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

Why would that make him not good to begin with? Says who...you? Rooney worked with him better than anyone else because that was Cus's legacy. Giachetti was fairly good and better than Jay Bright. Tommy Brooks was solid as well.

 

Far from it. The reason why nobody to this day implements the peek-a-boo is because how difficult it is to learn. Every fighter Cus trained was a success with it.

 

Atlas was his original trainer, no?

 

Based on the skillset he had, that's how he beats them.

 

I think Mike was hyper motivated all the way to the title but the cracks were starting to show beyond that once his life began to get more complicated. The fight every two week schedule sustained him but as the fights got bigger and the time between fights took longer Tyson found it harder to cope. He wasn’t busy enough to stay in control of things. He was a kid really. The wheels came off.

No matter how good a fighter is, they can’t continue to win at the highest level forever anyway. The problems Tyson had maturing as a famous person outside of the ring added to it.

 

What you are saying does make a lot of sense, his schedule was very structured to keep him active and in condition, also to maintain focus. Maybe his management knew that on the outside of the ring there were a lot of pitfalls that he lacked the maturity to handle. As I said, a mature male adult has dealt with these personal issues involving a person of the opposite sex, in our teenage years. But Tyson though talented, did not possess the mental maturity that someone of his chronological age should have in that point in his young life, so important to have a male role model, someone to give you that fatherly advise when things appear uncertain. Most people have that Someone, then they begin to figure out things for themselves as adult men. In all honesty, he did miss a step in his development as a mature man. Skill only will help you in your profession but not in life.

 

Yes the success of Tyson was really a team effort. He really had the best of everything to achieve his full potential. He had a number role models but perhaps not all of them were ones he chose for himself, and maybe some of the ones he did chose for himself were not that suitable. When somebody grows up with a team of people taking responsibility for you al the time it becomes difficult to take responsibility for yourself. But it was difficult for Tysonin other ways. There was clearly a lot of intense career discipline but the outlet for all that discipline was really down to the kid himself. How can anyone really take control of that outside of the champion himself?

 

That is very true, he should have been allowed to take responsibility for some decision making as he began to mature, much like a father does with his own son.I do think that his environment was very controlled, it is good to win him a title, but no, t hampers his development into a mature man. It is okay to let him fall so to speak. That way he learns to get back up on his own. He learns from his mistakes, so that he does not continue making the same ones again, like many of us did early in life. As I had mentioned, his former wife Robyn Givens was a mistake built on Lust, he pursued her..Look at Muhammad Ali during his rematch with Sonny Liston in 1965, he was going thru a divorce from his first spouse, Sonji Roi, a model, who refused to conform to his religious ways. It did not affect Ali, who stopped Liston very fast. Ali never really payed much attention to Angelo Dundee that often, yet he was successful.

 

In the amateurs, yes.

 

The whole point of this thread seems to be anything not stupendously great about Tyson in the ring is because of Rooney getting fired. Up to then he was, according to this line of thinking, absolutely perfect.

So if Tyson only ever lost a fight because Rooney wasn’t there, the implication is Tyson wasn’t very good without him. Which means Tyson wasn’t very good and he had this magical trainer who was the only one who could make him great.

LOL.

 

A lot of things go into boxing folklore that become the established fact of the matter according mainstream non boxing press. But they never really stand up to much real scrutiny. I think the truth is much more complex. it’s very lazy to say “if he took Rooney back Tyson would have carried on winning for years”.

exactly it doesn’t stand up. Tyson was a great talent and a great student. He should have been able to get on with a multitude of trainers...but he reached a stage in his development where no further progress could be made unless he was prepared to adapt and take control of his life again. Tyson became the boss of his own life. That’s what went wrong.

It is too simplistic to say “only people who understood the cus system, who had been with him the whole time could have got him back to where he was or take him to the next level”. That’s not true. All the fundamentals were there. Tyson was a ready made champion at that time. Had Tyson wanted to, had he been able to take responsibility to get his life under control any number of coaches or ex fighters could have worked well with him.

Lennox Lewis took a new coach at an even later stage and made it work.

 

I agree,,wouldn't have mattered all that much.

 

And then you would have to ask why Rooney didn't simply make a dozen Tyson clones?

 

I don't think Rooney in his corner during the Douglas fight would have made one iota of difference,, what would he have told him? you've got to get inside, geez he already knew that. Tyson was a finished product at that point, as good as he was ever going to be.

 

Yes, but you would be justified in saying that Rooney was much better than the people who he ended up with, as were a lot of trainers at that time.