a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970) (Cus D'Amato and Muhammad Ali)

Whoa! Very cool! I didn't know about this film until today. As both Muhammad Ali and Cus D'Amato both share today as their birthdays, what better way to honor them both with this film?

Enjoy!

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"a.k.a. Cassius Clay" is a 1970 boxing documentary film about the former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.

Directed by Jimmy Jacobs, the film was made during Ali's exile from the sport for refusing to be inducted into the US Army on religious grounds. Narrated by Richard Kiley, the film gives an overview of Ali's career to that point. The film features archival footage of people associated with Ali, such as Angelo Dundee, Malcolm X, and Drew Bundini Brown, and clips of his fights with Sonny Liston, Henry Cooper, George Chuvalo and Floyd Patterson. These are intercut with scenes featuring Ali and veteran boxing trainer Cus D'Amato discussing his career and how he would have fared against past champions such as Joe Louis.

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For more info on Cus D'Amato:

• Wiki

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For more info on The Greatest, please check out: 

• Official Site
• Professional Boxing Record at BoxRec
• Wiki

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For other Muhammad Ali-related posts:

• THIS DATE IN HISTORY:  February 25, 1964
• WHO WINS?  Greatest Athlete vs GOAT (Jim Brown vs Muhammad Ali)
• Bob Arum on Muhammad Ali vs Antonio Inoki
• Muhammad Ali vs. Ken Norton I (March 31, 1973) (Full fight)
• Muhammad Ali vs Ken Norton II & III (Full fights)
• 39 Years ago today... Ali vs Foreman - The Rumble in the Jungle (Full fight)
• Happy 73rd Birthday to the Greatest!

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Cus D'Amato would've been 106 today!

One of the greatest boxing coaches ever IMO. His innate understanding that boxing was more mental than physical was unheard of. His identification of Fear being a major factor in the training of a fighter set him apart from the other coaches. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 77 from pneumonia and never got to see his protege, Mike Tyson, win the Heavyweight Championship.


Happy Birthday Cus!

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Mike Tyson Tribute to Cus D'amato -- This One's for Cus
 

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Cus D'amato - Discover and Uncover Tribute 2013

A tribute to one of the most Legendary Boxing Trainer/Manager Cus D'Amato.. He was a great trainer, a great manager but above all he was a far greater person. His connection with his fighters were much more personal than professional. He was a schoolar of Boxing, obsessed with the psychology of fighting & fear..

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Random clips of Cus and Floyd Patterson followed by Mike Tyson amateur fight plus interview

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Mike Tyson talks about his REAL Father Cus D'Amato

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For more info on Cus D'Amato:

• Wiki

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IN MEMORY OF: Cus D'Amato (January 17, 1908 – November 4, 1985)

If the sage Constantine "Cus" D'Amato was still alive today, he would've been 105 years old! He was the manager and trainer of Mike Tyson, Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres, and Vinnie Ferguson. What made D'Amato different than other boxing managers or trainers was that he taught his fighters the crucial lesson of fear... what it was about and how to deal with the fear.

Here are two of my favorite quotes:

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly in boxing. For example, boxing is something you learn through repetition. You do it over and over and suddenly you’ve got it. …However, in the course of trying to learn, if you get hit and get hurt, this makes you cautious, and when you’re cautious you can’t repeat it, and when you can’t repeat it, it’s going to delay the learning process…When they…come up to the gym and say I want to be a fighter, the first thing I’d do was talk to them about fear…I would always use…the same example of the deer crossing an open field and upon approaching the clearing suddenly instinct tells him danger is there, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenalin into the bloodstream, causing the heart to beat faster and enabling the deer to perform extraordinarily feats of agility and strength…It enables the deer to get out of range of the danger, helps him escape to the safety of the forest across the clearing…an example in which fear is your friend.

The thing a kid in the street fears the most is to be called yellow or chicken, and sometimes a kid will do the most stupid, wild, crazy things just to hide how scared he is. I often tell them that while fear is such an obnoxious thing, an embarrassing thing…nevertheless it is your friend, because anytime anyone saves your life perhaps a dozen times a day, no matter what how obnoxious he is, you’ve got to look upon him as a friend, and this is what fear is…Since nature gave us fear in order to help us survive, we cannot look upon it as an enemy. Just think how many times a day a person would die if he had no fear. He’d walk in front of cars, he’d die a dozen times a day. Fear is a protective mechanism…By talking to the fighters about fear I cut the learning time maybe as much as half, sometimes more, depending on the individual.”

and

“Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy. Let it go out of control and it can hurt you, even kill you….Fear is a friend of exceptional people.”

 Happy Birthday Sir!

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BOXING: Slipping punches? Part 2 by Leon

Excerpted from http://www.spladdle.com/forum/showthread.php?t=638:

Slipping punches? Part 2 

By Leon

D.E.B.:

Sweet Science 101 for this skill starts with the double end bag [d.e.b.]. Your bag set up must be set up so that the bag isn't too fast. Different tightness for different stages in athleticism is the idea.

Jab the d.e.b. standing profile, but out of the pocket or crease, foot placement wise...think of the d.e.b as the right hand of someone holding the pads, also think of your left foot forward as being right in front of imaginary opponents lead foot [the secret to the d.e.b. is hitting it so it comes back in a straight line]. When it comes back slip to the left [simulates slipping a right hand], slip to the right [simulates slipping a jab], then slip left again and start over but now start on the right so its like: jab, slip right, left, right...instead of jab, slip left, right, left. Do sets of the aforementioned 3 slips for every jab. Its a good idea to be closer to the bag then normal for this drill.

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Cus D'Amato's training methods 2

Cus D'Amato's training methods 2

NOTE: No copyright infringement intended.

BLOOD, NEON, AND FAILURE IN THE DESERT
(Village Voice, March 24, 1987)
By Joyce Carol Oates


Las Vegas, Nevada. 7 March 1987

[snip]

As for Tyson: unlike Dempsey, Marciano, and Frazier, those famously aggressive fighters to whom he is often compared, Tyson is not a reckless boxer; he is not willing, as so many boxer-fighters are, to take four or five punches in order to throw a punch of his own. His training is defensive and cautious --hence the peek-a-boo stance, a Cus D'Amato signature: for is not boxing primarily the art of self-defense? of hitting your man, and scoring points, without being hit in return? For two years, which must have been very long years, D'Amato trained Tyson to bob, weave, slip punches from sparring partners without throwing a single punch in response -- a conditioning that has made Tyson an anomaly in the ring. His reputation is for power, speed, and aggression, but his defensive skills are as remarkable, if less dramatic.

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NOTE: I am mirroring my old archives. Posted 8/12/2014 and backdated to 4/25/2001.

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Cus D'Amato's training methods

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.

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NOTE: I am mirroring my old archives. Posted 8/12/2014 and backdated to 4/25/2001.

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Story of Cus D'Amato as a kid

Story of Cus D'Amato as a kid

NOTE: No copyright infringement intended.

KING OF THE WORLD
Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero
By David Remnick
Random House
© 1998 David Remnick. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-375-50065-0.

From Chapter 1

As a kid, growing up in the Bronx, D'Amato starved himself for days, the better to withstand the pain when someone tried to take food from him. He was probably the youngest fatalist in the borough. He used to watch funeral processions outside his building and say, "The sooner death the better." D'Amato was a street kid and a street fighter. One day another kid slammed him in the head with a stick, and he lost the vision in his left eye. D'Amato, however, believed in the regeneration of optic tissue, and throughout his life he made an effort to heal himself, closing his good eye so as to "force" the left eye to see once more. When he became a trainer, D'Amato told his fighters that security, financial and otherwise, would be the death of them. Security dulled the senses, and pleasure -- pleasure was worse. "The more pleasures you get out of living," D'Amato said, "the more fear you have of dying."

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NOTE: Posted 8/12/2014 and backdated to 8/24/2000 to mirror my old archives.

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Story of Cus D'Amato and fear

Story of Cus D'Amato and fear

NOTE: No copyright infringement intended.

THE BLACK LIGHTS: Inside the World of Professional Boxing by Thomas Hauser
Pages 18-20

One of boxing's foremost authorities on the subject of fear is Cus D'Amato, the legendary trainer of Jose Torres and Floyd Patterson. A diminutive, outspoken man who has worked with young fighters for most of his 77 years, D'Amato often looks back on his own experiences to put the subject of fear into context.

"I remember the first time I got involved in what I call a waiting fight," D'Amato reminisces. "In the neighborhood in which I lived, which was a pretty tough neighborhood, you got involved in fights all the time. Whenever you got angry, you fought or you lost respect. Under those conditions you didn't think about being frightened. You replaced fear with anger. But it's different when you have the experience of waiting, an experience I had once. I lived in an Italian neighborhood, and a few blocks away there was an Irish neighborhood. I never used to have trouble with the Irish; I got along with everybody. But then the neighborhoods had some trouble, and both sides said, 'You bring a guy and we'll bring a guy, and they'll fight it out. Instead of both gangs fighting, we'll have two guys representing the neighborhoods.' I was 16," D'Amato continues, "and the Italian guys chose me. I wasn't mad at the Irish, I wasn't mad at anybody. But three days ahead of time I knew I had to fight this big Irish guy at nine o'clock on Saturday night. So comes the night of the fight, I didn't want to fight because this guy never did anything to me, but I got no choice. All the Italian guys and I go over to the street between the neighborhoods, and wait under a big street light. We got there, maybe five minutes to nine, with eighty or ninety guys, and the Irish must have had a hundred but their fighter hadn't shown yet. I sat down on the curb, and I was thinking to myself. 'How the hell did I get into this mess?' To tell the truth, I was scared. All my life, when I got mad I'd fought. I was fighting grown men when I was fourteen, but now I'm saying, 'Jesus Christ, what's the matter with me? I got to be crazy to do this. The next time some guys try to get me to fight, I'll fight them first; I got nothing against these Irish fellows.'" D'Amato's eyes grow larger, his face more animated, as his tale progresses. "Anyway, I'm sitting there, really sweating. I reached up, felt the sweat on my forehead, and figured it was blood, but it was only sweat. Nine o'clock comes and the Irish guy isn't there. Quarter after nine, the Irish guy isn't there. Nine-thirty, I'm still waiting, and all the time the waiting is getting worse because this guy is gonna be there, and I'm gonna have to fight him. Finally, at ten o'clock, one of his buddies comes and says the Irish guy is scared. He ain't showing. It was the happiest moment of my life."

Fighters are the most exposed athletes in the world. During a fight, the crowd observes every twitch and movement. Still, spectators rarely see fear in a quality fighter. "That," says D'Amato, "is because the fighter has mastered his emotions to the extent that he can conceal and control them." But whatever a fighter says, the fear is there. It never goes away. He just learns to live with it. "And the truth is," D'Amato continues, "fear is an aspect to a fighter. It makes him move faster, be quicker and more alert. Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. Heroes just react to it differently. On the morning of a fight, a boxer wakes up and says, 'How can I fight? I didn't sleep at all last night.' What he has to realize is, the other guy didn't sleep either. Later, as the fighter walks toward the ring, his feet want to walk in the opposite direction. He's asking himself how he got into this mess. He climbs the stairs into the ring, and it's like going to the guillotine. Maybe he looks at the other fighter, and sees by the way he's loosening up that his opponent is experienced, strong, very confident. Then when the opponent takes off his robe, he's got big bulging muscles. What the fighter has to realize," concludes D'Amato, "is that he's got exactly the same effect on his opponent, only he doesn't know it. And when the bell rings, instead of facing a monster built up by the imagination, he's simply up against another fighter."

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NOTE: I am mirroring my old archives. Posted 8/12/2014 and backdated to 8/10/2000.

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Story of Cus D'Amato and fear vs. knife expert

Story of Cus D'Amato and fear vs. knife expert

NOTE: No copyright infringement intended.

Subject: Cus D'Amato and fear vs. knife expert
From: Stickgrappler
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:26 PM

I typed this up from BAD INTENTIONS: THE MIKE TYSON STORY by Peter Heller. I posted this to the knife videos thread, but figured this may be good for non-knife lovers. Not quite knifefighting, but a little of fear, fear management, and a boxer's approach to the knife. Enjoy!

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At the same time that Babe Ruth was slugging home runs on the other side of the Bronx in the new Yankee Stadium, the young Cus D’Amato was learning valuable lessons about fear and cowardice, toughness and courage and survival on the streets, lessons he would later incorporate in the unique philosophy of life and boxing which he imparted to his fighters. One lesson that became familiar to his disciples was that the fear of something is usually worse than the reality, a lesson he expounded using an example from his own life. He would describe how a guy from another neighborhood, who had a reputation as one of the best knife fighters on the streets of the Bronx, was swaggering around Cus’s own patch and intimidating his pals. One day the hoodlum challenged each of them to a knife fight. Everyone was afraid and no one would accept the challenge. Once his dominance was established, the challenger began insulting and humiliating them until he’d had his fill, and then left. Word of this reached Cus that evening. He was so angered that he sought out the antagonist and challenged him to a fist fight. The reply was no; instead, D’Amato was offered the opportunity to avenge the honor of his friends in a knife fight. The foolhardy Cus accepted. It was agreed the two would meet at an abandoned building at seven the next morning, alone. There would be no witnesses in case one of them ended up dead. On his way home, Cus couldn’t help but think it was most likely to be him. Fear gripped him as it never had before. He hadn’t the slightest idea how to wield a knife in a fight, yet here he was about to face an expert. When he was finally able to control his fear, he thought up an idea that would at least give him a chance. Maybe he didn’t know about knife fighting, but he did know about boxing, about using his fists. He found an ice pick, carved the handle down so it would fit in his closed palm, with the blade extending out between his middle and ring fingers. He than practiced as if he were boxing, only now, at the end of his fist, was a deadly blade as he jabbed the air.


In the few hours that remained until dawn, he tried unsuccessfully to sleep. He then headed for the empty warehouse where the fight was to take place, getting there early in order to check out the surroundings and prepare himself for his adversary. He taped the ice pick inside his fist, made sure the blade protruded far enough and wrapped a jacket around his forearm for protection. Then he waited. When the fear built up too much and threatened to overwhelm him, he danced around, practicing his technique. He learned that motion relieves tension. The minutes passed. Seven o’clock cam and went, and the knife fighter had still not appeared. D’Amato felt relieved, but then checked himself. If he began to wind down and his opponent suddenly materialized, he knew his resolve to fight might be weakened. Finally, when more than an hour had passed, Cus realized that fear must have got the better of the knife fighter. He wasn’t going to appear. Cus went home, a hero to his friends. The knife fighter never showed himself again. Cus knew he had won a victory, not only over his adversary, but over himself. He had faced his fear and refused to allow it get the better of him.


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From: striker18
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:34 PM

Great story!


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From: krept
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:36 PM

good story, thanks


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From: Horatius
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:36 PM

EXCELLENT POST!!!


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From: grandpab
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:41 PM

Great story, thanks for posting it.

Grandpab


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From: pit
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:42 PM

Cus was the man. Great story.


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From: Tatanka
Date: 15-Oct-99 | 05:44 PM

Cus is D'man.


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NOTE: Posted 8/12/2014 and backdated to 6/23/2000 to mirror my old archives.

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