MORE ON THE SAGA OF MIKE TYSON
San Francisco, CA– Having done a ton of research in my time, Mike Tyson was probably one of the easiest subjects to write an expose on. When I first met Mike Tyson, he was 17-years old, a ghetto urchin who had been rescued when Cus D’Amato, a trainer who became prominent when he signed Floyd Patterson after the future two-time heavyweight champion had won the 1952 Olympics at 165 lbs. D’Amato, a man whose sexual preferences appeared to be Gay, stood up against the Mafia and refused to fight fighters connected to Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo.
Frankie “Mr. Gray” Carbo
MOB & MADISON SQUARE GARDEN RAN BOXING
Palermo and Carbo ran boxing with an iron fist from the 1940s until US Attorney General Robert Kennedy shut their operation down in the early 1960s. Carbo, a member of the Lucchese crime family, was charged with eight murders, which resulted only in only one conviction, that for manslaughter after snuffing out a cab driver who refused to pay “protection money” to Carbo in 1931. For that, Frankie got less than two years in the slammer.
CUS WOULD NOT DEAL WITH MR. GRAY
When fighters or their managers got a call from Carbo, he used the alias “Mr. Gray.” Frankie would tell them how their upcoming fight would end. If they did not comply with Mr. Gray’s directive, they would either end up maimed or in some instances dead. Cus, knowing that Al Weill, the manager of Patterson’s heavyweight champion predecessor Rocky Marciano had kept his fighter out of the Mob’s control, Cus fed Patterson a number of non-entities, all the while top contenders like Eddie Machen and Zora Foley that were not connected, were flat out ducked. The ever-so feared Sonny Liston, who would eventually beat Patterson twice with one round knockouts, was a Mob controlled fighter that D’Amato avoided until public ridicule compelled Patterson to go against Cus and fight Liston.
CUS HAD ONE LAST SHOT WITH TYSON
D’Amato, realizing he had a potential heavyweight champion when Tyson was just a teenager, kept Tyson’s name out of the police blotters, even though he had committed heinous acts that included an alleged attempted sexual assault on the sister of his then trainer and now ESPN 2 analyst Teddy Atlas. Cus didn’t give a spit as to what Tyson did, he was willing to pay people off as he was just an old man trying to recapture glory one more time. When he died in November 1985 at 77, Cus’ dream of seeing Tyson win the title died with him as Mike wouldn’t win the WBC title from Trevor Berbick until one year later in November 1986.
THIS STORY HAS EVOLVED INTO A FIVE-PARTER
Originally, I expected Part III to take us from the loss to Buster Douglas in 1990 to his wrongful (in my opinion) conviction of raping Desiree Washington in 1992. But after realizing that I needed to go deeper into Tyson mentor Cus D’Amato, the next installment with take us from 1990 to 1992. While some writers have their work all laid out in advance, I thought I had done so until I realized that I had to go deeper into the man who discovered Mike Tyson, Cus D’Amato. I have the next chapter already written, but I felt that I had missed something, thus I put that on hold and went with this piece with D’Amato being the centerpiece.
HERE’S A VIDEO OF A VERY YOUNG TYSON & CUS D’AMATO
Pedro Fernandez