Does anyone know of any books articles that have any information of the training style and techniques of Cus D'Amato, Tysons original trainer.

Cus D'Amato's training methods
NOTE: No copyright infringement intended.

BLOOD SEASON: MIKE TYSON AND THE WORLD OF BOXING by Phil Berger
Pages 70-71

Whatever Atlas did with Tyson, it was by D'Amato's methods. For instance, when D'Amato had been with Jose Torres, he had developed a punching instrument known as the Willie Bag, after Willie Pastrano, from whom Torres would win the light heavyweight title. Willie was made of five mattresses wrapped about a frame. On the exterior of the front mattress was a rough-hewn sketch of a man, with his body demarcated by numbers that served as targets for particular punches. #1 was a left hook to the jaw; #2 a right hook to the jaw; #3 a left uppercut; #4 a right uppercut; #5 a left hook to the body; #6 a right hook to the body; #7 a jab to the head; and #8 a jab to the body.

D'Amato had created Willie to encourage his fighters to punch in rapid combination and had made tape recordings, in his voice, of varying sequences of numbers. When the fighter stepped up to Willie, he would respond to his master's voice by delivering the mandated combination punches.

For Tyson, there was also the sand-filled "slip" bag, a teardrop-shaped black bag about the size of a fist that would swing from a length of rope as the fighter stood directly in its path. To avoid being hit, Tyson was taught to move his head from side to side and dip down, the prescriptive maneuvers for avoiding actual punches. Through his work on Willie and the slip bag, and through sparring, Tyson was acquiring the means to activate his power without its backfiring on him.

I thought this was interesting:

From published interview with Ron Lipton.

Q The TV stations and cable companies have being constantly criticized by fans for not providing enough quality expert analysis with the ex-fighters they select and the personalities they have groomed. Is this fair comment?



A. Watch ANY boxing documentary on HBO and look at the choices they use for opinions on boxing. This does not include Lampley & Merchant. How in the name of God can a Thomas Hauser be a boxing expert, or a Jack Newfield, two of the most non-physical human beings who never were fighters but hang around fighters and then proffer themselves as boxing experts? Hauser's book on Ali was a simple Citizen Kane kind of everyone-who-Ali-knew-says-something-in-the-book, yet they are asking this lisping, haughty Johnny-come-lately his boxing opinions on everything. ESPN's commentator Brian Kenny is a great guy and I have done many interviews with him, but how did Max Kellerman and Teddy Atlas become boxing experts? Cus D'Amato never had a fight in his life. How could he be a boxing expert? How? Frank Lavalle taught Floyd Patterson not D'Amato. Yet Atlas says he is a student of D'Amato but Teddy only had about 6 amateur fights and quit from a bad back. How the •••• is he an expert on anything? Him and Max Kellerman with their Huntz Hall Bowery Boy accents are impossible to listen to, the tone is so ignorant. They just read boxing records and then parrot what they read like the boxing axioms they quote. Atlas is more interested in the Teddy Atlas show in the corner of every fighter he works with, espousing loud lessons in life for the camera to hear.



Get rid of these guys who have no real underpinnings and get some real experts in there, on HBO documentaries, onto ESPN for different opinions, lets have a change of the bloody guard for once. Al Bernstein is good, Dave Bontempo is good but Bobby Czyz is the worst - he never shuts up!

Thanks Poppa
There is an interesting article on (not sure of the exact site But its a tyson one) An interview with Kevin Rooney, another of d'amatos disciples.I found i agreed with most of what he said, Tyson should have beaten Lewis etc. The article mentioned the d'amato system without going into details, which was the reason for the post. I remember reading that D'amato based some of the training on advice he was given by a horse trainer, i was wondering where d'amato got it from if he had no experience.

Cus D'amato actually was a boxer back in the day. Also, Cus had been training Floyd Patterson since he was 14 years old Chief. He was his trainer when he won the gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics at the age of 17. He also trained Patterson when he moved up to the heavyweight division at the age of 21 where he proceeded to take the heavyweight title from Archie Moore, the belt having been inherited from Rocky Marciano. So basically, you dont know what your talking about chief...

So basically, you dont know what your talking about chief...


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yeah chief. so get outta hea chief.