Familiar Territory : Kevin Rooney Trains a Young Heavyweight in Catskill, but It’s Jeremy Williams

Cold winter winds blow up from the Hudson River. They sift around 10-year-old memories and echoes of a young heavyweight, on his way to being a champion.

When Mike Tyson came to this village as a 14-year-old in 1980, not many Catskill citizens paid much attention when they saw him doing early-morning roadwork along gravel roads. Just another street urchin Cus D’Amato had imported from New York.

Turning pro in 1984, Tyson’s career took off. He was a heavyweight champion at 20 and quickly earned millions. But today he sits in an Indiana prison cell, serving a six-year sentence for rape.

Now, comes another young Catskill heavyweight, running the same roadwork paths, training in the same cold, dark gym and listening to the same trainer.

Meet Jeremy Williams, the best young heavyweight you never heard of . . . yet.

Mike Tyson’s old Catskill gang has rallied around Williams, 20, who comes to Upstate New York from Long Beach Poly High.

Williams, who is 8-0 with six knockouts, is three weeks away from his first major match as a pro. On May 8 at Stateline, Nev., he meets another unbeaten heavyweight, Dannell Nicholson (9-0), on ABC.

Nicholson, from Chicago, was the heavyweight on last summer’s U.S. Olympic team. His loss by decision to eventual gold medalist Felix Savon of Cuba was one of the Olympic tournament’s most exciting bouts.

Williams is 6 feet 2, 210 pounds, and that alone is a surprise to people who watched him develop into a national amateur champion light-heavyweight in recent years.

He looked like a sure thing for the 1992 U.S. Olympic boxing team, but he came up one bout--and one temper tantrum--short.

At the Olympic trials tournament in Worcester, Mass., last June, he defeated another Southland light-heavyweight, Montell Griffin.

But Griffin, chosen as Williams’ most worthy challenger at the Olympic team boxoffs in Phoenix two weeks later, beat Williams twice on decisions to make the U.S. team.

In the interview tent after his second loss, Williams tipped over a table upon which rested a lectern and dozens of microphones and tape recorders. After a minute-long tirade against the people who run amateur boxing, he stalked out angrily.

“I went home to Long Beach and played basketball every day for about two weeks,” Williams said recently. “I cooled down. I still think I won both those Phoenix bouts (few others did), but that’s all in the past. I’m totally focused on trying to learn the pro game now.”

He is a fast learner, it seems.

THE TOWN

Catskill is near the site where Washington Irving’s fictional character, Rip Van Winkle, took his celebrated 20-year nap alongside the Hudson.

At various times, Catskill has been a women’s wear and machinery manufacturing center, a shipping point for apples and grapes and a summer resort, a kind of gateway to vacation sites in the Catskills.

It’s an old, somewhat scruffy town, dominated by turn-of-the-century homes. Downtown is about six blocks.

Perched over the Hudson, about 110 miles north of New York City, Catskill was settled by the Dutch in 1680.

Three hundred years later, Tyson came to town, which by then had 5,000 citizens.

And a decade before that, Cus D’Amato had arrived.

D’Amato was the New York trainer who had guided Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres to world championships in the 1950s and 1960s.

By 1980, when he was 72, D’Amato was semi-retired . . . until a counselor at an Upstate New York reform school called him.

Seems the Tryon School for Boys had a Brooklyn teen-ager named Tyson. The counselor recommended that D’Amato see him.

D’Amato brought Tyson to Catskill and watched him work in his gym, above the Catskill Police Department.

No tape recorders were present, but legend has it D’Amato said during that first workout: “Right there is a future heavyweight champion of the world.”

After winning the first of his three titles in 1986, Tyson was the undisputed world champion by the summer of 1987. But shortly after the 1988 fight against Michael Spinks, Tyson severed all ties to Catskill when he left trainer Kevin Rooney and his New York manager, Bill Cayton, for Don King.

D’Amato never lived to see any of it. He died in 1985.

He lies today in Catskill Cemetery, where the following is engraved on a brown granite headstone:

CONSTANTINE D’AMATO

1908-1985

“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.”

THE TRAINER

Kevin Rooney, who was Tyson’s trainer through his 1988 first-round knockout of Spinks, watched Williams whack a heavy bag so hard it rattled the chain from which it dangled.

Rooney, who once boxed for D’Amato, has changed Williams’ whirling, up-tempo, upright amateur boxing stance.

Now, as a young pro, he’s a puncher, operating from a coiled crouch and flat on his feet. His stance evokes power, not finesse. Punches are quick and short.

“Jeremy, move your head,” Rooney says. “You see what you just did? You threw that punch and didn’t move your head. Remember, on 95% of the punches you throw, the other guy’s going to be throwing a punch, too.

“The idea is to hit the guy and get out of there.”

Twelve years after Tyson arrived, this is how Jeremy Williams wound up in Catskill:

“I got a call from Steve Lott (an aide to Bill Cayton, Tyson’s former New York manger),” Rooney said.

“Jeremy’s dad (Charles Williams of Long Beach) had called Bill and talked about turning him pro. I told Steve I’d never heard of the kid, but that if he wanted me to, I’d take a look at him.”

Lott: “Bill sent Jeremy to Catskill last Sept. 15 to meet Kevin, to see if the two of them would hit it off.

“The plan was for Jeremy to be there three days, going through some workouts. At the end of the first day, Kevin called Bill and told him: ‘Bill, sign this kid.’ ”

Since then, it has been Team Williams and Rooney. Williams lives in Rooney’s Catskill home. On occasion, Williams has done his early-morning roadwork on the roads Tyson ran--Thorpe Road and Route 385, past the 1815 Thomas Cole house.

Rooney calls Williams more advanced as a rookie pro than Tyson, but not quite as hard a hitter.

“Experience-wise, there’s no comparison,” Rooney said.

“Mike had maybe 20 amateur fights when he turned pro. Jeremy’s had about 170 (Williams was 168-4 as an amateur).

“Jeremy’s been boxing since he was 7, so he has more ring presence and he’s more relaxed in there than Mike was at this stage.

“But Mike was a world champion at 20 years old. He was a tremendous puncher and had a lot of natural ring savvy. Mike threw three or four punches in a combination, Jeremy will throw seven or eight.

“I know this about Jeremy--when he steps into the ring to fight for the world championship, he’ll win it. He’ll be that prepared.”

Williams fought as a 178-pound amateur, “which was a mistake,” Rooney said.

“This kid should have been an amateur heavyweight. Keeping his weight down that low for so long retarded his natural growth.”

Rooney reveres D’Amato. Once, shortly after Cayton had signed Williams to a contract, Rooney said to his new fighter: “I believe Cus sent you to me, to show everyone what we could do.”

THE HEAVYWEIGHT

Starting in on his second jumbo cheeseburger, Williams talked about weight and strength. He agrees his drive to make the 1992 Olympic team should have been at heavyweight, not light-heavyweight.

“Between amateur competitions the last two years, my walking-around weight was 198-200,” he said.

“I trained in rubber suits and sweats all the time. When I was an amateur, I could bench press maybe 205 pounds. Now, I can do 315 pounds and I can squat 460.”

Williams had a glass-chin rap in the later stages of his amateur career, the result of being knocked out at a USA-USSR dual meet in San Jose two years ago and also at the 1990 Goodwill Games.

“I just got countered, that’s all,” Williams said.

“I used to over-punch, and I was wide open when I missed. Now, I’ve shortened up on my punches.”

And he has listening to Rooney, whose trademark as a trainer (Rooney also handles junior-middleweight Vinny Pazienza) is head movement.

“The reason Mike Tyson got to be so great so quickly is not just because of his punching power,” Lott said. “It’s because no one could hit him. Kevin had him moving his head after every punch.

“Look at the videos of Mike’s fights after he left Kevin and you’ll see he got hit more in his last few fights than he had for all of the early years of his career.”

Williams’ manager, Cayton, owns the world’s largest collection of boxing films. Occasionally, Williams watches the old masters at Cayton’s office in Manhattan.

A recent discovery: Joe Louis.

“I’m fascinated by him,” Williams said.

“He was a great puncher, yet he was a perfect gentleman in the way he beat you. He’d knock you down, look at you for a second, then turn around and walk slowly back to his corner.

“He had kind of a regal air about him. Very classy.”

Williams’ amateur career was so long, he continually runs into former opponents--even in Catskill.

On one of his first days in the town, he approached a fast-food counter, where the server did a double take.

“Aren’t you Jeremy Williams?” the man asked.

“Yeah, who’re you?” Williams said.

“Don’t you remember?” said Harold Wilburn, onetime U.S. Navy boxer. “You kicked my . . . in San Diego, in 1989.”