Conversation Piece: Cus D'amato: A Very Simple Tiger

A cherished legend in the Cus D'Amato family holds that an ancestor in the maternal line was one of Napoleon's captains. Something of the Napoleonic tradition survives in Cus. Judged by the severe test of achievement, he is a superb strategist. Nor is he afraid to fight an empire. A couple of years ago he challenged the International Boxing Club (James D. Norris, emperor) to a war that rages yet. His stratagems, and Floyd Patterson's ability, won the heavyweight championship of the world in record time.

Before his fighter won the title D'Amato was a very obscure fight manager indeed, one who had given most of his years in boxing to handling amateurs in small clubs, dreaming all the while, as managers do, that some day he would own a champion. (Now he dreams of owning three champions at once.) When he began his war on the IBC, D'Amato was so poor that he did not even have a room. He slept in his grimy gymnasium, a training school for any youngster who wanted to learn to box free. He was so poor, in fact, that when friends asked him for a loan he had to go out and borrow the money to lend them, a D'Amato conception of noblesse oblige. His sole weapon against the IBC has been Patterson, described early in the war as "just an overgrown middleweight," though very promising.

There was a time when D'Amato could not even get an interview with Emperor James to demand a fight for his boy. The palace guard barred him. Now Norris can't get an interview with D'Amato. Then Norris was at the very peak of his prestige, a figure to mention in the same gasp with giants like Mike Jacobs and Tex Rickard, though with Rocky Marciano retired Norris was to have nothing resembling a Joe Louis or a Jack Dempsey to exploit. What he was reduced to, actually, was Hurricane Jackson. Still, to be sure, he had a stranglehold—and he has kept it still—on boxing's major television and arena outlets.

By using finesse instead of the power of his monopoly position, Norris might then have had Floyd Patterson. D'Amato is not altogether an intractable man. He can sometimes be swayed by gentle persuasion. He cannot, however, be bullied around.

This was only two years ago. It was the poor but proud D'Amato of that recent time who forced Multimillionaire Norris to grant Floyd Patterson a shot at Jackson. Floyd's first victory over Jackson, won with a broken right hand, then made it impossible for Norris to deny Patterson a shot at Archie Moore and the heavyweight title.

D'Amato planned it that way, without subtlety or deviousness.

"One of the ways I buffalo people," he said recently on a slow stroll down Broadway, "is by being simple. They have this idea that everything I am planning and going to do is complicated. But I just go straight ahead. That fools them."

The D'Amato simplicity was best expressed when, asked how he could possibly hope to defeat Norris and his $200-odd million, he replied:

"I'll lick him with Floyd Patterson. Floyd is the best fighter in the world." He said that at a time when Patterson couldn't get a fight.

D'Amato is a man of medium height, carefully dressed according to his lights, with white hair close-cropped, a pugnacious chin, a strong nose and brown eyes that can look hard and mean when he is challenged. He strides directly to his objective. He minces neither his walk nor his words.