In this week’s New Yorker, Lee Gruenfeld writes to the editor:
David Denby, in reviewing James Toback’s documentary “Tyson,” notes that it depicts two incidents of alleged head-butting in fights between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson, the first of which opened up a cut on Tyson’s forehead; the second ended with Tyson biting Holyfield on the ear (The Current Cinema, May 11th). The first head-butt appeared to be accidental, Denby writes. He adds, of the second, “It all happened very quickly, but this time to me the act looked calculated.” As co-author of Holyfield’s autobiography, I’m certain that the footage, when presented neutrally, shows only inadvertent collisions when Holyfield didn’t feel compelled to move his head out of the way just because Tyson expected him to. More important, though, is the film’s failure to examine the negative effect on Tyson of Cus D’Amato—who, Denby notes, “indulged him as a lawless teen and disciplined him as a fighter.” It was Teddy Atlas, working for D’Amato, who first took Tyson under his wing and gave him stern and protective guidance. D’Amato’s obsession with training one last champion before he passed on led to his failure to curb Tyson’s excesses and to Atlas’s disgusted departure from the camp. Atlas took with him Tyson’s last chance to be as good a man as he was a fighter.
Gruenfeld is correct on this last point, and in retrospect it’s something that has puzzled me too; given that Toback is well aware of the history, why didn’t he add five minutes to make this explicit in the film itself? In fact D’Amato is presented as a father figure, so much so that during my interview with Toback I asked:
Rumpus: It’s so obvious that Cus D’Amato was a kind of father figure to him, but in this cut, Tyson never refers to him as such. Has he ever done so in life?
Toback: No. Mike looked to him as a mentor, but at the same time, he was very much aware that Cus was a kind of militarist who, as he says, turned him into an animal. It wasn’t just that Cus was a great trainer, it was drilling in the idea that your opponent is your enemy, he’s out to get you, he’s out to ruin your life, you’ve got to kill him. Which was not normal boxing training, and was even a little living vicariously through Mike.
So I think Mike understands that the part of his personality that got him in trouble later on was actually stoked by this training. So Cus was not so much a father figure as a teacher, but then Mike was left on his own without the tools to deal with anything but what was in the ring. It was great for the fights, but not really good preparation for anything that wasn’t part of the ring.
Check out the rest of the interview here.
