What if Rooney had stayed as Tyson`s trainer after the Spinks fight?

Probably wouldn’t have lost to Douglas and would’ve beaten ruddock more convincingly, would’ve still lost to Lewis and Holyfield though. He was most likely gonna drop Rooney eventually because Tyson wanted more yes guys on his team

 

It would only have delayed the inevitable.

 

Probably beats Douglas then Holyfield. Division cleanout complete.

 

Rooney, Atlas and Tyson were both disciples of the cus boxing culture but Cus really was a very old man. Rooney had continued what Atlas had been doing for Tyson under Cus’s supervision. Cus knew he was going to die. He made audio tapes of drills he wanted Tyson to do so that his work would carry on after his death. Which they used and based everything around. And Tyson was a great student. He was able too flourish during his progression period under this without Cus there.

However, For all Rooney could supervise these drills because he himself had been indoctrinated under the cus philosophy, the limits of his “Cus knowledge” after Tyson won titles and unified championships had to have reached its limits before their split. It had to. Tyson, by then, had to have been drilled so many times over, reaped the benefits and grown enough in that the time to realise he had surpassed even the ability of Rooney to train him.

Kevin was only there to carry things on. But it probably reached a point where it was “only carrying things on”. Things Tyson already knew. Carrying things on when the student is only half way there is one thing. But once the student becomes the master?

No. Tyson had absorbed everything he was going to absorb. Nobody but Cus himself was taking him further.

And he was still a very young man needing to mature as a person.

If Tyson had not sacked Rooney he was still ready to implode. The point he had been taken to was a point he was ever emotionally ready to deal with. Beating Spinks he was still a young man. A young man who had realised everything he had set out to do. The whole thing. To maintain that focus beyond that point would have taken a discipline understood of someone who had grown and matured outside of the ring beyond Mike Tyson had at that time.

Time and again, I have wondered what more Rooney could have told Tyson in the corner against Douglas when he was beaten to the punch. What’s he going to say? “Mike, He’s reading you. Each time he’s fainting, he knows how you are going to react. He’s walking you onto everything you try to do”. ‘He’s not intimidated”. “You can’t wait for him, he knows what you are going to do!”

Knowing that he’s getting his ass handed to him is not going to help. Here is a guy used to landing upon guys like Larry Holmes. Years out of the ring. Spinks. Totally intimidated. And a guy who knows no more about the Cus philosophy than he does is going to get him out of a sticky situation when he’s up against a guy who has fought as regularly as he himself has, always had talent, can anticipate his every move and is on a death wish to win?

No. Tyson and Rooney had a great run. But it went as far as it was going to go.

 

I think that there are ways that Tyson could have been developed further, had he been willing to listen.

I would have worked on shortening his punches for example.

It would come down to whether Rooney could have made Tyson take his preparations for he Douglas fight more seriously.

I am not saying that he could have done, but I am certain that he would have pushed him much harder in this direction, than the people that he was with.

 

I used to think that staying with Rooney would have led to Tyson remaining undefeated forever. But looking back i’m not so sure anymore. Mike Tyson was the architect of his own demise. And even if he kept focused the fights would have gotten tougher as the 90s progressed.

 

He never mastered infighting, in the same way as somebody like say Henry Armstrong did.

This could have made him nigh on impossible to beat.

 

When Tyson lost to Douglas he was still a self conscious child he undoubtedly needed somebody real at that stage in his life in about his own words.
“I was just a dumb kid quoting comic books”

 

There is a lot more to infighting, than being able to throw the odd short punch.

A good infighter, is almost impossible to tie up in the clinches.

The fact that Tyson was neutralized so easily in the clinches, shows a major gap in his game.

 

Oh yeah Mark. Then he flies to Kuwait and with Rooneys guidance defeats Iraq. After that, it is on to Bin Laden and his group of merry pranksters. After the terrorists are defeated, Rooney yells,"What doya tink of dat?". Mike then stays unbeaten until 2017 when Rooney dies of aids and under a new trainer, Mike loses the title. Cause see Mark, Rooney was the ring genious who held the keys to the kingdom and could make Mike into a superman w/out any flaws.

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A teacher needs a willing student.

Tom Brady’s probably the GOAT quarterback. But if he didn’t have the desire to stay great — avoiding shortcuts off the field, living clean, studying film when everyone else is ready to call it a day, getting guys to stay after practice to work on timing, etc. — he would not have been.

Tyson got rid of Rooney as much because he didn’t want to ‘be trained’ as because Kevin said something fairly innocuous about his wife. Tyson didn’t want to answer to anyone. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man (even if he wasn’t mature) — he got married, he was the cash cow and he was no longer willing to sit at someone’s knee and listen, nor to take orders.

The greatest trainer in the world (and Kevin was hardly that — I agree that Tyson had reached the limit’s of Kevin’s knowledge) can’t make a guy want to put in those hours, make him put aside his vices when it’s time to train, can’t make him get his rest when he needs it. Tyson was calling the shots and nothing on earth was going to change that.

So I don’t think it matters one iota if Rooney stayed around or not because Mike was going to tell him to **** off if he didn’t want to do what Kevin told him to do. And there wasn’t anything Kevin could have done about it.

Really I don’t think it would have mattered much if Cus had not died. For a little while, maybe, but children rebel against their parents. I’m sure we all did. Well Cus was as close to a father figure as Tyson ever had, and at some point Tyson’s earning power and an entourage around telling him he’s the man and all the other distractions ... those begin to make Cus less of an influence over Tyson’s life.

I also think Buster — in shape and focused and motivated as he was, which may be a set of circumstances that could only happen once in his life — was his kryptonite: big, mobile guy who could throw combinations with a big-time jab. And Evander was just more man than Tyson and had more champion in him.

 

Triggered?