Teddy Atlas on Mike Tyson

I got this from another website and I thought it was very interesting. This past week Teddy Atlas was on the Jim Rome show and he gave some insights on Mike Tyson. He talked about Mike and told a few stories of how he believed Mike never had that internal confidence or fortitude to be the great fighter he should have been. The one story was when Mike was 16 and was engaged in an amatuer fight with a big white kid. Up to this point, in his amatuer career, he was killing everyone. Just one knockout after another. But in this fight Mike knocked the kid down twice in the first round. However, unlike his previous opponents the kid kept getting up. After the 1st round had ended he went back to his corner and told Teddy to stop the fight because his hand was broken. Teddy said that he knew it wasn't and feared that Mike was playing games. But he had to see if it was broke just in case. So he grabbed Mikes hand and squeezed it as hard as he could. Mike didn't even flinch. He continued to stare over Teddy's shoulder at his opponent. Atlas told Mike that 'your hand ain't broke, you're broke'. He could tell that Mike was scared. Up till now, everyone stayed down but this kid was game. Even though his opponent refused to stay down Mike was still easily winning the fight and he told Mike this. Tyson begrudgingly went out for round two. Mike dropped him twice more in this round but once again, the kid kept getting up. So at the end of the round, Mike again sits down and tells Atlas to stop the fight because he's exhausted and he's going to get killed. Atlas got very angry at this point. He started yelling at Mike that he wasn't even getting hit. All of this kids shots were either missing or winging off of Mikes gloves and shoulders. He said that if he were the ref he'd have stopped the fight a long time ago because Mike was busting him up. But he could tell that Mike was scared. Because this kid wasn't playing the role of the helpless lamb, he didn't know how to handle it. Eventually, Atlas had to grab Mike and literally shove him back into the ring to get him to fight. The 3rd round starts and Mike and his opponent are just hugging each other. Neither one is punching just mauling. But then, at one point, the white kid is pushing Mike against the ropes and Atlas sees that Mike is going to go down - just like in the McBride fight, Teddy points out. Atlas jumps on the edge of the canvas and yells at Mike "Don't you do what I think you're going to do!". Eventually the bell rang and Mike got the "W" but like Atlas pointed out, he was going to tank the fight simply because this kid was standing up to him and he'd never experienced that before. Atlas said that the same thing kind of happened in the Tucker and Bonecrusher fights. Mike was winning both fights easily until about the 5th and 6th rounds, when he realised that neither guy was going to just take a shot and lay down, so he decided to accept what Teddy called "silent treaties". A silent treatie is when both fighters clinch and silently agree to not throw punches. Kind of like "I won't hit you if you don't hit me". Atlas said that both Tucker and Bonecrusher didn't mind agreeing to these because they didn't want to get hurt. Teddy then pointed out that the first fighter that stood up to Mike was Buster Douglas and he knocked Mike out. The week before the Douglas fight Buster's mom had died and Buster was in the mind set of "Your punches won't hurt nearly as much as the pain I'm in from this death". Atlas agreed that Mike had incredible physical tools and should have retired one of the all time greats. But his mental weaknesses were always his downfall and the reason why he never developed to his full potential. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting interview. I've always been a huge Mike Tyson fan but I had to agree with a lot of what Atlas said. When Mike lost to Lewis he took quite a beating. Atlas said that in the Lewis, Holyfield and Buster losses, he was a 'game loser'. Someone that wouldn't quit but wouldn't fight back either. They would take their shots and get KO'd but they wouldn't fight back. He said that's what Tyson was. It hurt to hear things that like but he's right. In all of Tyson's losses he never dug deep and tried to win. He would take his shots and not go down but he wouldn't fight back. If Mike Tyson had the mentality and heart of an Evander Holyfield I believe Mike would have retired at 30 years old, undefeated and with a crap load of money.