Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography (13 page)

So I was sitting in the theater, remembering that, and sinking deeper and deeper into my depression. Then I started crying. When the movie was over, I went straight to the train station and went back to Catskill. The whole trip back, I knew I had to immediately throw myself into full-blown training for professional fighting. I had to be spectacular when I turned pro. As we got closer to Catskill, I started talking to myself.

“They’re never going to see anyone like Tyson. He will transcend the game. He will be in the pantheon of great fighters alongside John L. Sullivan and Joe Louis and Benny Leonard and Joe Gans and the rest. Tyson is magnificent.”

I talked about myself in the third person. Even to myself.

I was completely pumped up when I got off that train and took a cab to Cus’s house. The world was about to see a fighter the likes of which it had never been seen before. I was going to transcend the game. With all due respect, and not to be arrogant, but I was conscious of my future prominence as a boxer then. I knew nothing could stop me and I would be the champion as surely as Friday would come after Thursday. I didn’t lose a fight for the next six years.

Coming off of those two losses to Tillman, I wasn’t exactly the hottest property in the boxing world. Cus had planned for me to win the gold medal at the Olympics and then start my career with a lucrative TV contract. But that didn’t work out. No professional promoters were interested in me. Nobody in boxing really believed in Cus’s peek-a-boo style. And a lot of people thought that I was too short to be an effective heavyweight.

I guess all that talk got to Cus. One night I was taking the garbage out and Cus was cleaning up the kitchen.

“Man, I wish you had a body like Mike Weaver or Ken Norton,” he said out of the blue. “Because then you would be real intimidating. You’d have an ominous aura. They don’t have the temperament but they have the physique of an intimidating man. You could paralyze the other boxers with fear just by the way you look.”

I got choked up. To this day, when I recount this story, I still choke up. I was offended and hurt but I wouldn’t tell Cus that because then he’d say, “Oh, you’re crying? What are you, a little baby? How can you handle a big-time fight if you don’t have the emotional toughness?”

Any time I showed my emotions, he despised it. So I held back my tears.

“Don’t worry, Cus.” I made myself sound arrogant. “You watch. One day the whole world is going to be afraid of me. When they mention my name, they’ll sweat blood, Cus.”

That was the day that I turned into Iron Mike; I became that guy 100 percent. Even though I had been winning almost every one of my fights in an exciting fashion, I wasn’t completely emotionally invested in being the savage that Cus wanted me to be. After that talk about me being too small, I became that savage. I even began to fantasize that if I actually killed someone inside the ring, it would certainly intimidate everyone. Cus wanted an antisocial champion, so I drew on the bad guys from the movies, guys like Jack Palance and Richard Widmark. I immersed myself in the role of the arrogant sociopath.

But first I got a Cadillac. Cus couldn’t afford to pay for my expenses while we were building up my career, so he got his friend Jimmy Jacobs and his partner, Bill Cayton, to lay out the money. Jimmy was an awesome guy. He was the Babe Ruth of handball and while he traveled around the world on the handball circuit, he began collecting rare fight films. Eventually he met Bill Cayton, who was a collector himself, and the two of them started Big Fights, Inc. They cornered the market on fight footage and Cayton later made a fortune selling those fights to ESPN. Cus had lived with Jimmy for ten years when Cus was still in New York, so they were close friends. In fact, Cus had devised a secret plan to train Jimmy as a fighter and for his first fight ever, amateur or professional, to fight Archie Moore for his light-heavyweight title. Jacobs trained intensely for six months with Cus, but the fight never happened because Archie pulled out.

But Cus never liked Jimmy’s partner Cayton. He thought he was too in love with his money. I didn’t like him either. Where Jimmy had a great outgoing personality, Cayton was a pompous cold fish. Jimmy and Cayton had been managing boxers for many years and had Wilfred Benitez and Edwin Rosario in their stable, so despite his dislike of Cayton, Cus promised them a role with me when I turned pro.

I guess Cus saw Jimmy and Bill as investors who wouldn’t interfere with my development and would allow Cus to have total control over my upbringing. By now they had invested over $200,000 in me. When I got back from the Olympics, Jimmy told Cus that he wanted to buy me a new car. I think that they might have been worried that I would leave Cus and go with someone else, cutting them out of the picture. Of course, I would never have done that.

Cus was mad because he thought that I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t like I had come home with a gold medal. But he took me to a local dealership. Cus was trying to steer me to an Oldsmobile Cutlass because it didn’t cost much.

“Nah, I want the Cadillac, Cus,” I said.

“Mike, I’m telling you …”

“If it’s not the Cadillac, I don’t want no car.” I stood my ground.

I got the car and we drove it back to the house and stored it in the barn. I didn’t have a license and I didn’t know how to drive, but when Cus got on my case, I’d grab my car keys, run out to the barn, get in the car, lock myself in, and play music.

In September of 1984, I signed two contracts, one with Bill Cayton and one with Jimmy Jacobs. Cayton owned an advertising agency, and he signed me to a seven-year personal management contract representing me for commercials and product endorsements. Instead of the usual 10 or 15 percent, Cayton was taking 331/3 percent. But I didn’t know the terms, I just signed it. A few weeks later, I signed a contract with Jimmy and he became my manager. Standard four-year contract, two-thirds for me, one-third for Jimmy. And then they agreed to split the income from the contracts with each other. Cus signed my management contract too. Under his signature it read, “Cus D’Amato, Advisor to Michael Tyson who shall have final approval of all decisions involving Michael Tyson.” Now I had an official management team. I knew that Cayton and Jimmy were very savvy guys with the media, and I knew that they knew how to organize shit. And with Cus making all the boxing decisions and handpicking my opponents, I was ready to begin my professional career.

Until about a week into training, when I vanished for four days. Tom Patti finally tracked me down. I was sitting in my Caddy.

“Where have you been, Mike?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t need this shit,” I vented. “My girlfriend Angie’s father is a manager at J.J. Newberry’s department store. He can get me a job making a hundred thousand dollars. I got this Caddy. I’m going to split,” I said.

The truth was, I was just nervous about fighting as a professional.

“Mike, you’re not going to make a hundred grand a year because you’re dating his daughter,” he said.

“I can do a lot of things,” I said.

“Man, you don’t have a lot of options. Get back in the gym, win your fight, and move on.”

I was back in the gym the next day. Once I got over my nerves, I was proud that I was going to be a professional fighter at just eighteen years old. I had a great team in my corner. Besides Kevin Rooney, there was Matt Baranski. Matt was a wonderful man who was a methodical tactician. Kevin was more “Aarrrgggghhh” in-your-face.

We discussed giving me a nickname. Jimmy and Bill didn’t think it was necessary, but Cus wanted to call me the Tan Terror, as an homage to Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber. I thought that was cool, but we never ran with it. But I paid homage to other heroes of mine. I had someone put a bowl over my head and go around it with an electric shaver and give me a Jack Dempsey haircut. Then I decided to go with the Spartan look that all my old heroes had, no socks, no robe. I wanted to bring that look back into the mainstream of boxing.

My first professional bout was on March 6, 1985, in Albany. My opponent was a guy named Hector Mercedes. We didn’t know anything about him, so the morning before the fight Cus got on the phone with some trainers and boxing gym owners in Puerto Rico to make sure that Mercedes wasn’t a sleeper. The night of the fight, I was nervous, but I knew I could beat the guy as soon as I saw him in the ring. I knew that Cus would match me up against a weaker opponent for my first few fights to build up my confidence.

I was right. They stopped the fight in the first round when I pummeled Hector to a kneeling position in the corner of the ring. I was excited, but back in the locker room, Cus pointed out all my flaws. “You gotta keep your hands up more. Your hands were playing around,” he said.

My next two fights were also in Albany, which was practically my hometown. A month after Mercedes, I fought Trent Singleton. I entered the ring and bowed to all four corners of the arena, then I raised my arms to the crowd like a gladiator. It didn’t take long for me to knock him down three times. The referee stopped the fight. Then I sauntered over to his corner, kissed him, and rubbed his head.

I was due to fight again in a month, so in between fights all I did was run, train, and box. That’s all Cus wanted me to do. Box, box, box, spar, spar, spar.

I fought Don Halpin on May twenty-third, and he was a much more experienced opponent. He lasted for three rounds while I was switching back and forth from a conventional stance to southpaw, experimenting and getting some ring experience. In the fourth round, I tagged him with a left and a right and he was on his way down when I hit him again with a right hook. He was on the canvas for a good amount of time before they finally got him up. Cus, of course, thought I didn’t go to the body enough and I didn’t move laterally. But Jacobs and Cayton were thrilled with the way I looked so far.

I started attracting my own following at these fights. They began showing up with little signs like they do at baseball games. One sign read
GOODEN IS DOCTOR K BUT MIKE TYSON IS DOCTOR KO
. I also started attracting groupies, but I wasn’t taking advantage of their advances. I was too in love with myself to think about anybody else. Actually, Cus thought I was going a little bit overboard. He thought I should go out more. So I’d go up to Albany and hang out with some of my friends there.

I hardly made any money from those early fights. My first fight lost money for the promoter, but Jimmy gave me $500. Then he took $50 from that to give to Kevin and he put $350 in the bank for me, so I walked away with $100. They were more concerned with spreading my name around than making money on these early fights. Jimmy and Cayton were the first fight managers to make highlight reels of all my knockouts and send VHS tapes to every boxing writer in the country. They were very innovative that way.

I was performing sensationally, but it seemed that Cus was getting grumpier and grumpier. Sometimes I thought that Cus thought I was an Uncle Tom. I would try to be polite to the people I’d meet and give them “Yes, ma’ams” and “No, sirs” and Cus would get on my case.

“Why are you talking to them like that? You think they’re better than you? All those people are phonies,” he’d say. Then when I acted like the god that he kept telling me I was, he’d look at me with disgust.

“You like people looking up to you, huh? Guys like Cayton and them telling you how great you are.”

I think he just needed someone to tear into. My day depended on what side of the bed Cus woke up on. By then, I had gotten my license and I would drive him to various meetings and conferences.

On June twentieth, shortly before my nineteenth birthday, I fought Ricky Spain in Atlantic City. This was my first pro fight outside of Albany, but Cus had sent me to watch big fights in cities all over the country to get me acclimated to the arenas.

“Make this your home, know this arena, know this place with your eyes closed,” he’d tell me. “You are going to be living here for a long time, so get comfortable.” He also took me along when he hung out with big-time fighters. He had me sit with them around a dinner table and get familiar with them so I’d never get intimidated by a fighter.

I was really excited to be fighting in Atlantic City and for it to be broadcast on ESPN. My opponent was unbeaten too, with a 7-0 record with five knockouts. They introduced me as “the Baby Brawler” and I don’t know about the “Baby” part, but I floored Spain twice in the first round and the ref stopped the fight.

Jimmy and Cayton were trying to get me a regular slot on ESPN, but Bob Arum, who was promoting the fights, told them that his matchmakers didn’t think much of my talent. That really pissed Cus off. Cus hated Arum’s matchmakers and after my next fight, they never worked with Arum again.

But all this political stuff didn’t interest me. I couldn’t wait for my next fight. It was in Atlantic City again on July eleventh. I was fighting John Alderson, a big country guy from West Virginia who also had a 4-0 record. This fight was on ESPN and I dropped him a few times in the second round and the doctor stopped the fight after he went back to his corner.

I ran my record to 6-0 in my next fight against Larry Sims, but I really pissed Cus off in doing so. Sims was really slick and awkward, one of those cute fighters. So in the third round, I turned lefty and I knocked him out with a resounding punch. In the dressing room later, Cus confronted me.

“Who taught you that southpaw crap? It might be hard to get you fights now,” he said. “People don’t want to fight southpaws. You’re going to ruin everything I created.” Cus hated southpaws.

“I’m sorry, Cus.” Ain’t that a bitch. There I was apologizing for a spectacular knockout.

I was back in the ring a month later and dispatched Lorenzo Canady in one round, and three weeks later I faced Mike Johnson in Atlantic City. When we lined up for the instructions, Johnson looked so arrogant, like he hated my guts. Within seconds he was down from a left hook to the kidneys and then when he got up, I threw a spectacular right hand that hit him so hard his front two teeth were lodged in his mouthpiece. I knew it would be a long time until he came to. Kevin jumped into the ring and we were laughing and high-fiving like two arrogant little kids. I was, like, “Ha, ha. Look at this dead nigga, Kevin.”