by Teddy Atlas
The kid in front of me started singing that Lou Rawls song that was on the radio at the time, “I’ll See You When I Get There.” It had always been a happy, upbeat song. Suddenly it was something else entirely.
I said I might have to run all the way
Because the bus might be slow today
I’ve been thinking about you all day long
And I just can’t wait to get home
The trip to Rikers seemed to take hours, and yet once we were on the bridge to the island, water on each side of us, it was ending much too quickly. On the other side of the bridge, we went through the gates, and drove past a number of buildings to the youth facility (known as the Youth Educational Facility), where we began the first step of a long processing routine in which we were shuttled from one station to another like cattle. Finally, I got stripped down and had my ass cheeks spread and searched, then was handed a set of plain blue clothes and was taken to my cell. That’s when the cold reality of where I was hit full force, walking past all those other cells, hearing the shit they were yelling at me. I was scared. Nothing makes you feel more alone than prison. At the same time, I realized that as much as I didn’t want to be there, I had to be sure I recognized that I was there. That it was real. To think or act otherwise was dangerous.
It’s funny what the mind can do, though. I mean, once they put me in this five-by-eight-foot cell, with a barred window the size of a postage stamp, I realized that if I stretched up and craned my neck, I could see and hear the planes taking off and landing at LaGuardia Airport. It’s almost cruel that they put a prison right next to an airport that way. Watching those planes, I began to imagine that I was on one of them. I actually made a deal with whoever, with God, I guess, that if I could be on one of those planes that I would accept that the plane was going to crash. I would take the chance. At first I thought I was the only one having thoughts like that. I thought it was a form of weakness. But then I thought, If I’m having these thoughts, other people must be, too.
I couldn’t be the only one. It was a revelation. In the mess hall, in the yard, these guys would try not to let on that they had been having these thoughts, the same way that fighters try not to let on that they’re having thoughts that scare them. Of course, everyone has them. When I came to realize that, it helped me put my fears into perspective. It’s one of the things that I’ve used ever since, and that’s helped me to become a good trainer.
Rikers Island had a reputation for being a rough place, and it was. Any place where kids spit razor blades out of their mouths to cut you is not a real great place. These other prisons, like Attica and Sing Sing, were tough, but the youth facility at Rikers was more dangerous because it was all young kids who were angry and lost, and not—even in criminal ways—directed yet. They were dangerous the way I was dangerous. They didn’t know why they were so full of anger, so full of hatred. They were still groping, trying to eliminate certain fractured feelings in themselves in whatever way they could; whereas the older guys in those other places had a better sense of themselves, were more practical, knew how to do their time. Older guys didn’t need to stab you to show they weren’t afraid. A kid in Rikers might stab you just to avoid facing something else he might be feeling.
Early on, I made it clear that I would stand up for myself. This guy who was six feet and a mean-looking motherfucker came up to me in the rec area and let me know he wanted my sneakers. I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but I knew what he was asking and what it meant. I knew what it would lead to. I didn’t even say no. I just went after him. I knew that if I didn’t, it wouldn’t stop there. I knew that after the sneakers it was going to be my dignity he would try to take, my soul. Some people might feel that it would be easier to avoid the confrontation, to give up the sneakers. In the ring, I see fighters quit or give up all the time because it feels at that moment like it’s the easiest option. I always tell them the easiest thing is actually to make a stand. The act of fighting, of facing what you have to face, in reality lasts only a few minutes. Otherwise, you have to deal with and live with the consequences forever. And that’s much harder. So I went after this guy, and it really didn’t matter who got the best of who—though I think I got in more shots than he did before the guards broke it up. The point was, I was standing up for myself. That was what was important. After that I was pretty much left alone.
Even though I kept to myself at Rikers, there was one guy there I made a connection with, a chaplain there, Brother Tim McDonald, who was a Franciscan friar they called the Brother of the Rock. He knew my uncle slightly, and he kept an eye on me from the day I got there. I didn’t know, but he was watching through a one-way mirror when they brought me in, and he came and saw me the next day.
Now I know that the Catholic religion has taken a big hit in the past few years, but this guy was the real deal, what a guy like that is supposed to be. He was a big, burly Irishman, and when he shook hands with you, he tried to break your hand. That was the way he showed you that he was in charge. I knew right away he was telling me very clearly, “This is my place.” But he was solid, and there weren’t many things in there that were solid. Or outside of there, either, for that matter.
He already had all my records. He said, “You belong in here, Teddy. You’re a dangerous person.”
He wasn’t saying, “You poor thing. I can see you’re really a sensitive person deep down.” Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to hear a little bullshit. I’m no different from anyone else that way. But I appreciated that I wasn’t hearing it, that maybe somewhere down the line I could hear some other stuff from him that connected to something real, and that I would be able to trust that what he was saying had meaning. It was another lesson that I would incorporate into my career as a trainer. I would tell fighters under pressure the truth, even though they didn’t want to hear it, because I knew they needed it and would know the difference. The ones who were going to make it would actually want to hear it, would know that they could trust it—both the criticism and the praise.
That first Sunday, I went to chapel, and afterward Brother Tim stopped me and said, “Why’d you come to church?”
“I wanted to go to mass,” I said.
“No, you didn’t. You came because you wanted to show me you were a good guy and get my approval.”
He was right. He had a way of puncturing your pretenses that made you trust him. He was teaching me things about human nature.
“So how are you doing?” he asked. “Are you all right? You need to make a phone call?”
Everything in prison is a kind of currency. He was using the fact that he had a phone in his office that I could use to further build trust and let me know that he cared. With other guys, he might use the currency of the phone for something else. If there was someone he saw who shouldn’t have been in Rikers or who couldn’t defend himself, Brother Tim would go to the guy who ran the quad, the inmate with the most juice, and he’d make a deal with him. He was smart. He’d say, “Look, I don’t want this kid bothered,” because he knew the kid would be raped otherwise. He’d say, “I’m going to let you make five calls a week,” and the guy would make sure that nobody bothered the kid.
Of course, it didn’t always work. He said to me on more than one occasion, “Teddy, some people travel through here and it changes their lives. Some, it ruins their lives.” There was one kid who was in for shoplifting. A frail, skinny kid, who’d slipped a couple of albums under his sweater and been caught walking out of a record store. Before Brother Tim could do anything to prevent it, the kid got raped. It was terrible. The kid’s bail was only fifty dollars, and when Brother Tim discovered that, it just killed him. I mean, this kid was ruined, he was never going to be the same, and for what? Fifty bucks? Brother Tim did get the kid out after that, he paid the bail—which is something he did routinely, despite the fact that he was making almost no money—but not too long after the kid got back home, he was found in the vestibule of his building, dead of a drug overdose. �
�Your mistakes sometimes you never get over,” Brother Tim said. “I see that here.”
I got out of Rikers, but I stayed in touch with Brother Tim. He lived with the Franciscan friars on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village. I’d go visit him, and take him out to eat at these Italian restaurants on Carmine or Bleecker Street. He looked like a dockworker, a guy out of Hard Times.
He’d wear this blue wool cap, and his clothes were what was made in prison or what someone gave him. He was an orphan himself, this guy who cared about all these godforsaken unfortunates. I remember at one of these restaurants we went to, he pocketed the silverware, and then went, “Oops, guess I lost control of myself, Teddy,” and put the silverware back on the table. “Gotta get out of my old habits.” It was funny, but it was also like he was making a show of having been there himself; he was saying, It’s easy to slip back. You have to be disciplined.
LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE, BROTHER TIM WAS WORRIED, WHEN my father finally paid my bail and I got out, that I would slip back. It was a genuine concern. I was back home, waiting for my trial to start, and I was facing a lot of years—ten years with the two felonies—and yet even with all that going on, it didn’t seem impossible that I would do something else to compound things, that I still didn’t get it.
Another guy who was concerned was my childhood friend Kevin Rooney, who had won the 147-pound Golden Gloves in New York four months earlier. Like me, Kevin came from a dysfunctional family, and he’d had several run-ins with the law. In those days the cops tried to get problem kids involved in boxing in the Police Athletic League, which is where Kevin and I first got close. We were boxing in an old laundry room in a rough project called Park Hill under the tutelage of this guy Ray Rivera. It was a no-frills setup. We’d pick our rubber mouthpieces out of a glass jar by the door and then put ’em back in the same jar when we were finished. Very sanitary. But it was a good program in lots of ways. It helped kids. I mean, when you think about the fact that Kevin and I are still involved in boxing, that says a lot.
Anyway, Kevin went on to fight in the New York Golden Gloves, and during the tournament, the Hamill brothers, Pete, Brian, and Dennis, who knew Kevin’s brother, introduced him to Cus D’Amato, a well-known fight manager and trainer. Cus thought Kevin could turn pro eventually, and Jim Jacobs, who was Cus’s friend and business partner, offered to pay Kevin’s expenses so Kevin could live with Cus in Catskill, New York, and train at his gym. It was an offer that Kevin jumped at. Now, four months later, right after I got out of Rikers, Kevin called me up. He knew there was a good chance I’d get into trouble again hanging around Staten Island, and he was trying to help me out.
“Come up here, Teddy. I’ll ask Cus, but I’m sure it’ll be okay with him. You can live here, train for the Gloves, and stay out of trouble while you’re waiting for trial.”
I could see it was a good idea. I knew myself well enough at that point to see that he was right. I brought it up with my father, and my father, to his credit, agreed to foot the bill. Fifty bucks a week for my room and board.
Sunday morning. October 1975. I’m in a train pulling into the town of Hudson, New York. Rikers seems a thousand miles away, though in reality I only got out a week ago.
The train slows and stops with a hiss. I grab my bag and get off. Kevin Rooney is standing by an old white Dodge station wagon.
“Cus is back at the house,” Kevin says. We drive across the bridge through Catskill, New York, a small, blue-collar town of nineteen thousand that has seen more prosperous days. “You’ll see what I’m talking about, Teddy. Every day I learn something new from him.”
Kevin explains that Cus shares the house with Camille Ewald, a Ukrainian woman, who has been his companion for many years. We pull up a long driveway outside a sprawling white Victorian mansion. Cus comes out on the porch. He’s heavyset, balding, wearing a red-and-white flannel shirt. He’s got a wide, flat face, piercing blue eyes, and eyebrows that arch up like triangles.
“You must be Teddy,” he says. “I been hearing good things about you from Rooney.”
WHEN I FIRST GOT TO CATSKILL, THE ONLY PEOPLE STAYing at the house were Cus, Camille, Kevin, and a kid named Jay Bright. All I knew about Cus at that point was that he had managed former heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson and former light heavyweight champ Jose Torres in the ’50s and ’60s, and that Kevin considered him to be a wise and great man. Approaching seventy, Cus had been out of the mainstream of the boxing world for years. As much as he could bring his knowledge and wisdom to bear on a couple of young guys like me and Kevin, it became clear to me that we brought something to him, too: purpose.
You have to understand, Cus, when I met him, was a little bit like one of those gunfighters who’s hung up his guns and retreated from the fray to live in peace and quiet. Cus’s reasons for leaving New York and the big time were complicated, dating back to when he had managed Patterson and Torres and had taken on what was then the ruling body in the boxing world, the International Boxing Club, a corrupt, Mob-influenced organization that controlled the matchmaking process. Once Cus had control of the heavyweight division, with Patterson as champ, he took on the IBC by refusing to match his fighters with any IBC-controlled opponent; he also took his fight against them to court. Some saw Cus as a hero and crusader bent on cleaning up the sport; others, a bit more cynically, saw him as manipulative and power hungry, not much better than the scoundrels he was fighting. Whatever the actual truth, Cus was mostly successful in his campaign: the IBC was ultimately deposed.
Although Cus prevailed, and with Patterson ruled the heavyweight division for years, he also became something of a paranoid, always looking over his shoulder for his enemies. Though no one ever accused him of being greedy—in fact, he was almost unique in the boxing world in his disregard for money—Cus’s involvement in behind-the-scenes maneuvering with an eye toward improving his own fighters’ lot landed him in hot water with the New York State Athletic Commission, which not only accused him of trying to control the heavyweight title, but also made pointed references to his association with Charlie Antonucci, a.k.a. Charlie Black, a known associate of the mobster Tony Salerno. When Cus failed to appear before the commission, claiming his absence a matter of principle, his manager’s license was suspended and, ultimately, revoked. Not long after, the IRS went after him over back taxes, and Cus was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy.
By the time Rooney and I showed up on the scene, Cus had been in Catskill for several years, basically in semiretirement. He’d cut a deal with local officials to rent the gym above the police station for a dollar a year in return for training some of the underprivileged, troubled kids in the area. But the truth is, training fighters at that point in his life was more like a hobby for him than a serious pursuit. Apart from the work he was doing with Rooney and a couple of kids, Kenny Zimmer and Jeff White, and an old man, Fred Sheber, who came from across the river with two or three kids every once in a while, the gym was barely active. If you believe in things like fate, or that people come together for a reason, my going up there turned out to be something like that.
Nobody—not even his detractors—would dispute that Cus was close to a genius as a trainer. He was an innovator, and came up with, among other things, the peek-a-boo style that Floyd Patterson made famous (in which the fighter holds both fists high and tucked in alongside each cheek, with the elbows and arms tight to the ribs). He also developed a punch-by-the-numbers system, each punch corresponding to a part of the opponent’s body (the numbers were written in the appropriate places on a padded apparatus called a Willie that was mounted to the wall). Cus would drill us by playing tapes he’d recorded in which he yelled out the numbers in the combinations of punches he wanted us to throw.
What really separated Cus from most other trainers, though, was his focus on the mental aspect of boxing. Every night, from the moment I arrived in Catskill, we would sit around the dinner table and Cus would expound on his life philosophy as it applied to boxing, and his boxing philo
sophy as it applied to life. He loved to talk, but he also asked lots of questions. As he put it, “To find out what I need to do with a guy, I have to find out about his background, learn what makes him tick, keep peeling away layers until I get to the core, so that he can realize, as well as I, what is there.” A lot of the ideas he talked about were things that I had already been thinking about, but maybe hadn’t put into words yet.
“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly boxing,” he said one night, while we sat at the table, eating a fresh-baked apple pie Camille had made. “The thing a kid in the street fears most is to be called yellow or a coward. Sometimes a kid will do the most wild or crazy things just to show he’s not scared….”
I thought of the kids I encountered in Rikers, who were capable of almost anything.
“But that’s all motivated by survival. If you can harness fear it can be your ally. The example I always use is of a deer crossing an open field, and suddenly his instinct tells him danger is near, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream, which in turn enables the deer to perform extraordinary feats of agility and strength so that he can get out of range of danger. That’s an example of how useful fear can be to a fighter if he learns to make it his friend.”
The routine in Catskill, the discipline, was good for me. We would train and do our roadwork in the morning, spend the afternoon attending to chores, mowing the lawn, cleaning, painting, feeding the dogs and birds, and then we’d go back to the gym at night and work with the bags and in the ring. At the gym, Cus would sit in this gray metal folding chair, watching us and talking to us.
