Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
On November 22, 1986, he took out Trevor Berbick
in two rounds, winning the World Boxing Council
(WBC) heavyweight title. Tyson destroyed Berbick. As
one of the judges, District Attorney Lane, told Sports Illustrated,
“If I had let the fight continue, if I let him get
hit with more of those terrible punches, it would have
been criminal.” A year after D’Amato’s death, Tyson
had fulfilled his dream and become the youngest heavyweight
champion in history. It was a sweet moment, but
the confused state of modern boxing meant his title was
incomplete. In addition to the WBC, there was also a
WBA (World Boxing Association) and IBF (International
Boxing Federation) champion.
The following year, Tyson did the necessary consolidation.
On March 7, 1987, Tyson went up against
WBA placeholder James “Bonecrusher” Smith in Las
Vegas. Smith fought not so much to crush Tyson’s
bones as to preserve his own, and after 12 dull rounds
Tyson was declared the winner. On August 1, 1987,
Tyson went up against IBF champion Tony Tucker to
reunite the triple crown of boxing. Tucker did manage
to land a blow in the first round, and ultimately he did
go the distance, but it was clearly Tyson’s fight
throughout. “Aw, he stopped fighting after the fifth
round,” Tyson told Sports Illustrated. “After that he
was just in there to survive.” Tucker survived, but his
championship did not. When it was over, Mike Tyson
was the undisputed World Heavyweight Championship
(complete with crown and chinchilla robe, provided,
inevitably, by the showman who always managed to
climb into the ring with a champ, Don King). An embarrassed
Mike Tyson sat in brooding silence during this
“coronation.”
The Troubled Champ
By the end of 1987, Tyson was being hailed as the
most exciting champ since Muhammad Ali, an example
for ghetto kids, and indeed all kids, to aspire toward. Interestingly,
he was surrounded by white men, including
his co-managers Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton, and so he
seemed to embody racial harmony and a “we can all get
along” spirit that only added to the allure of the “reformed”
delinquent. In 1988, it all began to go wrong.
As if sleep-walking in a film noir, Tyson soon found
his femme fatale, Robin Givens. The beautiful star of
ABC’s “Head of the Class,” Givens represented class
and sophistication to the newly crowned champ. To
Givens, or at least to her mother, Ruth Roper, Tyson represented
money—a lot of money. Tyson had earned millions
of dollars in fight purses and television contracts,
including a $26 million deal with HBO for a series of
seven fights, signed in 1987. More unusually for a prizefighter,
he had honest management that had allowed him
to keep the lion’s share of that money. After a whirlwind
courtship, Tyson married Givens on February 7, 1988.
Soon, she and her mother began to do a little house-
Related Biography: Trainer Cus D’Amato
Tyson
Cus D’Amato was more than a boxing trainer with a good eye for talent.
D’Amato was a legend, hailed as the man who had successfully fought
mobster Frank Carbo’s boxing monopoly and made Floyd Patterson “king of
the sport,” in the words of People reporter William Plummer. Norman Mailer
had called him a Zen master. He was more of a teacher than a trainer, a
teacher in the old, all-encompassing sense. While he taught his fighters the
moves, he also drew them out, discovering their hidden talents and fears.
“Fear is like a fire,” he’d tell them. “If you control it, as we do when we heat
our houses, it is a friend. When you don’t it consumes you and everything
around you.”
By the time Mike Tyson met him, D’Amato had largely retired from
the sport, but he maintained a training camp at an old Victorian house in
the Catskills, courtesy of his mistress, Camille Ewald. Usually there were
five or six aspiring fighters in residence. Fight-film entrepreneur Jimmy Jacobs
provided the equipment. (D’Amato had helped others to riches, but his
own money always seemed to slip through his fingers, often lent to friends
unable to pay him back.) When he saw Tyson, he saw the kind of champion
he’d almost forgotten, one who could reach the top, and actually deserve
the honor.
cleaning, banishing many of Tyson’s friends and closely
questioning others about the state of his finances.
A month later, Tyson’s co-manager, Jim Jacobs, died.
While Tyson was at the funeral, his wife Robin was at the
bank, demanding to know the whereabouts of “her
money.” Shortly thereafter, they confronted Tyson’s surviving
manager, Bill Cayton, demanding a full accounting
and ultimately reducing his share of the champ’s earnings
from one-third to 20 percent. Tyson’s behavior became increasingly
erratic, ramming cars into trees, getting into a
street brawl with boxer Mitch Green and, on a disastrous
trip to Russia, chasing Robin and her mother through the
hotel corridors in a drunken rage. In a nationally televised
interview with Barbara Walters, Givens told America of
her “life of horror” with a manic-depressive Mike Tyson,
while the heavyweight champ sat meekly at her side, looking
to some observers like a tranquilized pit bull. Shortly
after the interview Tyson smashed up furniture, glassware,
and windows at their mansion in Bernardsville, N.J., and
Givens fled to Los Angeles, where she filed for divorce. At
the time, she was generally seen as the villain. Her image
was splashed across the tabloids with the simple caption:
Most Hated Woman in America.
Out of the Frying Pan …
Almost as soon as Givens left Tyson’s life, Don King
entered. King had waited a long time. For years, Tyson
had been making mincemeat of King’s stable of heavyweight
champions, and it frustrated the promoter deeply
that he had no piece of the champ. King’s first opening
came at Jim Jacob’s funeral, which he attended uninvited,
loudly condemning Tyson’s managers for such indignities
as not having a limo ready for the champ. He
had also worked strenuously to bring to light the suspicions
of Givens and her mother toward Bill Cayton. And
now, with Givens out of the picture, he pounced, offering
Tyson the use of his farm in Ohio to recuperate from
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