LITMIR.BIZ

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we’d get in the car, Cus would come over.

      “I’m going to have some friends watching the fight. I’ll be waiting by the phone. I expect that when they call me, they’ll be ranting and raving about you,” he said. I never forgot that. “Ranting and raving.” That would get me fired up, and I’d be pumped for the whole six-hour car ride. I wouldn’t rest a minute. I couldn’t wait to get into that ring and start beating the motherfuckers. One guy came to the fight with his wife and his little baby and I knocked him out cold.

      Cus came to my fifth fight, a smoker in Scranton. I was fighting a guy named Billy O’Rourke at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center. Billy was seventeen and I said I was too because it was a pro-amateur card. Before the fight, Cus went over to O’Rourke.

      “My man is a killer,” Cus said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

      That was my toughest fight so far. In the first round, I kept knocking this guy down and this crazy psycho white boy kept getting the fuck up. And he didn’t just get up, he came up swinging. The more I knocked him down, the more he got up and whipped my ass. I had kicked his ass in the first round, but the second was just a war. We were fighting three rounds and Teddy didn’t want to take any chances on a decision going the wrong way.

      “Listen, you talk about being great, and all these crazy fighters, and you want to be this great fighter. Now is the time. Get in there and keep jabbing and moving your head.”

      I got off my stool and went out and dropped O’Rourke twice in the third round. He was bleeding all over the place. At the end of the fight, he got me against the ropes. But, boom, boom, boom, I came back and down he went. The crowd went crazy. It was the fight of the night.

      Cus was pleased with my performance, but he said, “Another round and he would have worn you down.”

      In May and June of 1981, I went after my first championship – the Junior Olympics. I probably had about ten fights at that point. First you had to win your local tourney, then your region, and then you competed in Colorado for the national title.

      I won all my regionals, so Teddy and I flew to Colorado and Cus took a train because he had a fear of flying. When I entered the dressing room, I remembered how all my heroes had behaved. The other kids would come up to me and put out their hand to shake, and I would just sneer and turn my back on them. I was playing a role. Someone would be talking and I’d just stare at him. Cus was all about manipulating your opponent by causing chaos and confusion, but staying cool under it all. I caused such chaos that a few of the other fighters took one look at me and lost their bouts so they wouldn’t have to fight me later on. I won all of my fights by knockouts in the first round. I won the gold by knocking out Joe Cortez in eight seconds, a record that I believe stands to this day. I was on my way.

      I became a local hero after I won that gold medal. Cus loved the attention I was getting. He loved the spotlights. But I kept thinking how crazy all this was. I was barely fifteen years old and half of my friends back in Brownsville were dead, gone, wiped out. I didn’t have many friends in Catskill. I wasn’t interested in school. Cus and I had already established what we wanted to accomplish, so school seemed to be a distraction from that goal. I didn’t care about what they were teaching me, but I did have an urge to learn. So Cus would encourage me and I read some of the books from his library. I read books by Oscar Wilde, Charles Darwin, Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Dumas, and Adam Smith. I read a book about Alexander the Great. I loved history. By reading history, I learned about human nature. I learned the hearts of men.

      I didn’t get into major trouble in school with the exception of ­hitting a couple of students and getting suspended. I was just uncomfortable there. Some students would make fun of me, but nobody fucked with me. Cus had told my junior high school principal, Mr. Bordick, that I was special and that “allowances had to be made for him.” Mr. ­Bordick was a beautiful man and whenever there was a problem, Cus would go to the school, do his Italian gesturing shit with his fingers, and I’d be back in school. I’d go home and go to the gym at five p.m. every night for two hours. In the evenings, I’d read boxing books, watch films, or talk to Cus. On the weekends, I’d get up at five, run a few miles, eat, nap, and then be back in the gym at noon. During the week, I ran back and forth from school.

      I got some extra running in thanks to my control-freak guardian Cus. I was at a school dance and it was scheduled to end at ten p.m. I told Cus I’d be home at eleven. Everybody was hanging around after the dance, so I called Cus and told him that I’d probably be home a little late because I was waiting for a cab.

      “No, run home now. Run. I can’t wait up for you,” he barked. Cus didn’t believe in giving out keys because he feared we’d lose them. I had on a two-piece suit and nice dress shoes, but Cus wanted me home now.

      “Man, I gotta go,” I told my friends. Everyone knew what time it was. If Cus called, I had to go. So I took the fuck off.

      One day I was hanging out with some friends and we were drinking and partying, and they were about to drop me off at the house and I saw Cus through the window, sleeping in his chair, waiting for me to come home.

      “Turn around. Take me to your house. I don’t even want to deal with Cus,” I said. Every time I’d come home late he would rip me a new asshole. I’d try to sneak up the stairs, but they were old and rickety, and I’d think, Shit, I’m busted. I’d come home from a movie after he gave me permission to go and there was Cus waiting to interrogate me.

      “What did you do? Who did you hang out with? Who are they? Where are their families from? What are their last names? You know you’ve got to box tomorrow.”

      Cus even tried to marry me off in the ninth grade. I started dating this local girl named Angie. Cus loved her. You would think that he’d discourage a relationship, that it would distract from my training, but Cus thought it would be good for me to settle down with her. I’d be calmer and it would actually help focus me on my boxing. I wasn’t serious about Angie. I wanted to live the flamboyant lifestyles of my heroes, boxers like Mickey Walker and Harry Greb. They drank, they had lots of women, and they were living the life. But Camille was on to Cus.

      “Don’t you dare listen to Cus about marrying anyone,” she told me. “You date as many girls as you want and then you select the best.”

      One day I got into a fight in school and Cus had to go smooth things over. When he got back, he sat me down.

      “You’re going to have to leave here if you’re going to continue to act like that.” I just broke down and started crying.

      “Please don’t let me go,” I sobbed. “I want to stay.”

      I really loved the family environment Cus had given me. And I was madly in love with Cus. He was the first white guy who not only didn’t judge me, but who wanted to beat the shit out of someone if they said anything disrespectful about me. Nobody could reach me like that guy. He reached me down in my cortex. Any time I finished talking to him, I had to go and burn energy, shadowboxing or doing sit-ups, I was so pumped. I’d start running and I’d be crying, because I wanted to make him happy and prove that all the good things he was saying were right.

      I guess Cus felt bad about threatening to send me away and making me cry that day because he started hugging me. That was the first physical display of affection I’d ever seen from Cus. Ever. But the moment that I cried was when Cus really knew that he had me. From that moment on I became his slave. If he told me to kill someone, I would have killed them. I’m serious. Everybody thought I was up there with this old, sweet Italian guy, but I was there with a warrior. And I loved every minute of it. I was happy to be Cus’s soldier; it gave me a purpose in life. I liked being the one to complete the mission.

      I started training even harder, if that was possible. When I got home from the gym, I actually had to crawl up the stairs. I’d make my way up to the third-floor bathroom. Cus would run some incredibly hot water into the little porcelain tub and then pour some Epsom salts in.

      “Stay in as long as you can,” Cus said.

      So

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