I know a lot of people blame King for manipulating Tyson to fire Rooney, using race and his personal life to convince him it was the right thing to do. A lot mark the day Rooney was fired as the end of Tyson's peak. He was still physically in his prime, but he no longer continued to improve as a fighter. He didn't train as hard, he didnt work on the fundamentals, he no longer lived the life. The line of thought here is with hindsight, a loss like he suffered to Douglas was inevitable. Merchant's words in the aftermath of Tyson Spinks had finally rung true. But then there's the other argument, they King was the one who pushed for the unification series. Without Kings influence the division would have remained scattered. Without King there's no way Tyson could have gotten Spinks in the ring. So in this line of thought we have a Tyson who is better for longer, but probably not as dominant, and if King has the other belts tied up, he might well have found himself frozen out of the divisional picture, being forced to settle for mandatory defences for a much smaller purse.
As someone said in another thread tyson was a machine, a powerful but delicate machine that needed the right mechanics to keep working on it. Rooney was one, the other was jim Jacobs. We dont know what would have happened with the fights without Don King's influence. What we do know is that immediately following the Spinks fight his form declined.
He fell in love with his power, cocaine and hookers. It's a shame because at any point he could have been trained back to that high, he was a tremendous physical specimen as he proved by still knocking out top contenders a decade later. But once he neglected the peekaboo, despite still being in his prime, he was not the same fighting machine.
I think it’s a chicken-or-the-egg thing. Tyson fired Rooney because they had clashes but ultimately because he wanted yes-men training him so he could do what he wanted and didn’t want to listen. So I don’t see a scenario where, unless Tyson was completely different mindset-wise and wanted to listen to a trainer and keep working with the same focus and vigor, he would keep Rooney. Ultimately nothing changes. Tyson’s strengths were his strengths and his weaknesses were his weaknesses, and the biggest of those weaknesses was always going to be a lack of focus, drive and continued determination to remain on top and do the things necessary to stay there.
Don King created the Heavyweight Unification tournament for HBO that allowed Mike Tyson to become a star. And Don King brought Tyson the largest purses in boxing history to that point and put him on the highest grossing PPVs cards in history to that point. At the time, Bob Arum had zero interest in the heavyweights. Cedric Kushner was sort of floundering. Barry Hearn and Mickey Duff were doing their own things. Jacobs and Cayton moved Tyson quickly, and packaged his rise to local TV, but they weren't experts at picking opponents - the only heavyweight they had before Tyson was Kallie Knoetze for a couple months. Once Tyson had a belt, they didn't really pick any of his opponents. King did. Or the sanctioning bodies did with their mandatories. And Mike Tyson didn't want Kevin Rooney to train him anymore. Cayton and Jacobs didn't want Rooney to train Tyson after the Bonecrusher Smith fight. And Tyson had any number of solid trainers throughout his career who were far more highly regarded than Kevin Rooney, including Freddie Roach, Tommy Brooks, Richie Giachetti (Holmes' trainer), Aaron Snowell (who took Witherspoon to the title twice) ... and if Tyson didn't look as good with them ... that's not on Don King. Don King never trained Mike Tyson. In his role as Tyson's promoter, Don King did a great job. If people want to blame someone for Tyson's lack of training, his personal transgressions or Tyson losing his skills, that's not on the promoter. That's on the trainers and the fighter. (Is it Eddie Hearn's fault Andy Ruiz showed up looking like a cow for his return with Joshua?) Without King, without the HBO tournament to unify the titles, without becoming the youngest champ in history, without the record purses King negotiated, I don't think Tyson would be as highly regarded today. Their legacies are linked together. Don King entered the picture with the Alfonso Ratliff fight - just prior to Tyson's fight with Berbick - and King left with the Botha fight. Remove King, and you have early Tyson against Tillis, Mitch Green and Ribalta ... and then jump ahead to Tyson vs. Norris, Savarese, Golota and Lewis. There weren't alot of high water marks for Tyson without King.
That's true. We also have to look at the peekaboo style itself. There was no way he could have maintained it for long, being such a physically demanding style. But as his speed/stamina diminished I like to think that Rooney could have adapted it over time, fight by fight. You only have to watch the pad work as it changed over time to see that it was not the same, so I dont think people/trainers truly understood what it was. Even the last series of training videos he released on instagram - when have you ever seen Tyson do anything like that in his prime fights? The answer is never.
I think so. Mike should have stuck with his original team. He was such a draw Don would have had no choice but promote his fights.
The only thing that could have kept Tyson winning, the only person who could reach him was Cus D’Amato. Once Cus died it was only a matter of time all the band aids aside.
What youre missing is Mike could have kept his original team of manager and trainer while letting King promote his fights. King needed Tyson. Mike didnt have to give him total control. Once he did things went downhill.
Tyson was going off the rails with or without Don King, Kevin Rooney or whoever. Once he lost Cus D'Amato, and starting getting as much coke for his nose and women for his Johnson as his body could stand, it was all over.
Lol at claiming Snowell and Giachetti were better trainers than Rooney. They may have been attached to more names but they certainly werent better trainers. Snowell was a clueless gym rat clown and Giachetti was nothing but a Don King yes man. If Giachetti hadnt been Don King's house trainer because he could be counted on to toe the Don King line he wouldnt have been associated with 1/10th the name fighters he has on his resume. Besides, claiming that because Tyson worked with guys who may have been better or more well known than Rooney and as such we cant use the lack of a good trainer as an excuse ignores the fact that Tyson was brought up in and trained in a very specific style that not only does nobody else teach but nobody even knows how to teach if they werent part of that D'Amato family. Roach may be a better trainer than Rooney but he isnt a better peek-a-boo style trainer than Rooney. And thats the point. Once Tyson got away from the D'Amato school he simply became a slugger. He stopped moving his head, started taking more punches, stopped throwing combos, stopped using angles and just devolved as a fighter. Thats because the Peek-a-boo style is a very elaborate puzzle that you cant just select this piece or that piece of to work independently of the others. You have to drill to a fine tuned machine and nobody Tyson trained with after Rooney did or could do that. They tried to bring in Jay Bright's clueless ass to help them piece together those drills but you might as well ask Camille Ewald to train Tyson because she probably knew as much about how to train a fighter as Jay Bright.
None of that has anything to do with the fact that Mike Tyson didn't want Kevin Rooney as a trainer anymore. Fighters are allowed to dump trainers. Richie Giachetti, Freddy Roach, Tommy Brooks and Aaron Snowell all had their own champions and were fine trainers.
I'm not missing anything. His original team was Cus, Jacobs, Cayton, Lott and Rooney. Cus died. Jacobs died. Tyson wanted Rooney fired. What original team do you think he should've kept, exactly? Bill Cayton and Steve Lott? Was Bill Cayton going to train him?
King definitely had a negative effect on Tyson! He was so desperate to get Tyson in his stable, that he poisoned his mind against his current management, and fed into everything that was weak in him. "That trainer shouldn't be telling you what to do, you're the champion, why aren't you telling him what to do?" He assumed that he had the new Joe Louis, but James Douglas proved him wrong!
