Just bought this, it's by mark Kriegel. Brilliant reading so far. Go s right back to the start of Tyson s life, early years and getting involved with Cus, Jacobs and Rooney. Think it goes as far as the Spinks fight. Well worth buying if interested in Tyson and those around in the early days.
What I find it interesting is that Tyson and Patterson were both juvenile delinquents and their behavior as adults couldn't be more different.
Very different personalities tho really. You would never have seen Floyd screaming he was going to eat an opponent's children! But both had their demons, and I think Patterson really overcame them as he aged. Tyson seems also to have mellowed, could be wrong as I don't know the guy, but that's the impression I've get.
He did get into an altercation on an airplane with a dude who was pissing him off recently. Other than that, he seems mellow. Every report I've seen of fan meets with him was that he was cool as hell to them, spent some time to chat, take pics, etc., even when they randomly encountered him out in public.
Floyd’s was a lot more minor and childish with his sorts of crimes… Tyson was a thug, had seen people die, robbed houses, mugged, gambled and was regularly brawling in the street. FP had a hard time being tough on his daughters bullies at a time Mike was trying threatening to r@*e opponents or actively trying to kill himself with drugs, alcohol and women - those two had very different temperaments from start to finish. Patterson was a self loathing sort of sad guy who didn’t like hurting people or disappointing the public Tyson was the inverse of that and was loved for it.
It probably was the other man who started it. Don't think it's smart to start an altercation with a former heavyweight champion.
FP clearly would have been one of those guys who never gets so much as a parking ticket if he’d had an easier young life. As soon as he got a bit of stability, he became the polite gent we all think of him as. he’s an interesting guy. Hard to dislike.
It’s fairly well chronicled that Cus cut a lot of corners with Mike that he didn’t cut with Floyd in upbringing because D’Amato knew he wasn’t going to be around for long and wanted the recognition or accomplishment of creating another heavyweight champ — and another ‘youngest’ heavyweight champ. He didn’t discipline Tyson when he should have (putting his hands on women as a youngster), didn’t make him attend school … much more interested in teaching Mike about fighting than life, or passing along lessons that would allow him to better navigate life as he grew into adulthood and stardom. And you can argue that Cus was his boxing trainer (actually he wasn’t — Teddy Atlas when Mike was an amateur and Kevin Rooney when he was a pro handled that), but he actually became Tyson’s legal guardian, and with that comes the sort of parental type responsibilities that go beyond boxing. Cus probably did a lot more with Floyd in helping him become a good citizen and a contributing member of society than he did with Tyson. So that’s one part of the ‘making of’ Tyson — he was made to be a fighter but not taught how to be a good person or how to be a man. And the cracks started to show when he couldn’t cope with life: ramming a car into a tree or guard rail or something in what was seen by many as a suicide attempt, his inability to handle marriage (beating his wife and laughing/bragging about it), choosing to hang out with thugs and live ‘street life’ even early in his championship years, etc. Not to mention raping a woman and going to prison for it. The truth is, Cus cared about him as a fighter but didn’t care about helping his personal development. Jimmy Jacobs and Bill Cayton cared about him as a cash cow and a commodity but not about him as a person. Don King cared about … money — that’s all Don ever cared about. And Mike didn’t have enough want-to or wherewithal to say ‘hey, I need to course correct here and find some kind of grounding, my life is spinning out of control.’ He didn’t take responsibility for his own actions because he wasn’t held accountable nor about taking command of his own life and making better decisions by seeking out counsel or a mentor or church or really anything to better himself. Another part of the ‘making of’ Mike Tyson was the marketing of him from nearly the start. Mike was carefully matched early to create highlight-reel KOs, and Jimmy Jacobs put together that highlight reel, creating a videotape of spectacular KOs that he went to every TV station in America for them to use as filler on the sports portion of their news broadcasts. He was in the media Mecca of New York and Jacobs/Cayton got him on the cover of Sports Illustrated and in the sports pages of the prestigious East Coast papers and on TV broadcasts, etc, to create his mystique. Truth is, he struggled a good bit in his first step-up fight against Quick Tillis, and the truth is if he was from Iowa or Nebraska, at that point the boxing experts would have said ‘yeah he knocked out a bunch of bums and a few journeymen, but this shows he’s got a ways to go, come back when you’ve developed a bit more’ … but because he was right under the noses of network TV execs (and HBO), they saw a buzz they could capture and a PR machine that was cranking at full speed and hopped on for the ride. That’s not to say Tyson wasn’t the real thing, but not unlike Gerry Cooney a generation before he was a New York fighter who got overhyped early on and, after a spell, got exposed (see the Buster Douglas chapter of the sequel book if there is one). He’s a fascinating study, a complicated and complex person who was first kept out of the spotlight (he fought in obscure smokers as an amateur and skipped most of the major tournaments until he tried to make the Olympic team) and then thrust into the limelight as his image was created and crafted for maximum profit with little or no thought to whether he was equipped to cope with it.
