atlas
Reviewed by Dick Stull, Humboldt State University
OCTOBER 22, 2007 archive
Truths about Fathers, Fear, Fighting and Fate
Fight-trainer Teddy Atlas touched on a universal and culturally timely issue in his book, Atlas: From the Streets to the Ring: A Son's Struggle to Become a Man. His father was a loved, admired, and respected New York City doctor but, nonetheless, emotionally distant from his family and, in particular, from Teddy, his oldest son, the one who wanted nothing more than his father's approval.
To this end, Atlas, who did not grow up on the mean streets, wound up there in his desperate quest to wrestle with fear and the lack of his father's (and his own) approval. Along the way, Atlas chronicles his violent street fights, his terrifying bus ride to Riker's Island, his undeserved second and third chances, and the scar he received in a knife fight, extending from scalp to jaw. The wound, from which he almost bled to death, required 200 stitches on the outside and 200 on the inside. That visible and invisible scar on his face is the central metaphor for Atlas's life - it was, in reality, Atlas's heart that received the 400 stitches that ultimately healed, but was still scarred inside and out.
After a number of scrapes with the law and a stay on Riker's Island, Atlas was introduced to boxing's own pugilistic Socrates, Cus D'Amato. D'Amato, who was revered as a trainer and motivator of champions (former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, for example), became a surrogate father to Atlas. But, like Atlas's own father, D'Amato had his own demons and flaws and, ultimately, was not the ideal Atlas wanted him to be. Under D'Amato's guidance, Atlas relates how he became himself a father-figure, mentor, and life coach to literally hundreds of kids from the streets where the world of boxing became the principal way of learning about oneself by facing one's fears and pain. Atlas became the "Young Master." Atlas's greatest charge became the young Mike Tyson, for whom Cus was willing to compromise his own strict rules in a race against time to make Tyson a champion before he (Tyson) self-destructed. Atlas ultimately pulled a gun on Tyson and threatened to kill him after learning that Tyson sexually abused Atlas's eleven year-old sister-in-law.
Atlas subsequently walked away from the future champion, his surrogate father and chronicles the rest of his path through the bizarre world of boxing. Along the way, Atlas continues to train fighters, including heavyweight champion Michael Moorer and relates some surreal Goodfella-like encounters with Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (who turned on mob boss John Gotti). Gravano was interested in getting a piece of the action in the boxing game as well as having Atlas train his son and was fascinated with Atlas's personal life philosophy as well as his training programs.
Atlas also rubbed up against the arts and Hollywood. Dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp asked Atlas to train her for her Broadway comeback at the age of forty-four and became another of Atlas's rapt students. Her stage return in 1983, after being trained in the physical and psychological realities of boxing, was a smash hit. She even choreographed a boxing-based dance piece called "Fait Accompli." Atlas, a true romantic, threw a pair of boxing gloves onto the stage amidst the shower of bouquets. And, in 1987, Atlas became a choreographer of sorts himself, consulting on the boxing scenes in the movie about concentration camp boxing, Triumph of the Spirit. He recounts his professional admiration for and work with actor Willem Dafoe. Atlas speaks of his marriage to a tough-minded Albanian immigrant's daughter and his love for his own family. But Atlas himself is honest enough to realize that he, too, mirrors his own father's quest to help others often at the expense of his own family.
In the latter part of the book, Atlas chronicles his mentoring/training of moody, doubt-plagued fighter Michael Moorer, culminating in Moorer's winning of the heavyweight championship over Evander Holyfield. Many boxing fans remember the night Teddy Atlas stood in front of Moorer between rounds and implored him "there comes a time in a man's life when he makes a decision to just live, to survive - or he wants to win. You're doing just enough to keep him off ya and hope he leaves ya alone. You're lyin' to yourself, but you're gonna cry tomorrow. You're lyin' to yourself!...And I'd be lyin' if I let you get away with it! Do you want to cry tomorrow? Huh? Then don't lie to yourself anymore! There's something wrong with this guy! Now back him up and fight a full round!" That scene was vintage Teddy Atlas. But Moorer and Atlas were to meet another old warrior who had tasted bitter defeat and come out of the abyss himself, former heavyweight George Foreman. Foreman, who had been invincible until Muhammad Ali dropped him with a right hand in Zaire, Africa in their Rumble in the Jungle championship fight in 1974, soon after retired from boxing for ten years before making an improbable comeback. Atlas recognized in Foreman a man who faced the abyss, his own personal metaphoric "death," and gives the reader a great lesson on psychology as Foreman waits like a ponderous mongoose until Moorer makes one fatal mistake and Foreman knocks him out. Eerily, Foreman wore the same trunks that he had worn when he lost the championship to Ali.
But the primary message throughout this entertaining 278 page narrative is that every human being, like a fighter, must decide for himself how much truth he can take--that ultimately to be a man, to be a warrior, to have character, one must face fear and self-doubt--and that by not meeting adversity with courage, or by quitting or by not truly looking into the abyss, one may escape temporarily, but pay the price with a far greater living death.
As a loyal friend, as a motivator, and as a boxing trainer, Atlas is an extraordinary individual, and not so self-obsessed that he doesn't see his own flaws--those flaws stemming from his own need for approval and to help others, eventually understanding that even though one may have character, one still has weaknesses too. To this end he realized he was too vulnerable by investing himself so totally in his fighters and, ultimately, became a popular television boxing commentator for NBC's Olympic Games coverage in 2000 and ESPN Friday Night Fights. He also started a foundation in the name of his father for a variety of causes, raising more than two million dollars.
The world needs more Teddy Atlases, men who are not afraid to show their emotions, stand up and show compassion and toughness for their friends, make decisions on principle as opposed to the immediacy of the moment, and to articulate life lessons that all too often in popular culture are treated like old-world clichés.
From the streets of New York to the third-floor smokers in Brooklyn to the glitz of heavyweight championship fights in Las Vegas to the unexpected cultural connections and serendipitous training of dancers and actors, Atlas brought grit, toughness, tenderness, and hard-won truths to the many people he touched - boxing as metaphor for life - and vice versa.
For all those who are weary and despairing of the immediate point-and-click dross of clichéd "authenticity," it's refreshing to read about someone whose " word is his bond" - and it's as solid as a straight right-hand to the jaw.
Atlas, Teddy and Peter Alson. Atlas: From the Streets to the Ring: A Son's Struggle to Become a Man.
Paperback: 278 pages. Publisher: Harper (2006)
ISBN-10: 0-6054240-3
Copyright © 2007 by Dick Stull.