind-hearted in some parts that you’re left wondering if a man with the ravening, street-fighter demeanour of Tyson can actually pull off something as tender as this. D’Amato himself was mostly stony and dispassionate, but in an archetypal cliché, he treated Tyson with the gentlest respect, for which the rising superstar adored him. 

Given Tyson’s sociopathic tendencies, D’Amato’s partially successful attempt at improving his mental conditioning forms the meat of this new book. “Cus was always acknowledged as being one of the first trainers to concentrate on the psychology of his boxers. At various times during his career he said that boxing was 50, 60, and once even 85 percent mental,” he writes. Tyson confesses that D’Amato forced him to believe that he was the finest boxer in the world. In Tyson’s own words, at the end of it all, “Cus had made him into a megalomaniac”. D’Amato created such a self-loving monster that when Tyson met Michael Spinks in the summer of 1988, his opponent couldn’t look him in the eye. A couple of giant right hands felled Spinks in 91 seconds. 

The overflowing endearment, however, is somewhat offset by D’Amato’s inability to always keep Tyson in check. “Cus was so in love with these old fighters (Dempsey, Armstrong) that he would make excuses for some of their behaviour,” states Tyson. He did the same with him. While Tyson’s ways had improved drastically since he had started working with D’Amato, he was still prone to intermittent bouts of petulance and impropriety. Once, Tyson, still shy of his 18th birthday, tried to force himself on assistant trainer Teddy Atlas’ wife’s sister. When D’Amato was made aware of the incident, he decided to break all ties with Atlas. 

Iron Ambition’s longish prose (over 450 pages) fails to undo the honest efforts of Tyson, who has produced a book brimming with candour, and acclaim for his master. In all likelihood, had D’Amato lived longer, Tyson would’ve actually broken Marciano’s 49-0 record, and Evander Holyfield would still have his ear intact. The only winner here is perhaps actor Zach Galifianakis, who can thank the makers of The Hangover for not choosing to film it 20 years earlier.