Mike would like to thank:
My inner circle of friends and family who have always been there to support, encourage, and inspire me. The list, although small, is still too long to name specifically, because in doing so I will definitely forget a name or two. But I do want to acknowledge my children, Morocco, Milan, Miguel, Amir, Rayna, Mikey, and Gena. All that I do is for you guys. Also, thank you to my wife, Kiki, for always being there: I love you.
I do need to specifically thank my man Larry “Ratso” Sloman, for all of the tireless hours and the labor of love and research he put into this book. Without your vision, this book would have never happened. Thank you, brother.
Larry would like to thank:
Michael Gerard Tyson. This second collaboration was as much a labor of love as our work together on Undisputed Truth. In that book Mike touched on his complex and rich relationship with Cus D’Amato, his mentor and adopted father. Everyone associated with that book felt that the relationship deserved more attention and that Cus himself had never gotten his due for his groundbreaking work in boxing even before he even encountered the young Tyson. So we decided to go deep: deep into Mike’s years with Cus, and deep into the mysterious and largely undocumented life of Cus D’Amato.
I spent the first few months scouring various archives. In the City Clerk’s Office in Manhattan, I found microfiche with the transcripts of the proceedings of Cus’s lawsuit against the New York State Athletic Commission, which had gone untouched for decades. The transcripts were a revelation. I then pored over the transcripts of the Senate subcommittee that investigated the influence of organized crime on boxing. One prominent figure emerged from these transcripts: former New York City assistant district attorney and special counsel to the Senate subcommittee John Bonomi. Mr. Bonomi died in 1999, but his widow, Patricia, and daughter, Kathy, graciously allowed me to visit with them and photograph his archives.
The transcripts of Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo’s trial in L.A. gave tremendous insight into the way the mob worked mostly with, but sometimes against, James Norris, boxing’s premier impresario at the time. But the most amazing find was in a spare bedroom of an apartment in Jersey City. Mario Costa is a longtime friend of Mike’s, and some of Mike’s pigeons still reside on the roof of Mario’s Ringside Lounge complex. Mario had been close to Camille Ewald for years, and after her death he managed to salvage more than forty boxes of Cus’s that had been stored in his room in the Catskill house. What a treasure trove! The boxes contained what was left of Cus’s files, old boxing memorabilia, newspapers from the years he managed both Floyd Patterson and Mike, and books from Cus’s private library. Thank you, Mario, for your diligence in preserving Cus’s legacy.
All writers stand on the shoulders of the scribes who precede them. For this work several books must be cited: The late, great sportswriter Barney Nagler wrote a fascinating book, James Norris and the Decline of Boxing, which chronicled both Norris’s and Carbo’s influence on boxing in their day. Norris’s aide-de-camp Truman Gibson exposed his former boss in a self-serving memoir, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America. There were myriad books about Floyd Patterson that proved useful, including his autobiography, Victory over Myself. Two friends of mine produced books that were exemplary in dealing with two of the most compelling heavyweights in history. Nick Tosches wrote the definitive tome on Sonny Liston: The Devil and Sonny Liston. And there is no finer book about Muhammad Ali than David Remnick’s King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. Jeff Lieberman, my friend and collaborator in our company Shallow Entertainment, produced an award-winning HBO documentary, Sonny Liston: The Mysterious Life and Death of a Champion, which provided great insight into the Big Bear.
Thanks must also be given to the Sports Illustrated writers who covered Cus and “got” him, much more than the beat reporters and columnists from the newspapers. It was an honor to interview Robert Boyle and Gil Rogin and document their remembrances of Cus. In the previous book, we acknowledged Paul Zuckerman, a young journalist who had actually moved into the Catskill home with Cus and Camille and produced hours and hours of tape, which Mike and I listened to with fascination. I tried to track down Zuckerman at that time, to no avail. I’m happy to report that he is still around, and our conversations about Cus (and other matters) are always illuminating. Paul is still working on his book about Cus, and we hope this will surface soon.
Special thanks to Bill McNeil, who wrote a book titled The Rise of Mike Tyson, Heavyweight. Besides offering documentation of the years that Mike and Cus spent together, Bill generously made available the tape of Cus’s speech to a meeting of the First Meridian Planning Corporation, which was owned by his old friend Roger Sala. It was Cus’s last public appearance, and his motivational talk to a group of investors and investment counselors was illuminating.
We can’t thank Joe Colangelo enough. Joe is Cus’s last living close associate, and the two of them worked tirelessly to keep Cus’s gym open in Catskill. Largely because of Joe’s efforts it remains open to this day. His memories of Cus and his anecdotes of their time together were wonderful.
Two very special people assisted us in making sense of Cus’s behavior and the mystery of his involvement with Fat Tony Salerno. Cus’s nieces Carole D’Amato Rothmund, Rocco’s daughter, and Elizabeth (Betty) D’Amato Quintano, Tony’s daughter, went out of their way to communicate priceless information to us; Betty even wrote up some remembrances of her father and uncle. Carole and Betty, you both helped us put the final puzzle pieces together!
We also would like to thank everyone who sat down for interviews to talk about Cus. Thanks to Al Caruso, Alex Wallau, Anthony Patti, Billy White, Brian Hamill, Burt Young, Buster D’Amato Mathis, Gene “Cyclone” Hart, the inimitable Gene Kilroy, Greg Walsh, Jimmy Glenn, John Halpin, Joan Mathis, Joey Hadley, Joy Gross, Lennie Daniels, Mario Costa, Mark Medal, Mark D’Attilio, Matthew Hilton, Nelson Cuevas, Nick Beck, Paul Mangiamele, Bobby Stewart (without whom . . . ), Tommy Gallagher, Tom Patti, and Scott Weiss. We owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Friedman at the New York Public Library, who tracked down key reports and documents for us.
While I was in Vegas, I was always happy to be in the company of Mike and his extended family. His wife, Kiki, to my eyes, is the best thing that’s ever happened to Mike. She was instrumental in helping this book along every step of the way. It’s wonderful to watch as Milan and Rocco blossom into young people! All the rest of Mike’s children are wonderful too, and as they filter in and out to visit their dad, they invariably bring good cheer with them. Kiki’s mom, Rita, and dad, the Imam Shamsud-din Ali, and her brother Azheem and his lovely wife, Jahaira, always make me feel at home.
But home for me in Vegas is chez Penn Jillette. It’s always a joy to crash with Penn, his lovely wife, Emily Zolten, and their two aptly named children, Moxie and Zolten. After a hard day’s work with Mike, it’s also a pleasure to scoot over to the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio casino and be continually astounded. Thanks also to Mike’s able assistants David Barnes (aka Farid) and David Malone for all their help.
Once again thanks to the Blue Rider publishing titan David Rosenthal, who is a joy to work or eat pastrami sandwiches with. Thanks also to our UK publisher, Rory Scarfe, for his upbeat enthusiasm about this book. Kudos to Brant Rumble, our editor at Blue Rider. This is our second book together, and he always is an absolute pleasure to work alongside. A shout-out to the Blue Rider peeps who shepherded this book along: Aileen Boyle, Jason Booher, Claire Vaccaro, Linda Cowen, Terezia Cicelova, and especially Anna Jardine. And now we get to work with über-publicists Jo Mignano and Brian Ulicky, who do an outstanding job of pushing our books out into the world.
Thanks to our longtime agent, David Vigliano, and everybody at AGI Vigliano Literary. Also to my literary lawyer, Eric Rayman, and my personal lawyer, Charles DeStefano.
Finally, I’m forever indebted to my family, Christy Smith-Sloman and Lucy. No writer is a bundle of joy to deal with when he’s in the midst of making deadlines, and Christy has put up with me for seven books now. I’m eternally grateful for her love and understanding. And I love Lucy too, even when she wakes me at four in the morning to go out.