Mike Tyson (Text Only Edition). Monteith Illingworth

weave, he was taught not to use the standard “bob” or up-and-down motion. Instead, he moved his head and shoulders in a U shape. The slip took him laterally away from the first punch, then the U-shaped weave moved under the second—whether or not it was delivered.

      D’Amato had a bias against the “weave and bob,” a mainstay for the conventionally trained fighter. The weaving he liked; the bobbing, he believed, tended to fix the fighter’s position. To D’Amato’s mind, it created the illusion that by standing still and moving up and down along a vertical plane he could avoid the punches, whereas in fact, the opposite was the case. All the other fighter had to do was time his punch, D’Amato insisted; it was like hitting a jack-in-the-box.

      The idea with Tyson was never to let him “hang” on either the outside or the inside. He had to be constantly moving sideways and forward in a seamless sequence. The goal was to get position and once there to deliver a combination of punches—all without getting hit.

      That would seem self-evident, but few boxers could, or knew how to, do it. Slipping away made sense, but constantly moving in seemed counterintuitive. It increased the danger of getting hit. Punch and you were doubly exposed to counterpunches. Those were articles of faith to boxers, but only because they never knew how to do otherwise.

      “When his defense started working, his offense did, too, because then he was in position to throw combinations of punches that the opponent couldn’t see coming,” said Atlas.

      The offense: slip to the right, away from a jab, then throw a left hook to the body and another to the head. Or slip right and weave left under the next jab to get positioning on the opponent’s exposed side, and execute the same combination. Or weave to either side, hook to the body, and uppercut through the gloves. Tyson was in front, on both sides, high and low. He was taught to punch from every conceivable angle.

      “We practiced those punches so much that we used to say he couldn’t do it wrong even if he wanted to,” said Atlas. Doing it right meant hitting specific targets. D’Amato laid them out: the liver on the right side, the jawbone just below the ear, the point of the chin, and the floating left-side rib.

      In the advanced lessons, Atlas added a unique D’Amato-inspired wrinkle. All fighters were at the least taught to slip jabs by moving to their right. Tyson learned how to also slip a jab by moving left. An opponent expected the slip right; Tyson’s slip left would come as a small but important tactical surprise.

      The training completely exploited Tyson’s natural speed and punching power. It also converted into an asset his only potential physical drawback: at five-foot-nine with a reach of a mere seventy-one inches, he was short all around. Since the reign of Jack Johnson in early 1900s, there had been seventeen widely recognized heavyweight champions, and a half dozen or so lesser ones, and in that entire group only two—Rocky Marciano and Joe Frazier—had measured under six feet. Some champions were taller (Jess Willard, the “Pottawatomie Giant” who defeated Jack Johnson in 1914, was six-foot-six-and-one-quarter with a reach of eighty-three inches), and some average (Jack Dempsey, who reigned in the early 1920s, was six-foot-one and seventy-seven inches). Marciano measured five-foot-eleven with a reach of only sixty-eight inches. Frazier was similar in his proportions to Tyson.

      Height and reach didn’t determine boxing styles, but they did influence them. When tall fighters confronted shorter opponents, they tended to let their hands drop, which exposed the head. The assumption was that the shorter fighters didn’t have the reach to hit them there.

      D’Amato’s techniques to obtain positioning took advantage of that erroneous assumption. Not only would Tyson be able to get within reach, but he would also receive less, and do far more, damage than presumed. D’Amato knew that Tyson’s crouching style would make the taller opponent punch downward. That would feel awkward and so tend to throw the fighter off. In body mechanics, a downward punch also has less force than one made along a horizontal plane. More importantly, a punch angled slightly upward from a crouch carried the greatest amount of force.

      Tyson was trained to maximize that force. D’Amato eschewed the orthodox punching stance of putting the left foot slightly forward. Once he gained position, Tyson brought both feet up together, knees slightly bent. That way he could leverage his punches off a combined springing and turning motion of his massive thighs and upper body. His arms, shoulders, back, waist, buttocks, and legs were all moving in concert. At the point of contact Tyson actually ended up leaning forward on the tips of his toes.

      Most trainers ridiculed D’Amato’s theories on the positioning of the feet. They argued that it put a shorter fighter off-balance. They were right, but only if the fighter stopped moving—the opposite of what Tyson was trained to do.

      When it all came together, Tyson was a rare, and exciting, sight in the ring: he could win a fight with a single knockout punch. And that, in practical terms, was all D’Amato cared about. Just as with Patterson and, to a degree, Torres, he didn’t expect the boxing world, or the casual fan, to be interested in or capable of appreciating the flow, the elegance, of Tyson’s defensive skills. But a knockout punch they couldn’t ignore.

      * * *

      Theory and practice, as D’Amato preached, often differed. He and Atlas trained Tyson to fight as a professional. But in the practical development of his career, Tyson would first have to work his way up through the amateur tournaments toward an ultimate victory in the Olympics. Tyson’s boxing style wouldn’t go over well in the amateurs, and D’Amato knew it. The crouching, which lowered the head, was against the rules. Amateur officials felt it led to head butts. Without such defensive movement, the shorter Tyson would be far easier to hit. That disadvantage would be compounded by amateur scoring rules. Tyson could knock a foe down, but if the man got up and landed four or five soft jabs, he could win the round on points. In the professionals, a knockdown automatically won the round.

      Tyson’s skill with body-and-head combination punches also served little purpose. Amateur fights were only three rounds; there wasn’t time to waste with a lot of body blows. Headgear was also used in amateur fights, which D’Amato vociferously opposed. Headgear, he argued, created a false sense of security that in turn limited a fighter’s confrontation with his own fear.

      D’Amato never hid his disdain for amateur rules. He considered them useless in preparing for a professional career. That did not endear him to the amateur boxing establishment. As a result, D’Amato expected Tyson to take a lot of criticism in amateur matches. Fortunately, he had the ability to knock opponents out with a single punch—which made troublesome rules entirely moot.

      That left only one major obstacle: Tyson had not yet been tested psychologically. D’Amato and Atlas soon discovered that even with his natural advantages, superior training, and the shortcomings of his opponents, Tyson could be easily, and inexplicably, overwhelmed by his own emotions.

      Tyson’s earliest fights were “smokers.” These were held in small boxing clubs in the tough neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx. The beer ran free; people gambled, ate heartily, and cared only for the local favorite. No amateur body sanctioned the fights. They were unofficial and unruly, but were a good way for a young fighter to get experience without his mistakes ever showing up in a record book. It was the old method for bringing a fighter along. D’Amato put Tyson in to test his abilities, but more so, his nerves.

      At his first smoker, in the South Bronx, Tyson disappeared a few hours before the fight. He sat two blocks away on a curb in view of a subway station entrance. A few years later he would admit to Tom Patti, a young fighter who moved into the upstate house in 1981, that he struggled desperately over whether to take the half-hour subway ride back to nearby Brownsville and never see Catskill again. Atlas found him before the decision could be made.

      Tyson did well in the smokers. He’d knock out grown men in the first and second rounds. “One look at Mike and guys didn’t want to fight him,” said Atlas. “I had to make deals, give the trainers $50 on the side.” A few local tournaments followed and Tyson kept up his streak. By early 1981, D’Amato decided to venture out. Kevin Rooney was by then fighting regularly as a professional. He had a bout in Scranton, Pennsylvania. D’Amato got Tyson a three-round preliminary, or undercard,