"To get back to what you were saying about Mike, it's so political behind the scenes with the different management and different promoters. Don King is a crook and always has been a crook. He's always made money for himself only. Some of the other guys aren't that bad. They're not flawless, but they're not that bad. King was just out for King and he grabbed on to the title with the heavyweights...Don King charged Larry Holmes $8.5 million dollars expenses, management and promotional fees. The promoter is not supposed to make any money like that," stated Kevin Rooney, renowned former trainer of Mike Tyson, as he spoke candidly about events that happened behind the scenes during the careers of legendary fighters like Tyson, Larry Holmes and Vinny Paz. You don't want to miss what else he had to say as he takes a walk down memory lane and discusses the difference in boxing today. Check it out!
PC: How have you been doing Kevin?
KR: I'm doing good.
PC: Are there any fighters you're working with right now that we should look out for?
KR: I have a kid, Jay Krupp, out of New Orleans and he's been working with me since he was 15 and he's 23 now. He's 12-1. He should be 13-0, but you know how the boxing game is. He is a welterweight right now, but he has a frame
but he's 23 now so maybe he's done growing. I would imagine eventually he will become a junior middleweight or a middleweight. There are a lot of people out there right now that's like 19-0, but they really haven't fought nobody. This kid has been in sparring with some real professional fighters. He has potential and he has a lot of energy. He wants to see it happen. Sometimes
well you know how fighters are; they go too fast sometimes so I gotta slow him down. His next fight is supposed to be mid-October. It's a 6-round main event. He fought down in New Orleans a couple of months ago and the place sold out. It fits 1,500 and the place sold out; standing room only.
PC: I'm about 15 minutes away from New Orleans so I'll have to check him out.
KR: Okay, yeah his dad is a fireman down there so he's popular down there in New Orleans. The fact that he is from New Orleans, you know, we were offered an ESPN fight against a guy that was 19-0, but I was like, "Let's wait a little bit here." His next fight is a 6-round fight and then his next 2 may be 8 round fights. I would like to see him get about 3 8-round fights. If we can pull that off and fight once a month
New Orleans still needs help so there's always different shows and all of that going on and whatnot down there. I can see him getting another off-TV fight and then ESPN.
PC: So you want to gradually move him up the ladder?
KR: Exactly! When I look at the whole boxing game right now, it's in disarray right now. It's going in all kinds of different direction. I blame the amateur boxing program. They changed the rules and got Americans fighting like Europeans. We're using the same rules that the Europeans use. I was in the hunt for the 1976 Olympic Team. I lost to Clint Jackson in the semifinals out in Vegas and what I'm saying is that that was the last team where everybody was there; the Russians, everybody, and we walked away with 5 gold medals, 2 silvers and a bronze or vice versa. I don't really remember, but Sugar Ray Leonard came out of that. Aaron Pryor I believe came out of that. I don't even think we got any medals this year.
PC: We got one bronze medal out of it.
KR: That shows you that the amateur association is wrong. They should go back to
people don't want to see guys just running and tapping. They want to see aggressive guys that are throwing body shots. What do you need 2 out of 3 guys punching a computer button for? That's total nonsense. We're not in a space tunnel or something. This is boxing and you have to get 3 competent judges looking at who is making the fight and being aggressive. They should do away with this point system. Whoever is making the fight at the end of 3 rounds should win the fight. I don't care if some guy is slapping him with 50 jabs that don't mean nothing because if you're slapping him 50 times and he's still coming forward, that means he has no power anyway. Politics and certain people in the committee
I don't know what it is, but it needs to be cleaned up. We need to go back to the old Wild Wild West way, but with the rules that we have a referee controlling everything; not a referee jumping in and counting and giving a guy numerous warnings. Who want to see that? They interfere with the fight more than anything. I'm not paying $10, $20 or $100 to see the referee like he's the star. I come to see 2 guys fight.
PC: The game is so different now. When you trained Mike Tyson, when fans went to a Tyson fight, they knew what they could expect. We don't have that in the heavyweight division now. Is that surprising to you that we don't have an American heavyweight that stands out?
KR: Definitely! Again, and the way I look at it, I was blessed to be around Cus D'Amato for 10 years. When you're around a guy like Cus D'Amato, who was a genius in the sport, he knew how to break it right down. It's hard for me and I got pissed off like 5 or 10 years ago. I had a kid who was a heavyweight and he was in tournaments and knocking guys out and he was in the finals I think it was and he beat this kid all up and they gave the fight to the other guy and I was pissed. I said I don't need to be around this no more because I'm going to go crazy, but then again, I'm looking for the right guy that can help me. The best way to get a real fighter is to get a young kid, a kid that's like 10 or 11 years old, and you want to put him in tournaments; win, lose or draw. I tell kids, "Listen, when you fight, don't let it go to the scorecards. Go out there and knock somebody out." The heavyweight I had was doing that and of course you run into some opposition that you can't knockout, but you can still beat him. It's like they gave the other guy credit for not getting knocked out, but he was taking a beating.
To get back to what you were saying about Mike, it's so political behind the scenes with the different management and different promoters. Don King is a crook and always has been a crook. He's always made money for himself only. Some of the other guys aren't that bad. They're not flawless, but they're not that bad. King was just out for King and he grabbed on to the title with the heavyweights. Mike Tyson came and cleaned up boxing because of Cus. Cus died when he was 11-0. I had been working with Mike since 1982. I was working his corner and that was my job. I told Mike, "Let's make Cus' prediction come true of becoming the youngest heavyweight champion." And he did. He beat everybody that they put out there and every fighter that he beat, with the exception of Michael Spinks, was a Don King controlled fighter. I may be wrong about 1 or 2 of them. When he started his run and we entered that 8-field tournament, they were trying to have one heavyweight champion. Don King figured he controlled all of the heavyweights so he had nothing to worry about. Mike came on the scene, entered that tournament and knocked out Trevor Berbick, Smith and Pinklon Thomas and then beat Tony Tucker. At that point, he was the youngest heavyweight ever. Then Butch Lewis had Michael Spinks, who had beaten Larry Holmes, the true heavyweight champion, and then we beat Spinks and Larry Holmes. Larry Holmes got a shot at the title because he had been the reigning champ for so long and there was controversy in his fight with Spinks with some people wondering if Spinks really won that fight. So they let Larry Holmes in there and Larry shouldn't have fought Tyson because Tyson was too strong and too fast for Larry and it was tragic. Here is the thing that I've never talked about to anybody. I was told by management that Larry Holmes was getting $3.2 million and Mike was getting $3.1 million. An important person to me in the group said that was the most money Larry Holmes had ever made. I said, "What are you talking about? When he fought Gerry Cooney, he got $10 million. They both got $10 million." The person looked at me and said, "Kevin, this is the most money that Larry Holmes has ever made." So I just shut my mouth. And then I found out later through the grapevine and here and there that it's factual
Don King charged Larry Holmes $8.5 million dollars expenses, management and promotional fees. The promoter is not supposed to make any money like that. He makes his money off of the PPVs and TV, but whoever was managing Holmes, I believe it was Don's son Karl or Richard, one of them, but they were all flunkies for King. They were making money with King and they were all satisfied. This is the thing, they were advertising that Holmes was getting $10 million so he should have walked away with no less than $6 million and he walked away with about $1.5 million and he probably had to pay trainers after that. He probably was lucky if he walked away with a million dollars, but he never said nothing. That's some stuff from the past and I never put that out there until now.
PC: Knowing the product that you put out there when you had Mike, was it difficult for you to watch his last 3 or so fights?
KR: I could sit through his fights, but it goes back even further. When he fought Douglas, I could see that he was in trouble. I could see that he wasn't in shape. Here is the other side of it. I look at it like, "Mike took a beatin'." I don't think any other fighter would have taken a beating like that. Maybe Muhammad Ali would have, Joe Frazier or Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, but then that's it. I don't think Jack Dempsey would have been able to take that beating and Buster was in great shape. Buster had a lot of talent, but he was promoted by Don King so there's your answer. How come this guy never developed? Well there's your answer.
PC: You were on the inside so I have to ask you. Everyone has their own speculation about what was Mike's downfall. What did you see as his downfall?
KR: The beginning was being married to Robin Givens. That started the spiral. Then they stepped in and they saw
when Mike fought in Japan, not Douglas, but Tubbs, and the women were there and Jimmy had gotten sick, the fact that Jimmy died was a big blow to Mike. That hurt him much more emotionally than he ever let people believe. Because now when Jimmy died, he had already married Robin and booze got way involved. They were playing a scam on Mike. It's hard for me to say. Either Mike didn't see it coming or he just didn't care.
PC: Do you have any heavyweights now?
KR: I have a lot of things going on. I have to go to Chicago. I have a mouthpiece out to Israel to find a real heavyweight because there has never been a heavyweight champion from Israel. My idea is to promote him and bring all of the attention and the fighting going on. Let's put it into the ring, an Israeli heavyweight and a Muslim heavyweight, and line them up. Let them fight it out and whoever wins, let's create peace in the country. It's an idea I've been thinking about for a while.
PC: If you could work with any fighter, past or present, who would it be?
KR: Wow! To tell you the truth, I would rather work with a kid that I started, like Cus did. That was Cus' doing. Everything that I teach, I learned from Cus. I probably don't teach it as well as Cus because I'm a lot younger than he was. When I first started coming around in 1975, Cus was 66 years old. I had just won the New York City Golden Gloves. I had a federal job at a hospital on Staten Island. I had already figured if I stayed on the job, I would be the boss because my boss had started off doing what I was doing. I was making decent money back in '74-'75. I was making $4.75 an hour, which carried a little weight at that time, but my point is if I would have stuck with it, I would have been a supervisor at some point and could be retired from a federal job. But I won the Golden Gloves and I asked them for a one year leave of absence and they said no so I had to make a decision right then and there and I did that. I came up here and I was under Cus' tutelage for 10 years.
I worked with Vinny Paz. I helped bring him back when everyone thought he was done. He fought Roy Jones and made more money than Roy Jones. They never should have stopped that fight. It was only 3 seconds left in that round. Vinny would have got out of the round and you never know what would have happened because Vinny was a real tiger. It's been like that since the '80's. The referee is in much more command and they say it's to save the fighter, but that's nonsense because Cus used to talk about how guys would get knocked down 6 or 7 times and still have the will to win. Those were real fighters and that's what we're missing. That's why Europe has taken over the heavyweight title because these guys are 7-foot, strong and they throw a lot of jabs, but all you need is a Mike Tyson, Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis or a Muhammad Ali and Ali would dance circles around these guys in his prime. Ali had a ton of heart and most people never give him the recognition for that either. Right now, we have no heavyweights and I blame the amateur association because they develop garbage. But you have to look at the big picture. It's a lot of kids growing up today with one parent, mostly their mother, and they don't even know their father. It's like the whole world is going crazy and Cus said that to me back in 1980. He said the whole world was going crazy and now I can see what he's talking about. There is no respect; kids are cursing at each other and they're cursing at you. Someone is babysitting a kid and I'm around, they just start telling me to shut up so I say, "Listen, you don't talk like that." I told my friends that kid needs a beating and if they curse, they need soap in their mouth. That's a lost tradition. I remember reading a few years ago some kid sued their father for hitting him and the kid won. How can you tell a parent that you can't spank your kid? How can a kid get a lawyer and take his father to court? It's crazy!
PC: I appreciate your time. It was definitely a history lesson speaking with you. Is there anything you want to say to close out the interview?
KR: No. Just watch out for Jay Krupp. He will be fighting on October 11th in Cutoff, Louisiana. They're still seeking an opponent, but he's a tough kid and he's good-looking so when you see him, you wouldn't think he's a fighter, but he fights better once he gets hit. He has a great chin and like I said, his look doesn't fit his fighting style and his toughness. He's my main guy right now. Thank you for the interview.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]