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I said, “There's nothing broken. The only thing broken is you.” I got up in his face. “You want to be a fighter? Stop the bullshit! The only thing this guy's doing is being dumb enough to get back up. Every time you hit him, you hurt him.”

Tyson was looking at me. I could see a flicker of anger, which was good. “You're going to let it get to you because he keeps getting back up?” I said. I pushed him out of the corner as the bell sounded.

Tyson dropped the guy two more times in the next three minutes, but the guy kept getting up. By the end of the round, Tyson barely made it back to the corner. “I can't go on,” he said.

“You can't go on?” I said. “I thought you wanted to be a fighter. I thought you had this dream of being heavyweight champion. Let me tell you something,
this
is your heavyweight title fight.”

It's amazing when you think about it. You see all these big fights on HBO, but you never see these backwater bouts when a guy is on his way up, and there are these crossroads moments where if he hadn't overcome something, he'd have never made it to HBO. I said, “You bullshit artist. You've been with us all this time, saying you want to be champ, and everything's fine when you're knocking guys out. But now, for the first time, a guy doesn't want to be knocked out, a guy has the balls to get up, and you want to quit? You know what I'd be doing if I was in that other guy's corner? I'd be stopping the fight. That's how beat up this guy is, and you want to quit! Now get up, goddamn it!” I picked him up off his stool and stood him up.

He staggered out into the ring, and the two of them grabbed each other. He hit the guy again, the guy hit him. To Tyson it must have been like Sugar Ray Robinson versus Jake LaMotta, but in reality it was two big palookas. They were pawing at each other, hugging and slow-dancing, and with about twenty seconds left in the round, the guy got Tyson into the corner. I could see in Tyson's eyes what was about to happen. He was going to quit. He was going to go down. If I didn't do anything, he was going down.

I took a risk. If you go up on the ring apron, they can disqualify your fighter. I knew that. I also knew that we had amateur refs, and it was a crazy crowd, so I took a chance. I got up there. They were in the corner right by me, and I screamed, practically in Tyson's ear, “Don't you do it. Don't you fucking do it!” He hung on those last few seconds. Then the bell rang.

When we were out in the corridor afterward, on our way to the locker room, he leaned close to me and said, “Thanks.” That was it. Nothing else really needed to be said.

“Listen,” I said, “I'm not going to make a big thing about this. I'm only going to talk about it once. You almost did it. You almost let it happen. But you didn't. You have to learn. That's part of being a fighter. The important thing is that you didn't let it happen. If you had, it would have ruined everything. Instead of us standing here, you humbly telling me ‘thank you,' you'd be crying somewhere, and you'd never be a fighter. You would have looked back and said, ‘Oh, my God, I didn't have to do that.' But you would have done it. It would have been done. So you need to learn from this experience, and make sure that you never let yourself get that close to that place again.”

It was a watershed moment for him, a real defining moment, because if he had quit then he might never have become Mike Tyson.

Cus was at the fight that night. It was the first time he'd seen Tyson. Obviously, he was very disappointed. He saw the power, he saw that Tyson could knock down this bigger, more mature guy who was stubborn as a boulder. But he also recognized that Tyson was still weak, that he wasn't strong mentally, and that we would have to help him get stronger.

At a certain point, if he's going to get to the top of the boxing profession, a fighter has to learn the difference between the truth and a lie. The lie is thinking that submission is an acceptable option. The truth is that if you give up, afterward you'll realize that any of those punches that you thought you couldn't deal with, or those rough moments you didn't think you could make it through, were just
moments.
Enduring them is not nearly as tough as having to deal with the next day and the next month and the next year, knowing that you quit, that you failed, that you submitted. It's a trainer's job to make a fighter understand that difference, that the parts of a fight that are urgent last only seconds; seconds during which you have to stave off the convenient excuse—“I'm too tired” or “I hurt too much” or “I can't do this” or even simply “I'm not going to deal with this.” Sometimes it just comes down to not floating—just being there and understanding that if you give in, you'll hurt more tomorrow. Maybe there is no more important lesson to learn from boxing than that.

O
NE NIGHT, AFTER A SESSION AT THE GYM,
I
TOOK A
bunch of the kids to the Jamesway Shopping Center in Catskill. It was one of those strip malls with a dry cleaner, a video rental place, and a pizzeria. I often took the kids out and did things away from boxing. We'd go to movies, have picnics, play touch football, or just hang out and talk. As I've said, I was more than just a trainer for these kids; most of them came from families where the father was dead or absent, and so for many of them I was filling that void.

When we walked into the pizzeria, I made the boys sit down in a couple of booths that were side-by-side while I went up to the counter to order. The girl behind the counter was in her early twenties and pretty. I had seen her around town a couple of times but we had never talked. She had dark hair, playful brown eyes, and a nice figure.

“So these all your kids?” she asked.

“Yeah, they're all mine,” I said.

“Impressive,” she said. There was a spark there right away. It wasn't like I knew I was going to marry her, but I was definitely interested.

She had sort of a provocative flirtatiousness. She was very confident, and I liked that. Even though she was working behind the counter,
I could tell she wasn't going to let anyone push her around or take an attitude with her.

I ordered a couple of pies, because I didn't have money for any more, and went back and sat down with the boys. A while later, she came over with a tray full of Cokes.

“I hope you boys are taking good care of your father,” she said.

“He ain't our father,” Mane Moore said, giggling.

She looked at me with a little smile. “He isn't? He told me he was.”

“Naw!”

When the pizzas came out of the oven ten minutes later, I went up to the counter to get them. Hot steam was rising off the cheese. She saw me looking a little perplexed.

“What's the problem?”

“I only ordered two pizzas.”

“Oh yeah? I thought you ordered three. I'll tell you what, why don't you take the extra one and I won't charge you for it.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“Yeah, I know. But those boys look pretty hungry.”

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“I'm Teddy.”

“Elaine.”

She helped me carry the pizza back to the table.

“Thanks…Elaine.”

“My pleasure.” She went back to the counter.

I sat down and the boys were all staring at me, grinning.

“What?”

“You like her, don't you?”

“What are ya talking about?”

They all started laughing and giggling. I looked around the table, leveling them with a stern gaze.

“Shut up and eat your pizza, all of ya.”

A few days later, I went back to the pizzeria, without the kids this time. Elaine was behind the counter again.

“Hi. Elaine, right?”

“Right.”

“Listen, I wanted to ask you something….”

“Yeah?” She looked amused.

“I been thinking of opening a restaurant….”

“You want to open a restaurant?”

“Well, like a sports bar.”

“A sports bar.”

“Well, like a sports bar and restaurant.”

She stared at me.

“I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”

“You want advice from me.”

“Yeah, you know, like how to get started.”

“Maybe you should be more direct.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you want to ask a girl out.”

“Oh.” It threw me a little that I was so transparent. “You think that's what I'm doing?”

“Actually, I thought you'd come back here sooner,” she said.

I laughed. She was so cocky that there was nothing else to do. Anyway, that was how it began. I followed her advice and asked her out. One night, early on, I took her to an amateur fight show near Catskill that Tyson and the other kids were fighting in. I had never taken any other girl I'd dated to a fight—I was like my father in that way and considered it a little unprofessional—but I guess subconsciously I wanted her to know what I did. I wanted to impress her.

While she sat in the audience, I took care of the kids. I wrapped their hands and did my thing. Every once in a while I'd look over at her in the crowd. She didn't seem to mind being by herself. She understood that I was working. I could tell that she was enjoying herself, watching the fights, watching me with the kids.

I had dated a fair number of girls before her. There had been girls who liked me. One girl I even took back to Staten Island, during the holidays, to meet my mother. She was a gorgeous blonde girl but a little naive; she'd never really been outside of Catskill. I remember we took a ferry boat over to Manhattan to go Christmas shopping in the city, and there was a shoeshine guy on the boat, walking around, saying, “Shine, shine.” Well, this girl started looking around, on the floor, under the
benches. I said, “What are you doing?,” and she said, “I'm looking for that man's dog, Shine.” You can imagine what my mother thought when she heard that. She went, “Shine, huh?”

With Elaine it was different. She was quick. She kept me on my toes. Her instincts about people and situations were sharp. The first time I took her to the gym could have been awkward. There was this girl fighter I'd been training, Nadia, who liked me a bit. What had happened was that she had come to me because she was going to take the state police test, and in those days the trooper test required sparring for one round whether you were a man or a woman. Nadia asked me if I would train her and also help her lose weight at the same time—she was overweight. In a matter of months, she lost fifty pounds. I guess between that and watching me work with the kids, she started to like me a little.

It was flattering, but I didn't feel the same way about her; I did my best to keep things professional. At the same time I didn't want to hurt her feelings—I had spent a lot of time trying to build her up. One day, I got to the gym—this was after I'd started seeing Elaine—and one of my kids, Kevin Young, was waiting downstairs. He said, “I wanted to get you before you go in the gym. Nadia got here early today and she said that enough is enough. If the mountain don't come to Mohammad, Mohammad is gonna come to the mountain. She's gonna ask you out on a date tonight.”

I went up to the gym. I had a couple of boxes of new gloves with me, and I put them down and started opening them up. Nadia made a beeline for me. “Hey, Boss,” she said. She always called me Boss.

“Hey, Nadia.”

“How you doin'?”

“Okay.” I knew what was coming. To spare her feelings as much as possible, because I could see she was geared up to ask me out, I said, “Nadia, I may need you to help me out tonight. I have to get finished early. I have to go somewhere….”

“Oh…,” she said, and I could see her sag a little. “Sure….” She'd been ready to ask me out afterward and now she couldn't. If she had caught me off guard and asked me, it might have been awkward. So it was due to my kids that it didn't happen that way. They were good kids and they thought about stuff like that and looked out for people's feelings.

The next week, or the week after that, I brought Elaine to the gym. Everyone was doing their thing, getting ready for their workouts. This
was before Velcro wraps, and all my fighters learned to tie their own wraps using their teeth. Elaine saw Nadia tying her hand wraps with her teeth, and she didn't know that it was actually a point of pride for Nadia. She just saw this woman struggling to tie these wraps with her teeth, and she went, “Oh, here, lemme help you,” and Nadia growled at her. She actually went, “Grrrr!”

A lot of women would have been thrown, but Elaine didn't get flustered. She handled it well. Instinctively, she understood what was going on, but she didn't react the way another woman might have. She wasn't jealous or insecure. She didn't put her arm around me, and throw it in Nadia's face. She had compassion and handled herself with dignity. It was one more thing I admired about her.

Things got serious with us pretty quickly. I brought her to the house to meet Camille and Cus. She brought me home to meet her family. Her parents were Albanians who had escaped to Italy from Pristine, Yugoslavia, right after Elaine was born. When she was six, her mother and father had come to America, living first in the Bronx, then later on moving to Catskill, where they had relatives. Like most Albanians, they were a very tight-knit clan, patriarchal, observant of the old-world customs and traditions. Arranged marriages were still the norm in their culture, and after a girl got married, she would move into her husband's family's house and become basically a slave. Elaine was headstrong and independent, a bit of a rebel. I was the first man she had ever brought home to meet her parents, and I wasn't Albanian. It might have been a problem, except her father adored her and made allowances.

 

S
O THINGS KEPT MOVING FORWARD.
I
T WAS DIFFERENT. SHE
was the first girl to be allowed to eat at the house with Cus and Camille and the kids and me. I had certain privileges and standing by then, and it was clear that things with me and Elaine were serious.

It was interesting, though. Cus tried to scare her off. He was threatened. She put demands on my time, and he was worried that I would lose my focus, or spend less time at the gym. He said to Elaine, “He's got a bad temper, you know. There's a lot of things you don't know about him. He's a dangerous guy.” He could have blown things—I mean, he couldn't have, really, but he thought he could have, that was his intent.
I actually think it had the opposite effect. I think Elaine saw through him in a way, and understood that if somebody was going to all that effort to scare her off, there must be something worth coveting there. Anyway, it didn't work. She didn't stop seeing me.

A few months after we began dating, my career as a professional trainer got a boost. Cus lined up a fight for Kevin Rooney with Alexis Arguello, the lightweight champion of the world, who was looking to move up to the junior welterweight division. Rooney was a welterweight, so he'd need to bring his weight down from 147 to 140. But it was an opportunity to put himself on the map. Me, too.

As I started to study tape of Arguello's fights, I began to believe that even though we were a big underdog, we could beat him. In his bout against Vilomar Fernandez, I saw that a skilled boxer could give Arguello trouble. Arguello had many strengths as a fighter. He had power in both hands, and his punches were extremely accurate. But he also had weaknesses. He stood up very straight; he needed to be set to punch; and he had trouble with movement. I formulated a plan to keep him off balance that I thought could work, although it would take tremendous execution on Rooney's part. My belief that we could pull it off was so strong that it had an effect on Rooney. Of course, most of Rooney's confidence was inspired by what Cus, the
real
master, thought. When Cus thought he could win, that really had a big impact on Rooney, and on me, too.

Early on in training, Cus came to the gym to watch. When he saw what Rooney and I were working on, he said, “That's why you're the Young Master. You have a workable plan to win this fight.” It made me feel good to hear him say that. Really the only thing that worried me was the weight. Rooney had never fought below 145 pounds. The positive, as Cus kept reminding me, was that Arguello was going to be fighting at a higher weight than he'd ever fought at before. So each side had something to overcome.

Training went well. If anything, Rooney came down in weight too easily. When I asked him about it, he attributed it to an improved diet. Then during a sparring session one morning, with the fight only a week away, it became obvious something was wrong with him. He was slow and weak. His face was drained of color. I stopped the workout, put cool wet towels on him, and made him drink water. It was hot in the gym, so I thought maybe that was the reason. I started asking him questions,
pushing him to tell me anything he'd been doing that might have been the cause. At first he was reluctant to say anything, but then he told me that every night after training he had been going to Brian Hamill's place in Rhinebeck, New York, and sitting in Hamill's sauna. That's how he'd dropped the weight so easily.

I immediately called my father. He told me to bring Rooney to see him. We drove in to Staten Island that night. My father examined Rooney, gave him this stuff called Ensure that replaced all the nutrients and electrolytes he had lost, and also gave him a shot of B
₁₂
. Then he took me aside and said, “He needs to rest. His body needs to recover. It'll take time. Can you postpone the fight?”

“It's not that simple.”

“You shouldn't let him fight, Teddy. You're his trainer, and it's your responsibility. You shouldn't let him fight.”

We drove back to Catskill. I explained the situation to Cus. “We have to postpone the fight,” I said.

“Impossible.”

“Then we need to pull him out.”

Cus went crazy. “We're not pulling out! Don't you dare even think about it.”

We got into a big argument. I knew Rooney wasn't himself. This was a fight where there was no margin for error. We'd have to fight a perfect fight to win. Instead, we were going in knowing ahead of time that something was wrong. I had always deferred to Cus on big decisions. He was like the pope. More and more, though, I was beginning to find myself uncomfortable with some of the choices he was making.

In the end, he found a way to appease me. He was a brilliant manipulator. He turned the situation around so I could feel as if I were the one making the decision. He said, “Look, we'll let him spar in a couple of days. If you don't think he's right, then he won't fight.” Rooney got back in the ring after resting a couple of days, and he definitely looked better. Not a hundred percent, but better. Still, I saw he wasn't strong. “If he's not strong, it'll be like letting him walk into the propeller of a plane,” I said.