Still to this day, the legendary Cus D'Amato story from the Catskills in New York, stands at the very top with some of the greatest trainers of all time for me, not just because of some of the great champions he had, but also because of how ahead of his time mental approach and philosophies were.
From a career achievement point of view, he coached excellent champions like Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres and Mike Tyson to world championship glory, but he also had a tremendously positive impact on many more, not just in the ring but outside of it too.
One of his great quotes which I always found fascinating as regards his philosophy was:
"My objective is not just to make a guy become world champion but when he does, to also make him become independent of me."
When you really stop for a second and think about what he's saying, the meaning has a lot deeper gravity than just of which from a sporting sense.
It's almost that teach a man how to fish philosophy as opposed to just giving him a fishing rod with the school of thought being once he understands how to fish he can teach others and not just feed himself, but help educate his whole family to do the same.
Transferring this educational mindset into the boxing ring was a massive thing Cus employed not just with his fighters, but also with the coaches he employed to train his fighters.
Mickey Rooney for example, who trained Tyson in the early days after Teddy Atlas was relieved of the job, could often be heard shouting out numbers for combinations for Tyson to execute in the ring, and indeed in training.
Education and self-belief were integral in the D'Amato philosophy, where you could almost see that he felt the game was much more about the mental side of things, than the physical.
Another tremendous quote in his philosophy was when he was speaking to Tyson one time on why he thought at that time Ali was the greatest, where he mentioned:
"Ali is the greatest simply because he believes in himself more than anyone else."
He just had this ability of simplifying complex things down to clear, understandable metaphors designed for any human to understand - like a lot of geniuses do.
And genius he was, at least for me.
His way of teaching his fighters was a combination of technical brilliance personified by psychological mastery, a really innate understanding of the human condition, an almost boxing psychologist in a sense.
Even when towards the end he was badly sick, dying, his incredible will and resolve within himself was such that he always projected a positive message to his fighters on the outside, deliberately, like many top class man managers do.
Never project weakness or negativity to your team, if you are a leader, and a great leader he was.
Perhaps the best way to finally sum up this great man was by one final anecdote he left the world before he went, which was:
"The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters."
Cus D'Amato - a man well ahead of his time.
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