Kevin Rooney,Good trainer or was he just in the right place at the right time?

[porkypara]

He made his name as Tysons trainer when he was in his prime after the death of Cus D'amato.

He came across as a bit arogant in a book I read the other day.As if he was the only one who could train Tyson.

But apart from Tyson what other great boxers has he trained.I know he was involved with Vinny Paz but he is hardly an all time great.

What your opinion on him guys??

[ross]

I think Kevin was let down by Mike leaving him, they were close like brothers, they lived there lives together for about 10 years.

Kevin probably hasnt got the same enthusiasm as he did for Mike, someone he was close to and someone who could follow his instructions to the tee because of his physical gifts.

If kevin was coaching in the inner city he would have a regular influx of hungry young fighters, as it is, in the middle of nowhere he is lucky to get any gifted fighters walk through those doors.

If he had another gifted fighter that could actualy follow his instructions and not fight wild like Lenord Pierre.

I have been thinking of asking Kevin to come to Guernsey, paid for and train a small group of amature boxers for a week or 2 in the summer, so I can get the chance to train under him more than anything and someone else may get the chance of him saying, "drop everything, come join me at Catskills and give me your all for a few months, see if you can make it"

If I were 10 years younger and didnt have a mortagage id love to give that a try but, id still love to learn the Damato system, Cus was a genius, a philosopher and, phycologist and had the most exciting and formidable fighting technique to teach.

If Rooney had another special person, he would again be a great trainer, a trainer still needs a talented fighter so he can look good, same as an athletics trainer still needs a fast runner to look good as a sprint coach.

[No Contest]

I think that if Tyson stayed with Rooney he would have never gotten knocked out by Douglas, am I tripping or didnt he leave Tyson a few fights before that match?

[ross]

Mike left Rooney right before the Bruno match, his last good match where he trained right was against Spinks and both fights highlight that, from knocking out the linear unbeaten champ in 90 seconds to getting hurt and extended to 5 by a comparative no hoper

[El Kabong]

Rooney teaches a style that has proven to be successful in the past.

If Rooney was a good trainer he would have had other big time world champions other than Mike Tyson.



I think he's lackluster as a trainer because he has personal issues that keep him and his fighters from focusing on fights and also trust issues have to be problems both ways.....I think since Mike left Rooney, Kevin just wants to hang on to anyone good with a death grip and it may be uncomfortable for the fighter that way OR fighters may have trouble trusting Rooney because like Mike he's self destructive as well.

That being said Rooney's teaching could help a lot of young fighters

[amat]

It's no coincidence that Tyson fell off when he fell out with Rooney. And I think it goes the same the other way aswell. I don't know what type of bond Rooney had with Tyson but when they split, he changed. Not for the better either. His punches became longer, his feet no longer moved side to side, he clinched a lot more and really got away from that peekaboo style. It's unbelievable how the best short puncher since Frazier totally got away from short punching.

Mental issues of course screwed Mike over but so did the overhaul of his style after the Rooney fight. That, along with the mental things, screwed Mike and broke him. And nobody has been able to fix him since. So maybe Rooney was the only guy to train Mike.

But now I don't think we'll be seeing Rooney as a successful trainer for a while. Like Lyle said he has to many of his own issues, he's an overly pompous guy who has really been clinging onto Mike for much to long. Not to mention his legal matters.

[Swashbuckling Gordy]

Mike left Rooney right before the Bruno match, his last good match where he trained right was against Spinks and both fights highlight that, from knocking out the linear unbeaten champ in 90 seconds to getting hurt and extended to 5 by a comparative no hoper

No hoper ? Bruno was a lot of things but he was not a no hoper !!

He had a good jab , power and despite what people say he had a good chin and a big heart and solid fundementals !!!

Bruno was not out of his depth he was a genuine top ten fighter and to beat him you had to beat him !!

You forget Bruno actually wenton to win the world title and give Lennox Lewis trouble and had given Witherspoon a great fight in which he was ahead on the cards before his lack of stamina caught up with him .

To call him a comparitive no hoper against a guy who had few fights at heavy and won the title with questionable decisions is wrong .

Spinks hadnt displayed any serious power at heavy whereas Bruno was a known big puncher something demonstrated in the 1st minute when Tyson for the 1st time was in trouble !!

Spinks was more of a no hoper than Bruno .

[Scrap]

I find it interesting that that school of thought which was taught at Cus gym to handle distress and fear, when the shit hit the fan none of them did going back as far as Patterson.

[DaxxKahn]

I think Kevin was let down by Mike leaving him, they were close like brothers, they lived there lives together for about 10 years.

Kevin probably hasnt got the same enthusiasm as he did for Mike, someone he was close to and someone who could follow his instructions to the tee because of his physical gifts.

If kevin was coaching in the inner city he would have a regular influx of hungry young fighters, as it is, in the middle of nowhere he is lucky to get any gifted fighters walk through those doors.

If he had another gifted fighter that could actualy follow his instructions and not fight wild like Lenord Pierre.

I have been thinking of asking Kevin to come to Guernsey, paid for and train a small group of amature boxers for a week or 2 in the summer, so I can get the chance to train under him more than anything and someone else may get the chance of him saying, "drop everything, come join me at Catskills and give me your all for a few months, see if you can make it"

If I were 10 years younger and didnt have a mortagage id love to give that a try but, id still love to learn the Damato system, Cus was a genius, a philosopher and, phycologist and had the most exciting and formidable fighting technique to teach.

If Rooney had another special person, he would again be a great trainer, a trainer still needs a talented fighter so he can look good, same as an athletics trainer still needs a fast runner to look good as a sprint coach.

Kevin is a decent trainer...Not great...There are other reasons Kevin has not excelled further than what he has...That are Kevins fault and no one elses...Take it from someone who has done business with him and the Catskill crew....Kevin is not a trainer that builds fighters Kevin is a guy that can work with a product already hald built....

As far as the Cus D'Amato style of boxing...It is not a style ment for all fighters...It is based for shorter guys who can get compact and crouch...A tall fighter would get destroyed using it....

The whole success of the style is head movement and jab's to work off of...it leaves little opening for body shot abuse

[ross]

By comparative no hoper in Bruno, I meant compared to Spinks people gave him no hope of beating Mike because of his form in heavy weight title fights compared to Spinks.

"comparative"

If we go back, just before the Spinks fight, look at Spinks and Brunos records, if we are honest it would be Spinks who has the better chance

Spinks beat a very well regarded champ, a top ten all time heavy, twice, maybe debatable but he did enough in those fights to make an argument, Bruno on the other hand had fought 2 punchers with good not great skills and floundered through their power, Tyson had as much if not more power and was coming off a string of extremly impressive performances, wiping out the last serious threat to his reign in 90 seconds.

Comparatively Bruno was a no hoper

[The Shadow]

Well, he's one of the last descendants from the old world; the Cus DaMato school of boxing. I think it's important to put this into some sort of perspective:
Tyson is mentally ill, and I don't mean that in a demeaning manner. Just like someone with a heart condition, he has a legitimate life-threatening illness.
It makes perfect sense that it's onset didn't start to show in his performances until he was in his twenties.
Perhaps the same can be said of Kevin Rooney as he's done many strange things and acted in bizarre ways over his career.
As to the legitimacy of Rooney's training abilities, I really couldn't say. He came from the Yale school of boxing theory under the tutelage of Cus, but I'm not
sure that it's made him a great trainer. He certainly has an abundance of knowledge to pass on, and it would be a shame for that to go to waste.

[lloydster]

I think Kevin Rooney's history speaks for itself. Who has he achieved results with other than Vinny Paz?? Paz was a fighter who fought his own way and didn't use the D'Amato style. If he did "bob n weave", maybe Paz's face wouldn't have been so bloodied in all of his fights.

Then there's Leonard Pierre - a wild, sloppy, defenseless fighter, who when faced with a step up in opposition - gets his lights punched out. And, I believe that Rooney had him at 15 years old!? Doesn't sound like a "good trainer" to me.

When you really think about it, Rooney was HANDED a ripe Mike Tyson (an elusive one-punch knockout artist that would have made ANY trainer look good). Cus and Teddy had already built his foundation. All Rooney had to do was follow the recipe, and he did exactly that - probably out of fear that if he changed something, Tyson would fail and Rooney would get blamed.

"Good" and "great" trainers are the ones who BUILD champions like Dundee, Steward, Roach, etc. Simply listen to the TV annoucers question Rooney's instructions in the corner. Rooney hasn't a clue.

The following is a MUST read:



In the grip of his vices


By BRIAN ETTKIN, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Sunday, December 10, 2006

CATSKILL -- Behind bloodshot eyes, fleshy folds of skin and alcohol-saturated breath stands the man who trained Mike Tyson 20 years ago, when Tyson became boxing's youngest heavyweight world champion. That guy was driven. That guy was disciplined. That guy was Kevin Rooney.
This man who asks at 10:40 a.m. if I'd like an adult beverage and drinks a screwdriver and then beer throughout our 4-hour visit, who throws a couple punches at the double-end bag in the gym he runs, then stumbles, dizzy and drunk -- staggering through life -- this is Kevin Rooney, too.

Cus would've never allowed this. If somebody had come to Cus D'Amato's gym drunk, he would've thrown him out like a stray dog. Show up drunk to train a fighter, to teach something positive when the example you set is so negative?

"Cus would not allow him in the gym," says Nadia Hujtyn, a trainer who was a student of D'Amato's when Rooney was. "He would definitely put him in a program, get him in a program and keep him in a program."

But the revered Catskill boxing manager and trainer who adopted Tyson and became surrogate father to Rooney and other young street punks who strived to better themselves through boxing died Nov. 4, 1985, at age 77. It is a parlor game in boxing circles to speculate how the tapestry of Tyson's life might have unfurled if D'Amato had lived to guide him longer.

One can't help to wonder if Rooney's life might have not unraveled if Cus had lived to mentor him longer, too. "Cus was above father figure," says Rooney's ex-wife, Bonnie. "A kid would argue with his father, a kid would get rebellious against his father. I don't think Kevin ever felt any of those feelings about Cus. Whatever he said went. Kevin didn't think to argue with it."

But whereas Tyson was a 19-year-old kid when D'Amato died, Rooney was 29 years old, married with two young children. Tyson experienced misery, unhappiness and depression in the subsequent years, much his doing. So has Rooney, who for most of the past two decades has abused alcohol and at times gambled compulsively.

He served five months and 10 days of an eight-month sentence in Greene County Jail in 2004 after violating probation following DWI and disorderly conduct convictions. Rooney's sister, Mary McLean, thought Kevin might hit rock bottom then, that he might seek treatment for his alcoholism instead of entering outpatient programs only when mandated by court order. About a week after his release, Kevin took the train to visit his family in Staten Island. When he knocked on his sister's door, she says, he was smashed.

"I couldn't believe here's the first time I'm seeing you, and you show up drunk," says McLean, the sibling to whom Rooney is closest. "I would've thought that taught a lesson, but no."

Rooney, 50, was arrested again in April and charged with driving under the influence and first-degree aggravated unlicensed motor vehicle operation, charges that were dismissed on Nov. 28. Yet when I recently visited, he walked down Catskill's Main Street with a plastic coffee cup filled with beer. A policeman striding toward us eyed Rooney suspiciously and swiveled his neck as he passed but said nothing.

Rooney reportedly earned as much as $5 million when he trained Tyson. But he filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990, in debt then for $1.299 million, including $499,999 owed to three Atlantic City casinos for gambling debts.

Rooney was awarded $8 million-plus in a breach-of-contract settlement with Tyson in 1998 and trained former world champ Vinny Pazienza (who legally changed his surname to Paz) for much of his career. Yet because of Rooney's gambling, bad investments and loans friends never repaid, he's spent several small fortunes, and a federal tax lien has been placed on his clapboard house with the chipped green paint, busted windows, sagging wood-slat fence and doorknob that falls to the porch if you pull too hard.

Inside, the sheet-covered couch cushions sink deep enough to give the appearance that any dropped loose change could fall to the center of the earth. There are dog bowls on the kitchen floor, though he hasn't owned a dog in years.

Seeing him here, it's hard to believe this is the guy who honed a raw thug into Kid Dynamite, that this is the man Atlantic City casinos would send helicopters or limos to pick up and comp his penthouse suites once he arrived. One time Rooney had $88,000 in chips on a roped-off craps table when a friend, Charlie Benton, persuaded him to stop while still ahead.

"He would've stayed there until it was gone," says Benton, a retired state correction officer. "That was one of the few times I remember him coming home winning."

But he never particularly cared about money. Rooney says, "The gym is my whole life. And drink."

The gym, above Catskill's police station and firehouse, is where D'Amato trained Tyson, where Hall of Famer Wilfred Benitez once sparred with a young welterweight named Kevin Rooney and where Rooney trained Paz. But Rooney trains only two fighters now, super middleweight Lenord Pierre (18-3, 13 KOs), who has lost his past two fights, and light middleweight Jay Krupp (9-1, 3 KOs).

When Rooney trains them at the gym, he might be sober.

"There have been times where he has (been intoxicated)," Krupp says. "But lately he's been real good."

"They know they deserve better, but by the same token neither (fighter) wants to work harder," says Hujtyn, a Columbia-Greene Community College employee. Kevin Rooney to become a millionaire by age 30, not for the money but the achievement. He was the second-youngest of five children, reared by Irish-American Catholics in a house on a cobblestone hill in Staten Island's Stapleton neighborhood. Daniel and Mary Rooney were alcoholics, their children say, and when Daniel would drink he became verbally and occasionally physically abusive.

Once as a young teen, Kevin says, he tried to defend his mother from his father, who dropped him with a punch to his solar plexus.

Another time, Kevin swung a baseball bat and broke his father's elbow. Kevin claims he was defending his mother; Mary says her brother wanted the car keys when he was stoned, though he wasn't yet 16. Kevin never made peace with his father before he died. "Kevin has a deep-rooted anger that he has just not learned to live with," McLean says.

He gambled young, throwing craps at age 12 or 13 in an alley as classmates looked out for their teachers at Immaculate Conception School.

By the time Kevin was 16, he lived on his own, hung out in a drug-ridden neighborhood on Broad Street, got into fistfights and was the lookout guy for friends who robbed cars.

Boxing saved him. Boxing would wake him at 5:30 a.m. to run hills and instill discipline in the midst of chaos. He'd win the 147-pound, sub-novice New York Golden Gloves Championship in 1975, defeating Kevin Higgins of West Point in the finals. And he'd leave New York at age 19 to come train here and live in D'Amato's Victorian mansion on a bluff overlooking the Hudson. D'Amato's fighters stayed for free in exchange for performing household chores.

D'Amato, who had trained world champions Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres, told Kevin he should take classes because there wasn't anything to do when not training, so Kevin earned his GED, then an associate's degree from Columbia-Greene. Cus valued discipline, so Kevin, who loved ice cream and could eat a half-gallon of coffee or vanilla and almonds at a time, gave it up for a year just to prove he could.

"When I put my mind into something," he says, "that's it."

He was street-smart, blunt and charismatic. At Columbia-Greene, he starred in a play for the first time, "A Streetcar Named Desire." Rooney played Stanley Kowalski.

"He was very good," Bonnie Rooney says. "Nobody could've done better."

Rooney would win 21 of his 26 pro fights, with seven knockouts, draw in another, and get knocked out in the second round by the great Alexis Arguello. But as his boxing career neared its end, Rooney struggled to give it up, even as D'Amato groomed him to train Tyson. Whenever Rooney talks about Cus, he speaks reverently. He laments that nobody has written a biography on D'Amato, a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame who stood up to mobsters and the corruption that besmirched his sport. Cus' integrity was beyond reproach. The apple didn't fall out of sight of the tree.

"I met probably three people, maybe four people in the business who had any integrity whatsoever," says Steve Lott, Tyson's former assistant manager.

Lott's friend, Kevin Rooney, was one of them.

Like D'Amato, Rooney has never charged people to work out at the gym. He once volunteered time to train prisoners at Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie.

Now he doesn't help himself. He'd rather live in the past instead of confronting his present. When he plays a videotape of his Golden Gloves finals victory, it is as if this is an out-of-body experience, in which he's a spectator watching himself fight live.

"Look at that," Rooney says, his volume rising, "BOOM, BOOM. This is before I came under, BOOM, a street kid, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM."

Glory days forever ago. the span of years, life hit Rooney with several combinations -- Cus' death, a separation and subsequent divorce from Bonnie, Tyson's dismissing him when he chose Don King's management.

But don't blame these events entirely for Rooney's spiral. He drank when he trained Tyson, too.

"It wasn't a daily problem then, but a problem enough," Hujtyn recalled. "There were enough times when he didn't come to the gym. 'Tell the boys I'm not going to be there today. I don't feel well.' "

"Kevin wanted to go and be among the people and feel this (Tyson) thing and enjoy it," says Bonnie, a hair salon owner in Hudson. "I kind of wanted to nest in and become reclusive with my two young children."

Newspaper clippings of their children's achievements are taped to Rooney's refrigerator. Amber, a salutatorian at Hudson High, graduated cum laude from New York University. Kevin will graduate this month from Fordham, earning his bachelor's degree in less than four years, as his sister did.

"He did love them. He did love them," Bonnie says. "And I think they both knew it. I'm sure they both knew it."

"My niece, she keeps a distance," McLean says. "I think my nephew really thinks he can save him, I really do. ... Kevin will make a point of going over to visit his dad and call him on a regular basis, whereas not so with Amber. Amber will do the holidays; Amber has a very low tolerance to his drinking."

Neither of his children returned phone messages to comment for this story. a time in which pervades the heavyweight division, Rooney dreams of training its next great one, and if he had left Catskill as friends and family urged him, if he had opened a gym in New York City ...

"That was probably the most important decision in his life, staying in Catskill," Lott says. "No matter who passed away, no matter what relationships he had or didn't have, Kevin's choice was to stay in Catskill. If he had moved to a ghetto area in Brooklyn or Manhattan or the Bronx, he'd have had to turn guys away. In 10 years, he'd have had two or three champions. The numbers are on your side in the ghetto.

"No one's going to move to Catskill to box."

Few do, though Rooney is one of the few trainers schooled in D'Amato's peek-a-boo style, in which boxers use constant head movement and hold their gloves high, behind which they slip and weave and throw punches. He's esteemed enough that promoter Dino Duva and manager Ivalyo Gotzev earlier this year flew Rooney to Las Vegas, the home of their fighter Samuel Peter, the WBC's No. 1 heavyweight contender, to discuss Rooney possibly training him.

The night Rooney arrived, he had dinner and drinks with Duva and Gotzev, and they played blackjack. Rooney didn't get to meet Peter the next day, nor was he hired. Rooney says his drinking and conduct didn't influence their decision.

"He's got tremendous ability and talent as a trainer, but his problems have gotten in the way of him getting back to the top of the game," says Duva, a recovering drug addict. "That's stopped him and prevented him from getting back to the top again, but that's not to say it's too late." we stand in the gym, a wall that's plastered with newspaper stories on D'Amato and a sign that reads, CUS WE REMEMBER HIM WITH HONOR GRATITUDE RESPECT & LOVE, Rooney says, "If you were his friend, he'd be there forever. I miss Cus every day. Every day."

Rooney insists he doesn't have an alcohol problem and could quit drinking anytime he chooses. Many of the 17.6 million adult Americans who abuse alcohol or are alcoholic say that, too. How do alcoholics most often cope with their life-threatening disease? Through denial.

If Rooney regrets or is unhappy with his life, he denies that, too.

"I'm a happy person," he says, though he admits, when drinking, "I can be angry. I can be a little mean."

"Kevin's not a happy drunk," McLean said. "There's people that drink, they laugh, they tell you a joke. ... We figure he drinks to feel better, to forget. It must be the only way he can function. This way you don't have to dwell on all the negatives that are going on."

Rooney is asked how he can help young fighters drawn to his gym when he's unwilling to help himself.

"I may not be the greatest one," he replies, "but my door is open."

He is asked what Cus would think if he saw him at the gym slurring his words, his days full of missteps.

"I think he would help," Rooney replies, sounding wounded. "I don't think he would think any less of me."

But know this -- if Cus still ran the place, if he saw this Kevin Rooney, until he sought treatment and sobered up, the door would stay closed.

Brian Ettkin can be reached at 454-5457 or by e-mail at bettkin@timesunion.com.

[ross]

I have read that before and it makes a very interesting read

Kevin may not be the best trainer but what he is, is one of the last disciples left of the Damato system

This system is amazing, it is a system and not just a style, Buddy Mcgirt even said it after Mike trained with him for a week, he said

"I always thought Cus' system was all about the peek-a-boo style. But it's not. It's about positioning yourself to throw punches... and Mike does it VERY well. Mike is extremely gifted and it's incredible to watch him. The other day Mike and I were walking down the street and I told him 'Man, you know... you're Cus D'Amato's masterpiece!' Mike agreed with me, and told me that Cus told him that he's one fighter that he never would have to protect."


http://www.tysontalk.com/article-top...f97c62c43be3d8

[Lords Gym]

Bob Lee told told me.. " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"

[lloydster]

There is now doubt that the D'Amato system was "amazing" - however ONLY for short, explosive fighters like Tyson. It would never work with a tall fighter like Klitschko.

Rooney may be one of the last trainers of the D'Amato system (don't forget Teddy Atlas), but he has NOT been successful in "TEACHING" it. I see no evidence of the D'Amato system in Leonard Pierre, Vinny Paz, or any of his other fighters.

I recall watching Pierre-Pavlik on TV. Wally Matthews the announcer said "Leonard is a student of the D'Amato style... but what he's doing now ain't the D'Amato style. Far from it."