The ‘Willie bag’, tinted with the dark leather of thousands of gloves and tightly wound by duct tape wrapped around a thick, vertical, blue metal structure, remains one of the smelting devices. volume of Cus D’Amato. The numbers are still there, just showing: first. Left hook, 2. Right hook, 3. Cut top left, and such.
D’Amato’s gym in the Catskills, New York, isn’t quite the hub for professional boxers it used to be – in fact, it’s far from it. But the training methods imparted by the great legends continue for boxing enthusiasts do dripping through the door. Wooden planks pop out at almost dangerous angles, the very board that 13-year-old Mike Tyson will use to constantly strengthen his abs. The stories of a troubled teenager Brownsville would take us many pages to read, but he’s so far away now. And so, the dust gathered.
It wasn’t Tyson, or D’Amato’s other great champions Floyd Patterson or Jose Torres, whose combinations were thunderous and furious with the sound of their teachers’ voices. That is Feifilimia, or ‘Fei’ Faiva (5-0-1, 3KOs), a 19-year-old woman born in American Samoa, but recently living in New York, is just minutes from the gym. Listening to her ear-piercing punches without seeing her stature will set you down a very different spiritual path. She rushes like a truck but stands only 5 feet 2 inches, greeting you with a gentle smile.
“I’m reading a book at the moment, it’s called ‘Thanks for your response.’ I’m learning to take certain feedback constructively; I’m learning how to respond to certain types of feedback and to make sure I benefit from them,” explained Faiva, when asked how she spent her downtime. She is calm, laid-back and well-spoken, talking about her dogs and how they take up any additional space during a busy schedule. However, the past weeks have been difficult due to the apparent conflict between the previous and current management.
“Currently, I’m trying to deal with my training situation. I wasn’t able to train with the coach I wanted because there were some business issues that didn’t go right. I’ll still be fighting out of the same gym at the Catskills, the Cus D’Amato Boxing Gym; will still have the same coach, so nothing will really change. My former manager was the one who looked down on and oversaw the gym. When I left him and signed with another manager, [now] We have a business relationship. I have to pay, and the rate here for a professional is $100 [per day], or $45 per hour. I don’t have that ability.”
The teenager was introduced to the dark business darkness of boxing much earlier than anticipated. Her last fight – and only one this year – was in August, when she beat Elizabeth Tuani in four rounds. Before? Faiva’s first five competitions were held in less than three months, from September to December 2020.
For a young woman who isn’t currently working to focus on her career, being active will be the key to her future. But her introduction to boxing was unusual, and coincidentally featured Mike Tyson, appearing unknowingly as a co-star. When her family moved from the tiny South Pacific territory, Faiva was nine years old, and they settled first in Arkansas, then moved to the United States to be near her mother’s therapist, Ms. remember as printed. After their first three years in the South, Memphis, Tennessee, and a pair of boxing gloves are picked up with nerve plots from a small plot of land in their neighborhood.
“Outside the apartment we were living in at the time, there was a bunch of people walking past,” explained the potential customer, dubbed “Lady Tyson.” “I know them because I am friends with their sisters, but one of them asked me if I wanted to put on gloves. They had two pairs of gloves and he asked, do I want to try and fight? It’s not a fight I hate this person, I don’t know much about them. At the time, we were boxing on a lawn, not on concrete or cement, and I just remember the other person saying, ‘Get started.’
“I remember going through these punches, going forward, and the first thing I thought of was: ‘Just chase him!’ So I did, and I can feel these punches [landing] on my head, but then I felt contact while I was being hit and I hit him back at the same time. He started to distance himself, away from me, and eventually he ran away and said, ‘I’m done, I don’t want anymore.’ ”
“Later, when my grandfather heard about this, at first he felt worried for me, and also proud of me. It got him talking about Mike Tyson, and I got to see a different side of him. I never knew that he had heard of any fighters. We got to this point in conversation where he was so excited, he said I could be a champion, and that’s it. [Tyson] is the fighter he admires the most. “That’s it; the seed has been planted.
When her grandfather asked more about Tyson, Faiva dug deeper, researching the heavyweight icon’s recent activity and training facilities, updating her grandfather and letting him know that it was, Mike Tyson is still very much alive and has gyms dedicated to fighting training the way he was taught by D’Amato years ago. One such gym was near Faiva’s Memphis family home, which eventually led her to the Catskill Mountains.
“I knew immediately [this was my style]. I was baffled just looking at the way Mike fought. His style, the way he fights, I’m fascinated by it all. I met him, and I was totally nervous! I don’t even know how to respond to him. That’s my reaction when he walks around the gym; he just stared at everything, the newspapers taped to the wall. I thought, ‘What is he observing?’ Literally everything on the wall is about him, so what is it? I was wondering what was on his mind, you know…”
The suggestion that the wall pieces, framed artefacts of another time, may have brought Tyson back to his youth seems very fitting for Faiva. She’s at the beginning of an incredibly difficult journey that, while standing opposite, is one of the sport’s biggest-ever superstars – but they all start in the same place. They understand what it feels like to punch those pads with scribbled marker numbers as makeshift body parts, and to see the dust release for breath from the apron around each fleeting jump. , skip and jump.
This is not doing things easily, by any measure; it wasn’t then, it’s not now. The tired look of Cus D’Amato Boxing Gym reflects the work that’s been done over the decades – it doesn’t stop here.
Faiva has broad goals and speaks many times about legacy. Watching her highlights on YouTube and on her social media platforms, it is very clear that she possesses the defiance and belligerent nature to match her peek-a-boo style. D’Amato, although he sounds a bit calm and timid at times. Women’s boxing is a far more shallow exploration, and the roads to the top can be sped up by political shortcuts. But that’s not what she wanted.
“I want to feel like I really deserve to be recognized for my achievements. I knew that the only way I could really do that was not just to fight the big names, but to beat them in a fan-friendly way. That is my vision. The first thing that comes to mind is I want people to say I’m an asshole. A bad ass. And that I’ve fought every top dog by the age of 130, and I’ve definitely put on a show. Occasionally, I have post-workout moments where I just sit down on a couch and just look around. Suddenly, this thought [would come into my head], I would reflect, like, ‘Can you believe this?’ I’m here, he’s sitting on the same bench that I’m sitting on. Nothing has really changed in the gym.”
“Boxing is not all about physicality. There is definitely a huge mental aspect to this game. I’m not worried about it because I’ve prepared myself mentally. Whatever happens, I’m ready to accept it. I will not accept a bad situation; I will try to strive for change. I saw the kind of career I wanted to create for myself, and I wanted that. ”
