Atlas (4 page)

W
HEN
I
FIRST GOT TO
C
ATSKILL, THE ONLY PEOPLE STAY
ing at the house were Cus, Camille, Kevin, and a kid named Jay Bright. All I knew about Cus at that point was that he had managed former heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson and former light heavyweight champ Jose Torres in the '50s and '60s, and that Kevin considered him to be a wise and great man. Approaching seventy, Cus had been out of the mainstream of the boxing world for years. As much as he could bring his knowledge and wisdom to bear on a couple of young guys like me and Kevin, it became clear to me that we brought something to him, too: purpose.

You have to understand, Cus, when I met him, was a little bit like one of those gunfighters who's hung up his guns and retreated from the fray to live in peace and quiet. Cus's reasons for leaving New York and the big time were complicated, dating back to when he had managed Patterson and Torres and had taken on what was then the ruling body in the boxing world, the International Boxing Club, a corrupt, Mob-influenced organization that controlled the matchmaking process. Once Cus had control of the heavyweight division, with Patterson as champ, 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 saw Cus as a hero and crusader bent on cleaning up the sport; others, a bit more cynically, saw him as manipulative and power hungry, not much better than the scoundrels he was fighting. Whatever the actual truth, Cus was mostly successful in his campaign: the IBC was ultimately deposed.

Although Cus prevailed, and with Patterson ruled the heavyweight division for years, he also became something of a paranoid, always looking over his shoulder for his enemies. Though no one ever accused him of being greedy—in fact, he was almost unique in the boxing world in his disregard for money—Cus's involvement in behind-the-scenes maneuvering with an eye toward improving his own fighters' lot landed him in hot water with the New York State Athletic Commission, which not only accused him of trying to control the heavyweight title, but also made pointed references to his association with Charlie Antonucci, a.k.a. Charlie Black, a known associate of the mobster Tony Salerno. When
Cus failed to appear before the commission, claiming his absence a matter of principle, his manager's license was suspended and, ultimately, revoked. Not long after, the IRS went after him over back taxes, and Cus was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy.

By the time Rooney and I showed up on the scene, Cus had been in Catskill for several years, basically in semiretirement. He'd cut a deal with local officials to rent the gym above the police station for a dollar a year in return for training some of the underprivileged, troubled kids in the area. But the truth is, training fighters at that point in his life was more like a hobby for him than a serious pursuit. Apart from the work he was doing with Rooney and a couple of kids, Kenny Zimmer and Jeff White, and an old man, Fred Sheber, who came from across the river with two or three kids every once in a while, the gym was barely active. If you believe in things like fate, or that people come together for a reason, my going up there turned out to be something like that.

Nobody—not even his detractors—would dispute that Cus was close to a genius as a trainer. He was an innovator, and came up with, among other things, the peek-a-boo style that Floyd Patterson made famous (in which the fighter holds both fists high and tucked in alongside each cheek, with the elbows and arms tight to the ribs). He also developed a punch-by-the-numbers system, each punch corresponding to a part of the opponent's body (the numbers were written in the appropriate places on a padded apparatus called a Willie that was mounted to the wall). Cus would drill us by playing tapes he'd recorded in which he yelled out the numbers in the combinations of punches he wanted us to throw.

What really separated Cus from most other trainers, though, was his focus on the mental aspect of boxing. Every night, from the moment I arrived in Catskill, we would sit around the dinner table and Cus would expound on his life philosophy as it applied to boxing, and his boxing philosophy as it applied to life. He loved to talk, but he also asked lots of questions. As he put it, “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 layers until I get to the core, so that he can realize, as well as I, what is there.” A lot of the ideas he talked about were things that I had already been thinking about, but maybe hadn't put into words yet.

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly boxing,” he said one night, while we sat at the table, eating a fresh-baked
apple pie Camille had made. “The thing a kid in the street fears most is to be called yellow or a coward. Sometimes a kid will do the most wild or crazy things just to show he's not scared….”

I thought of the kids I encountered in Rikers, who were capable of almost anything.

“But that's all motivated by survival. If you can harness fear it can be your ally. The example I always use is of a deer crossing an open field, and suddenly his instinct tells him danger is near, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream, which in turn enables the deer to perform extraordinary feats of agility and strength so that he can get out of range of danger. That's an example of how useful fear can be to a fighter if he learns to make it his friend.”

The routine in Catskill, the discipline, was good for me. We would train and do our roadwork in the morning, spend the afternoon attending to chores, mowing the lawn, cleaning, painting, feeding the dogs and birds, and then we'd go back to the gym at night and work with the bags and in the ring. At the gym, Cus would sit in this gray metal folding chair, watching us and talking to us.

“Remember, it's always good to throw the punch where you can hit him, but he can't hit you. That's the science.” He didn't actually get in the ring with us very often, but he'd demonstrate what he was talking about, moving his hands to indicate. I picked up on things quickly.

There's no question that Cus was doing things for me that I'd wanted my father to do: giving me guidance, telling me the things I needed to hear, paying attention to me—things I'd been starving for. He made me feel good about myself, focusing on my strengths, not my failings. “You're loyal, Teddy. You don't rat on your friends. I like that.”

Rooney and I were sparring a fair amount in the gym, and Cus was impressed by my punching power and natural ability in the ring. “You got professional potential,” he told me. “You punch with the right hand as hard as any fighter I've ever had, and you got a good chin.” I knew he was exaggerating, but it still felt good to hear stuff like that.

Jim Jacobs, who was Cus's best friend and a fight film historian, was going to manage me when I turned professional. Jacobs was rich, plus he had a manager's license, which Cus didn't, so that was how they worked it out: Cus the guru, Jacobs and his partner Bill Cayton the money men.

When he thought I was ready, Cus entered me in the Adirondacks Golden Gloves. I knocked out my first opponent in the opening round, and I kept knocking guys out all the way to the title. As good as things were going for me in Catskill, there was a black cloud hanging over me: My sentencing date for the robbery and gun charges was quickly approaching, and I was more than a little worried about how it would turn out.

I wasn't the only one. The specter of me doing real jail time had my mother and father fighting about me again. The lawyer my father hired, Dan Leddy, thought it could make a big difference if my father testified on my behalf. But my father refused. “He says he's not going into that courthouse to defend a son who broke the law,” my mother told me. “He's so goddamn stubborn. He won't listen to me. Why don't you talk to him, Teddy? Tell him you need him.”

“I'm not gonna do that.”

“But it could make a difference.”

“I don't care.”

“You're just as stubborn as he is.”

I went back to Staten Island, trying to mentally prepare myself for the worst. On the day of the sentencing, I sat at the defendant's table with Dan Leddy. My mother was seated right behind us in the front row. My father, true to his word, didn't show up. Near the end of the proceeding, there was a commotion in the back of the courtroom. I looked around, and there was Cus, making his way in. Dan Leddy announced to Judge Rayden, a dour-looking fellow in his sixties, that we had one more person who wanted to speak on my behalf: “The defense calls Mr. Constantine D'Amato.”

I'll never know how much Cus's testimony swayed the judge, but it definitely made a difference in the judge's final dispensation. Cus had charisma and he knew how to command a room. When Leddy asked him to describe the nature of his relationship with me, Cus turned to the judge, and there was a catch in his throat. He said, “Your Honor, I realize you might not know much about me, but I've spent my whole life developing young men. As a boxing manager I trained two world champions, heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson and light heavyweight champion Jose Torres.

“I've also helped a lot of other young boys straighten out their lives
and build character. I know things about Teddy Atlas this court doesn't know. Things you won't find on his arrest record. This boy has character. He has loyalty. He'll hurt himself before he'll let down a friend. These qualities are rare, and they shouldn't be lost. He's made mistakes. We've all made mistakes. But I've come to know this boy, and if we lose him, we'll be losing someone who could help a lot of people.”

At this point, Cus began to cry. Without wiping away the tears, he said, “Please don't take this young boy's future away. He could be someone special. Let's not lose him. Please….”

Even the court officers were choked up. Despite a plea bargain that my lawyer had set up, the judge still had some discretion in the terms. He could have made things tough on me; instead, he let me off with probation on the condition that I continue living in Catskill with Cus.

Two months later, with my legal problems behind me, I fought a guy I had knocked out in the Gloves in a club fight, a tough kid named Danny Chapman. I dropped him in the first round, but he was real gutsy and got back up. I started to go after him again and felt a sudden grab in my upper back. Sharp and very painful. Though I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, my back had been bothering me more and more over the months, to the point where I couldn't go through sustained training without it tightening up or seizing up on me. So now I was in this fight with this tough guy, and I couldn't bend or dip. I was getting hit with punches that I normally would have slipped. Instead, I was just standing there, going toe-to-toe with him, hitting him but getting hit because I couldn't move.

Somehow, I won a close decision, but it was much tougher than it should have been. Of course Cus noticed. He saw that I was wincing and grimacing after every punch I threw.

“What's the matter?” he asked me afterward.

“Nothing.”

“You gonna tell me or not? I can see you're in pain.”

“My back tightened up.”

“Where?”

“Up here. Right below my shoulders.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I don't know.”

Cus wanted to take me in for tests. I resisted. I knew something was
wrong, I just didn't want to hear some doctor confirm it. In the end, he took me to see this guy in Manhattan who Jim Jacobs recommended. The X-rays revealed that I had scoliosis, as well as gaps in the vertebrae and a herniated disc.

The doctor was of the opinion that boxing could make my condition worse. Cus and I wound up having an argument over it on the drive back upstate.

“You heard what he said, Teddy. It's a tough break, but what are you gonna do?”

“I can take the pain. He didn't say I had to stop.”

“He said you could make it worse. I won't allow it.”

I sulked, and Cus let me drive in silence for a few miles.

“It's not the end of the world,” he said at last. “You can still be involved in boxing.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think you could be a good trainer. I've seen the way you talk to Rooney and some of the other kids. You're a born teacher.”

“I'm a fighter, not a teacher.”

“You can become the same type of success through your fighters. Because if you take a boy and teach him to fight from beginning to end, part of you is in him, too. So that when he fights, part of you is in that ring.”

From that day on, Cus began working on me every chance he got, telling me he thought I'd make a good trainer. He really knew how to lay it on. He told me that teachers were born, not made; that I had been born with the gift, and it would be a shame if I didn't make use of that gift. Cus was very smart about people, he had very good instincts about them, and I think he really saw something in me that made him think I'd be a good trainer. At the same time, he had an ulterior motive: if I became a trainer it would serve his own purposes. He was getting older and he needed somebody to help him, an ally. Either way, I didn't want to hear it. I was still young. I wanted to fight, I didn't want to teach. The dream of being a professional fighter was the thing that was pulling me forward, keeping me directed. If I couldn't continue, then to hell with boxing and to hell with Catskill. At least that was the way I felt at the time.