Iron Ambition

Starred review from May 15, 2017
In this tender and disturbing hybrid of memoir and biography, former heavyweight boxing champion Tyson examines one of the most unusual characters in boxing history. The story begins in 1979 with boxing trainer Cus D’Amato watching Tyson, then a 13-year-old gangster, batter a former pro in a sparring session. At the time, it had been over 20 years since D’Amato guided Floyd Patterson to a title and almost as long since his exile to pugilistic Siberia (aka upstate New York). The resentful street kid’s rage and power reinvigorated D’Amato, and seven years later he helped Tyson become the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. Tyson’s narrative alternates between recollections of his discipleship with D’Amato and narration of the manager’s earlier years, including his upbringing in the Bronx and his battles with the Mafia, which controlled boxing in the decades after WWII. D’Amato, a brilliant autodidact whose training methods incorporated Zen, hypnotism, and the psychoanalytic practices of Wilhelm Reich, had forged other champions before Tyson, only to lose them through an odd mixture of paranoia and principle. This book is no hagiography, and descriptions of D’Amato’s brutal psychological manipulation of damaged teenagers like Tyson makes for unpleasant reading. As hypercritical and manipulative as D’Amato could be, he nevertheless drew remarkable accomplishments from boys others had forgotten. Tyson’s love for D’Amato is more than apparent, but it doesn’t lead him to downplay his teacher’s myriad faults.

April 15, 2017
The boxing champion, infamous for biting and beating, reveals his soft side in this memoir of his longtime mentor and trainer.Constantine D'Amato (1908-1985), known to the world as Cus, was a tough ex-fighter who developed a style called "peek-a-boo," in which a boxer guards the face and head from the blows otherwise likely to be rained down upon them. He had a soft side as well; it was D'Amato who discovered Tyson (Undisputed Truth, 2013) in a reform school and trained him, directing Tyson's aggression into a somewhat more productive venue and giving him the self-confidence he never had: "For the first time in my life someone was telling me that there was no one better than me." D'Amato, writes Tyson, was obsessed with boxing from childhood on, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport and its practitioners made him the man to see for anyone wanting to get into the game. Not surprisingly, that included a lot of shady types, and Tyson is forthright about how mobbed-up the New York boxing world was when he was getting his start, though some fearless trainers and fighters tried to buck the system; of one, he writes, "he seemed like a nice guy--until he got drunk and did things like throw beer bottles at Mafiosi." Tyson also marvels at D'Amato's fairness to his fighters, expressed in part by a formula that allowed a boxer to make money even if a promoter didn't. He writes respectfully and affectionately, though some of the old toughness hangs on. Pondering how many requests he gets for photos, he writes, "back in the '70s taking any kind of pictures around strangers was a no-no. You didn't even say 'Hi' to people you didn't know. Motherfucker would start beating on you and leave you in a coma on the street." A belated but welcome homage to a boxing legend who died shortly before Tyson's career took off. Fans of the sweet science will want to have a look.

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February 1, 2017
The former heavyweight champion and New York Times best-selling memoirist recalls trainer Cus D'Amato and everything he taught Tyson about the one-two punches delivered by sports and life.

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