Cus D Amato Quotes

The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.

No matter what anyone says, no matter the excuse or explanation, whatever a person does in the end is what he intended to do all along.

(Quoting Cus D'Amato) Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.

To see a man beaten not by a better opponent but by himself is a tragedy.

MIKE WOULD LIKE TO THANK: Cus D’Amato, my mentor, friend, and general. Because of you, my life has reached heights I could never have imagined. Without you, I don’t know where I would be today. My gratitude to you is immeasurable.

The way that you direct your imagination is by repeating a simple affirmation. “‘EVERY DAY, IN EVERY WAY, I AM GETTING BETTER AND BETTER.’ This

Cus talked with such enthusiasm because enthusiasm is contagious and people will do things when they get enthused.

Fear is a friend of exceptional people.

There are animals disguised as human beings out here, you are not sophisticated enough to decipher the two." Cus D'Amato

The ability to do what needs to be done regardless of the pressure and do it with poise, with no reflection of his inner feeling or conflict if it exists, is what makes a professional. It has nothing to do with their knowledge. I’ll show you many amateurs with far superior knowledge and ability than top professionals.

A boy comes to me with a spark of interest, I feed the spark and it becomes a flame. I feed the flame and it becomes a fire. I feed the fire and it becomes a roaring blaze.

Friendship is an intercourse of world. Mike Tyson became a friend of “Cus” D’Amato, and it took him from fighting on the street and going to prison to fighting in a ring for money.

As Cus said ‘the physical part of boxing is so minor, that most people would never believe it or accept it. Because, in my opinion, the mind and emotion is about 75% of boxing’.

It is common knowledge but uncommonly practised, that what you think is what you are. A fighter is the sum of his thoughts that occupy his mind on a daily basis. If a fighter decides to actively allow negative thoughts to run rampant in his mind, he will be operating from a negative mental zone.

the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help to temper negative emotions. And while all this might seem of purely academic interest, it could prove helpful when your partner breaks his leg at 19,000 feet in a blizzard on a Peruvian mountain. It is not a lack of fear that separates elite performers from the rest of us. They’re afraid, too, but they’re not overwhelmed by it. They manage fear. They use it to focus on taking correct action. Mike Tyson’s trainer, Cus D’Amato, said, “Fear is like fire. It can cook for you. It can heat your

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN FEAR AND COURAGE “I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.” —CUS D’AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER

I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.” —CUS D’AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER When

I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being [cowardly] and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is [cowardly] refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.

As Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer, Cus D’Amato, had once said, the only difference between the hero and the coward was what they did with their fear. Everyone felt it, but the strong simply refused to give in to it.

Cus D’Amato, who trained Mike Tyson, said emotions, particularly anger, are like fire. They can cook your food and keep you warm, or they can burn your house down. Many great athletes use anger in a positive way. Anger motivates them. Anger steels their resolve. It is much better to become angry than to become afraid.

When the fighter decides he has the potential to be a great champion, he must understand that this alone isn’t actually enough for him to realise great success. The most important factor that will command results is action, not desire or belief alone. Being a champion means to be a leader and actively take control of your life. A champion isn’t someone who wants and wishes. The wants and wishes are simply the engines, which fuels the mileage of action for years until you get to the destination that was initially so far away. The problem for many fighters who do not realise their potential is that they lack this knowledge that there is a process to becoming a champion, and this process requires great enormous amounts of action.

Boxing is a contest of character and ingenuity. The boxer with more will, determination, desire, and intelligence is always the one who comes out the victor.

Cus would often say, discipline is the ability to ‘do what needs to be done, even when you do not feel like doing it’.

It is easier to get up early in the morning for a run when you shift your focus from how you feel about doing it, to understand that it needs to be done regardless of how you feel. Live by the ‘why’ of what you’re doing, as opposed to whether you feel like doing it.

Belief in yourself is about having a high sense of self-worth, believing that you are of enough quality to attract positive results. You must know that there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to get the things that you want out of life, and in the ring.

When the novice throws punches and nothing happens, and his opponent keeps coming at him, the new fighter becomes panicky. When he gets panicky he wants to quit, but he can’t quit because his whole psychology from the time he’s first been in the streets is to condemn a person who’s yellow. So what does he do? He gets tired.” “This is what happens to fighters in the ring. They get tired. They get tired, because they’re getting afraid. Now that he gets tired, people can’t call him yellow. He’s just too “tired” to go on. But let that same fighter strike back wildly with a visible effect on the opponent and suddenly that tired, exhausted guy becomes a tiger. It’s a psychological fatigue, that’s all it is. But people in boxing don’t understand that.

I tell them the first time they’re going to fight, the night before they probably won’t sleep. I can’t offer them any consolidation other than the fact that the other guy went through the same thing, and when they get down to the fight and enter the dressing-room, especially if they’re in an amateur fight, the room is full of possible opponents, because they don’t know who they’re going to fight, and everybody looks calm, confident and smiling and all the new boy is aware of is that terrible thump in his chest, and he’s intimidated by their attitude and their confidence. What he doesn’t realize is that they look at him and they see the same thing in him as he sees in them, because by an exercise of discipline he also puts on a superficial appearance of confidence…We go on now into the ring. Half the time they’re walking when they go down to the ring as though they’re going to the gallows. So when they climb those stairs, I never call a fighter yellow. Knowing what he goes through, the very act of climbing into that ring stamps him a person of courage and discipline. When two men step into the ring, one and only one deserves to win. When you step into the ring, you gotta know you deserve to win. You gotta know destiny owes you victory , cause you trained harder than your opponent. You sparred harder. You ran farther.

Cus D’Amato, Mike Tyson’s legendary first trainer, famously said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.” —CUS D’AMATO, LEGENDARY BOXING TRAINER

It is not a lack of fear that separates elite performers from the rest of us. They’re afraid, too, but they’re not overwhelmed by it. They manage fear. They use it to focus on taking correct action. Mike Tyson’s trainer, Cus D’Amato, said, “Fear is like fire. It can cook for you. It can heat your house. Or it can burn you down.” And Tyson himself said that fear was “like a snap, a little snap of light I get when I fight. I love that feeling. It makes me feel secure and confident, it suddenly makes everything explosive. It’s like: ‘Here it comes again. Here’s my buddy today.’” It’s a dangerous place to be, too. Control can easily slip away, as Tyson’s unusual behavior will attest.