McNeil William F. - The Rise of Mike Tyson, Heavyweight

Also by WILLIAM F. MCNEIL AND FROM MCFARLAND

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1802-9

2014 William F. McNeil. All rights reserved

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On the cover: Mike Tyson before his match with Steve Zouski on March 10, 1986, at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York (Paul Post)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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To my wife Janet
who was always there to provide me with
support and encouragement and, along the way,
gave me 64 years of beautiful memories.

I wish to thank all those people who generously contributed to the production of this book.

In particular I wish to thank Michael Marton, producer of the timeless and historic television documentary Watch Me Now, the story of Cus DAmato and the Catskill Boxing Club. With Mr. Martons permission, I have drawn freely from his material to produce the flavor of Mike Tysons early days in Catskill.

Roger Sala, former business executive and boxing manager, captured Cus DAmatos philosophy of life on an audiocassette, which he graciously allowed me to utilize.

Gunther Hafner, former publisher of the Catskill Daily Mail, permitted me to draw freely from information on the career of Mike Tyson that appeared in the Daily Mail.

Many other individuals and organizations also permitted me to draw from their knowledge of Mike Tyson and the boxing game, including the Albany Times Union, United Press International, the Berkshire Eagle, the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, New York, Dardis McNamee, editor of Capital Region Magazine, People Weekly magazine, and Home Box Office, Inc.

Other sources consulted during the research for this book included the Springfield Republican, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, Ring Magazine, KO Magazine, World Boxing, Boxing Scene, WNYT Channel 13 (Albany, N.Y.), WTEN Channel 10 (Albany, N.Y.), ABC-TV Sports, ESPN, WNYW Channel 5 (New York), the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlantic City Press, Vanity Fair, Time, GQ, Boxing Illustrated, and The Greene County News.

In addition, I interviewed numerous people who knew Mike Tysonchildhood friends from Brooklyn, friends from Catskill, boxing associates, trainers, teachers, and neighbors.

Paul Post, Paul Antonelli, and Teddy Atlas generously provided me with photographs to enhance the manuscript.

And a special thanks to Sally Talay, formerly of the Catskill Daily Mail, for her cooperation during my research.

Hey, little fairy boy, you should wear a dress like your sister.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 1986 Boxer of the Year, the new WBC heavyweight champion of the world, and the youngest man ever to wear the crown.

The little fairy boy and the heavyweight champion of the world have a lot in common. They are the same person. His name is Mike Tyson.

This is his story.

The Mike Tyson story began in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn on a hot muggy day in the summer of 1966. An eight-pound baby named Michael Gerard Tyson was born on June 30 in Cumberland Hospital, the third child of Lorna Tyson and Jimmy Kirkpatrick. Lorna Tyson, born Lorna Smith somewhere in the South in 1930, relocated to Brooklyn after World War II. She married Percel Tyson when she was very young, but they were subsequently divorced. Lorna never remarried but she always needed a man, earning her a reputation for being promiscuous as well as for being alcohol dependent. She met and moved in with a big, boisterous laborer named Jimmy Kirkpatrick who, according to her son Mike, may have been a drug dealer and a pimp. Kirkpatrick reportedly had fathered 16 children with various women, three of them with Lorna: Rodney, five years older than Mike, Denise, one year older than Mike, and Mike. She took the Kirkpatrick name even though she never married Jimmy, and after Jimmy was hospitalized with a heart condition and subsequently deserted her and the children before Mike was born, she brought home a new boyfriend, Edward Gillison. As Tyson would note in later years, it was a dysfunctional family. One of her boyfriends beat her up one day but was soon forgiven when he returned to the apartment with liquor and cigarettes. Another boyfriend was thrown out of the apartment after he tried to molest Denise.

Lorna Tyson deserved better than life in the ghetto. The 36-year-old single mother had her problems but she combed her Brooklyn neighborhoods in search of opportunity, only to find, like thousands before her, nothing but poverty and misery in the segregated sewers of the great northern city. With no man to bring home a regular paycheck, she was forced to subsist as best she could on public assistance. Still, in spite of the poverty and violence that dominated her world, she was able to provide the strong mother image that seemed to be the nucleus of so many black urban families in the 1960s and 1970s. One of Tysons friends said Lorna was a tough lady, given to violent outbursts, and he kept his distance from her. Be that as it may, Lorna Tyson made a superhuman effort to shield her children from the evil outside influences that pervaded the crime-ridden New York City suburb. But her efforts on behalf of her children were only partially successful. Rodney and Denise survived the violence and degradation that was part of their life in Brownsville, but young Mike was not as fortunate. Rodney, a good student, enlisted in the United States Navy after graduation from high school and continued his education following his discharge, eventually becoming a physicians assistant in a Los Angeles trauma center. Mike would admit in later years to a love-hate relationship with his brother. I was really envious of Rodney. I hated my brother. Everybody loved my brother and sister. They always had more dignity and pride. I was always jealous of them because they had nothing but everybody in the neighborhood loved them. My brother was always something and I was nothing. Denise married Roger Anderson, moved to Queens, and had two children before succumbing to a heart attack in 1991.