LITMIR.BIZ

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only display of compassion that he didn’t criticize was when I would pick up my opponents after I knocked them out. Dempsey would do that all the time. He would pick up his vanquished opponent, take him back to his corner, hold him, and kiss him. That was right after he tried to eviscerate him. So I’d pick them up and give them a kiss. “Are you okay? I love you, brother.” It was almost humiliating for them.

      Cus didn’t like me to celebrate my knockouts. No high fives, no dance steps.

      “You’ve been practicing this for two years and you’re acting like you’re surprised this happened?” he’d say.

      To Cus, my opponents were food. Nourishment. Something you had to eat to live. If I did good in a fight, Cus would reward me. Nice clothes, shoes. When I won one of my junior championships, he bought me gold teeth. When I got my gold in the ’80s, most people would think, “Ugh, criminals wear gold teeth. Be careful.” But Cus loved it because all the old-time fighters got gold teeth to celebrate their success.

      You’d think with all these knockouts and the junior championship Cus would have had little to criticize. Not Cus. He always treated me like a prima donna in front of people, but behind closed doors it wasn’t like that. I’d be alone with him at the house and he’d sit me down.

      “You know, you had your hand low. With all due respect, if that gentleman was a bit more professional, a little bit calmer, he would have hit you with that punch.”

      This was after I had knocked the guy out! Everybody had been congratulating me on my right-hand KO. Cus didn’t say I would have gotten knocked out. He said he would have hit me! He would put that idea of getting hit by that punch in my head all day. Then after a couple of days, he’d run that shit again.

      “Remember after the fight I told you that guy would have hit you …”

      AAAGGGHH.

      Cus was all about manipulation, psychological warfare. He ­believed that 90 percent of boxing was psychological and not physical. Will, not skill. So when I was fifteen, he began taking me to a hypnotherapist named John Halpin. He had an office on Central Park West in the city. I’d lie down on the floor of John’s office and he’d go through all the stages of relaxation: your head, your eyes, your arms, your legs, all getting heavy. Once I was under, he’d tell me whatever Cus wanted him to say. Cus would write out the suggestions on a piece of paper and John would recite them out loud.

      “You’re the world’s greatest fighter. I’m not telling you this because I’m trying to make you believe you are something that you’re not, I’m telling you this because you can actually do this; this is what you were actually born to do.”

      Halpin showed us a method by which we could put ourselves into a hypnotic state anytime we wanted. When we were back up in Catskill, I’d lie down on the floor or in my bedroom and Cus would be sitting next to me. I’d start to relax and go into my hypnotic state and Cus would talk. Sometimes he’d talk in generalities like I was the best fighter in the world but sometimes it would be specifics.

      “Your jab is like a weapon. You throw punches that are ferocious, with bad intentions. You have a wonderful right hand. You haven’t really believed in it but now you will. You are a scourge from God. The world will know your name from now until the eons of oblivion.”

      It was some really deep shit. And I believed it.

      Sometimes Cus would wake me up in the middle of the night and do his suggestions. Sometimes he didn’t even have to talk, I could feel his words coming through my mind telepathically.

      I became focused on the hypnosis. I thought this was a secret method that was going to help me. Some people might think this was crazy but I believed everything that Cus was telling me. I embraced it religiously. Cus was my God. And this old white guy was telling me that I was the apex. Why did I have to be the best that ever existed?

      Now that I was a gladiator and a god among men, it seemed a little demeaning that I had to go to high school. Then, in the fall of 1981, I got in trouble at Catskill High. One of my teachers, a real ignorant redneck, started arguing with me and threw a book at me. I got up and smacked the shit out of him in front of all the other students. They suspended me. So Cus grabbed me and we marched into the school and confronted the principal, Mr. Stickler, and the teacher. You would have thought Cus was Clarence Darrow the way he was defending me.

      “You maintain that you merely dropped the book and it hit Mike by accident,” Cus grilled the teacher. “But if, as you claim, you dropped the book, how could it have been propelled into the air and into Mike’s physical person? It would have harmlessly fallen to the floor without causing any injury to anyone.”

      Cus was pacing the room, making sudden stops and pointing dramatically at my teacher as if he was the guilty party.

      They finally compromised and let me stop attending school as long as I got a tutor. Cus was hurt that I was leaving school. He had planned to throw me a big graduation party. On the way home from the meeting at the high school, I looked over at Cus. “Come on. I’m ready to go to the gym.”

      He just looked back at me. “Come on,” he said.

      June of 1982 rolled around and it was time for me to defend my ­Junior Olympics championship. By now my reputation had certainly preceded me. Parents pulled their kids out of the tournament in fear of them fighting me. John Condon, who was part of the Golden Gloves tournaments, wouldn’t let me compete. “I’ve seen you fight. You’re too mean. I can’t let you fight these kids. You’d rip them apart.”

      My second Junior Olympics started off well. We were back in ­Colorado, and in my preliminary matches I knocked out all of my ­opponents. Then it was time for the finals where I’d defend my title. That’s when the pressure got to me. I saw all of the cameras and my insecurities started to kick in. There were all these established boxing officials saying great things about me. I thought that that was wonderful, but that it was all going to end because I was filthy, I was dirty. Even so, I certainly didn’t want to let Brownsville down. Cus had told me many times that if I listened to him, “when your mother walks the streets of Brownsville, people will carry her ­groceries.”

      I couldn’t deal with all that pressure. Before the finals, Cus pulled me aside.

      “Mike, this is the real world. You see all these people,” and he pointed to all the ring officials and the reporters and the boxing officials in the arena. “When you lose, they don’t like you anymore. If you’re not spectacular, they don’t like you anymore. Everybody used to like me. Believe me, when I was in my fifties, young, beautiful women would chase me all over the place. Now that I’m an old man, no one comes around anymore.”

      Ten minutes before my fight, I had to go out for some air. Teddy went with me.

      “Just relax, Mike, just relax,” he said.

      I lost it. I started crying hysterically. Teddy put his arms around me.

      “It’s just another match. You done it in the gym with better fighters than this guy,” he tried to console me.

      “I’m Mike Tyson …,” I sobbed. “… everyone likes me.”

      I couldn’t get a coherent sentence out. I was trying to say that if I lost, nobody would ever like me again. Teddy comforted me and told me not to let my feelings get the best of me.

      When I walked into the ring, my opponent was waiting for me. He was a 6'6" white guy named Kelton Brown. I composed myself, summoned up my courage. We went to the center of the ring to get the instructions and I got so up into his face with my malevolent stare that the ref had to push me back and give me a warning before the fight even started. The bell rang and I charged him. Within a minute, I was giving him such a masterful beating that his corner threw in the towel. I was now a two-time Junior Olympic champ.

      After my hand was raised, the TV commentator interviewed me in the ring.

      “Mike, you must be very satisfied with how your career

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