Atlas: From the Streets to the Ring

Teddy Atlas knows boxing like no one else. In Atlas, Teddy recounts his incredible life, from juvenile delinquent on the mean streets of Staten Island in the 1970s, to his induction into the legendary Cus D'Amato's Boxing Camp and his first major challenge – training 14–year–old Mike Tyson.An amateur boxer trained by D'Amato, Atlas captured the Adirondack Golden Gloves title at 139 pounds in 1976. Forced out of competition because of injury, Teddy turned his talents to training fighters.His long list of charges have included many world champions past, present and future. Teddy trained future heavyweight champion Mike Tyson when Tyson was an amateur living in D'Amato's home in Catskill, New York. He trained featherweight champion Barry McGuigan, super bantamweight and super featherweight champion Tracy Patterson, super featherweight and lightweight champion Joey Gamache, welterweight champion Simon Brown and light heavyweight champion Donny Lalonde. In 1994, in a memorable performance as trainer and cornerman, Teddy inspired Michael Moorer to beat Evander Holyfield for the world heavyweight championship. Teddy has also employed his talents outside of the ring. He trained dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp for her successful comeback at age 42. He trained actor Willem Dafoe for his role as a boxer in the holocaust film "Triumph of the Spirit", and while on location in Poland, Teddy choreographed the film's boxing scenes and appeared as one of Dafoe's opponents. Teddy also choreographed fight scenes for the television series "Against the Law." And he appeared in the movies "Play it to the Bone" and "Only in America: The Don King Story." Atlas is the remarkable story of all of these achievements, told in Atlas's completely inimitable voice. As you'd expect from a boxing memoir, it pulls no punches.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.