{"id":245066,"date":"2025-11-05T09:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245066\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T09:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:47:06","slug":"cus-damato-said-one-heavyweight-was-boxings-albert-einstein-he-could-be-the-greatest-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245066\/","title":{"rendered":"Cus D’Amato said one heavyweight was boxing’s Albert Einstein: ‘He could be the greatest ever’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cus D\u2019Amato is famous for letting Mike Tyson loose on the path to stardom, but decades prior he said that another of his heavyweight charges changed the sport with sheer skill.<\/p>\n

Born in 1908 and naturally drawn to boxing as a way of defending himself in the Bronx, D\u2019Amato \u2013 who died on this day in 1985 \u2013 had a brief stint as a fighter before injury forced him to turn his hand to training.<\/p>\n

His famously obsessive study of fighters and psychology saw him build young men into champions, most notably Floyd Patterson, Jos\u00e9 Torres and Mike Tyson.<\/p>\n

While D\u2019Amato\u2019s name is synonymous with that of Tyson\u2019s<\/a>, his first success story was Patterson. Together, the pair achieved Olympic Gold in 1952 and then, in \u201956 when Patterson was just 21 years old, the heavyweight championship of the world.<\/p>\n

After that title-winning victory over the resilient Archie Moore, D\u2019Amato predicted Patterson\u2019s legacy would be unmatched.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Floyd came back from the Olympics. I told him that before he was through he would be chosen \u2018rookie of the year,\u2019 \u2018fighter of the year,\u2019 would become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time and would be the greatest fighter of all time. Now only one of these remains to be realised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson \u2013 born in 1935 in North Carolina \u2013 had trained with D\u2019Amato since he was a teenager. He made four successful defences of his titles before being dethroned by Sweden\u2019s Ingemar Johansson, only to win them straight back in the rematch one year later, making him the first man in history to regain the heavyweight championship.<\/p>\n

Against the fearsome Sonny Liston, he was not so lucky.<\/a> The technically masterful champion was blitzed by Liston\u2019s aggression on two occasions back-to-back. He would build up some impressive wins before losing to Muhammad Ali in 1965, later also falling short in their 1972 rematch.<\/p>\n

Though not as discussed as some of the more commanding presences the heavyweight division has hosted in the times before and after, gentleman Patterson is an all-time great. In fact, his blend of speed, defence and ring savvy all delivered within D\u2019Amato\u2019s peek-a-boo style led the trainer to brand him boxing\u2019s answer to revolutionary physicist Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know why Patterson is a great fighter? It\u2019s because he has taken the leap. All great men take a big leap forward. I sometimes compare Floyd to Einstein because they have done the same thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore Einstein came along we lived in one kind of world. We had only a little knowledge of what the world was like and we thought that was everything. But Einstein didn\u2019t let that stop him. He leaped and he carried the whole world along with him. That is what Floyd has done in boxing. Some day they will know how great he is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cus D\u2019Amato is famous for letting Mike Tyson loose on the path to stardom, but decades prior he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-245066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}