Mike Tyson, Cus D'Amato and the youngest heavyweight champion in history

Mike Tyson was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the youngest of three children, and moved to Brownsville when he was 10. "I never knew my father," he said. He was in petty crime by the age of 11. "They held the guns," he told Sports Illustrated. "I would just put everything in a bag. I was 11."

In 1979, aged 13, he was sent to the Tryon School for Boys, a reform school in upstate New York. One of the counsellors, Bobby Stewart, had boxed professionally, and he agreed to teach Tyson on condition that his behaviour improved. "Even though he was 13," Stewart said, "he could beat up most men." Stewart then took him to see Cus D'Amato.

Catskill

D'Amato had managed Floyd Patterson, at the time the youngest man to win the heavyweight title, and José Torres, who became light-heavyweight champion. He ran a boxing school in Catskill, New York, and lived with Camille Ewald in a 14-room house on nine and a half acres above the Hudson. Ewald reckoned some 200 fighters passed through it in the 15 years D'Amato ran the school.

After watching Tyson spar, D'Amato told him: "If you want to stay here, and if you want to listen, you could be the world heavyweight champion someday." A few weeks later Tyson moved in. D'Amato became his legal guardian. Tyson's mother, Lorna, died of cancer in 1982.

D'Amato taught him where to hit a man: "the liver on the right side, the floating rib on the left, the jawbone below the ear lobe." He also taught him what he believed about fighting. "In the last analysis, mind triumphs over matter," he said, "and the will to win is more crucial than the skill to win." And he gave him a target. "Patterson was the youngest world heavyweight champion ever," D'Amato told him. "You'll be younger."

Kevin Rooney, a protégé of D'Amato's, began training Tyson in 1982. The arrangement, agreed with D'Amato, was that Rooney would be Tyson's trainer for as long as he fought and would take ten per cent of his earnings. Until Tyson turned professional, Rooney worked for nothing.

Jacobs and Cayton

The management came from Jim Jacobs, a longtime friend of D'Amato's, and his partner Bill Cayton. Jacobs had been a champion handball player, and together they had built up the largest collection of fight films in the world. In September 1984 D'Amato arranged for Tyson to sign with Reel Sports, Inc., the company Jacobs and Cayton owned. Tyson borrowed their films and studied the fighters of the past.

Tyson made his professional debut on 6 March 1985 in Albany, New York. He was 18 and he won in the first round. Then he kept winning, and ABC television signed him to an exclusive four-fight deal worth $850,000. Jacobs defended the level of opposition. "Look up the ring records of Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano," he said, "and see who they were fighting after 10 months."

The opponents had their own view. "He has a sledgehammer, mon," said Sterling Benjamin, who lasted 58 seconds. "I've never been hit that hard in my life," said Sammy Scaff. Torres, by then chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, called him "faster and much more powerful than Joe Frazier, with a better hook."

November 1985

By the start of November 1985 Tyson had won all 11 of his professional fights by knockout. On Monday 4 November D'Amato died of pneumonia at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 77. Three days later about 100 people came to his funeral at St Patrick's Church in Catskill, among them Patterson, Torres and Tyson, who was 19.

"I miss him terribly," Tyson said. "He was my backbone." He talked about the small things. "When I'd get up in the morning, he'd make me breakfast. Now he's not around anymore." And about what the fights would be like now: "When it's over, there's no Cus to tell me how I did, no mother to show my clippings to."

Nine days after D'Amato died, Tyson fought Eddie Richardson in Houston and knocked him out in 1:17 of the first round. "Yeah," said Richardson afterwards, "about a year ago I was hit by a truck." From then on Rooney was in charge of the training.

When Sports Illustrated put Tyson on its cover as "Kid Dynamite" in January 1986 he had had 15 fights and knocked out all 15 opponents, 11 of them in the first round. His total time in the ring came to 40 minutes and 25 seconds.

1986

The knockouts did not come every time. On 3 May 1986 James Tillis became the first man to take Tyson the distance, and on 20 May Mitch Green did the same at Madison Square Garden. In July Marvis Frazier lasted 30 seconds, the quickest win of Tyson's career.

By then the heavyweight division had a plan. In January 1986 HBO and the promoter Don King had announced a unification series to bring the WBA, WBC and IBF titles together. In March Trevor Berbick, the Jamaican-born heavyweight who had beaten Muhammad Ali in Ali's last fight, won the WBC title from Pinklon Thomas on a unanimous decision. Tyson earned his place in the series in September with a second-round knockout of Alfonzo Ratliff. It was his 12th win of the year.

Berbick

They met for the WBC title at the Las Vegas Hilton on 22 November 1986. Berbick was 31–4–1 and the champion; Tyson was 27–0 and the challenger. Berbick was paid about $2.1 million and Tyson about $1.5 million.

Tyson took over from the opening bell, and one four-punch combination in the first round sent Berbick across the ring. Early in the second a combination put him on the floor. He got up, but he had nothing to fight back with. Then a right to the body and a left hook to the head dropped him again. Berbick tried to rise, fell, tried again and fell again. The referee, Mills Lane, stopped it at 2:35 of the second round.

Tyson was 20 years and four months old, the youngest heavyweight champion there had been. The record he broke was Floyd Patterson's, the record D'Amato had told him he would beat.

"I'm the youngest heavyweight champion in history," Tyson said. "And I'm going to be the oldest." Of the second round he said: "I was throwing hydrogen bombs in there."

He had the WBC belt. The WBA and IBF belts were still to be won.