Howard Cosell once said that if he had a son who wanted to be a fighter he would want him to be trained by Angelo Dundee. Based on the dedicated, selfless job that he has done for WBC light heavyweight titlist Chad Dawson, Mike Criscio may fit that same description as a manager.
Criscio took over Chad?s management at a time when the young fighter was beset with promotional problems and came to him for help. Criscio helped Dawson, who was 17-0 at the time, get out of his contract and then guided him without compensation until just recently when Chad rose to prominence. When Criscio took over the managerial reins he put the word out to other promotional companies. Only one promoter got back to him – Gary Shaw.
To this day, Criscio doesn?t accept a management fee from new fighters making miniscule purses.
Criscio, now 41, understands the difficulties and temptations that young athletes encounter. As a young man in New Haven, Connecticut, he was a top nose guard highly recruited by Division 1 schools for their football programs. He was hit by a drunk driver, and then went to school in South Dakota for a year, then the University of Rhode Island.
This was in the mid eighties when the upstart USFL was trying to make inroads on the established NFL. An agent talked him into signing with the league?s Tampa Bay Bandits. Criscio recalled the agent telling him that he would get a $250,000 signing bonus and would ?be a fool not to take it.?
