Tyson’s Manager Angrily Delivers a Low Blow : Tells News Conference That Biggs’ Camp Called Own Fighter a ‘Mental Case’

Prefight publicity, which historically acknowledges no depths of propriety, may nevertheless have reached a new low Wednesday when Mike Tyson’s manager breached a trust, at the very least, and revealed that Tyrell Biggs’ camp privately tagged their own fighter a “mental case.”

The press conference for Friday night’s heavyweight title fight--attended by Biggs, who was hearing this for the first time--quickly lapsed into something of a profane free-for-all, replete with obscene denials and desperate lunges for the microphone.

Not even Don King, promoter of record and master of ceremonies, could re-establish any semblance of decorum. Of course, he didn’t try real hard.

“Oh, my,” King said, obviously delighted. “This is very good. Very good. “

Biggs’ manager, Lou Duva, who was wrestling for the microphone at the time, shot back: “Sit down and be quiet. You’re nothing but Tyson’s chauffeur anyway.” King clasped his strange head in surprise.

Then, regaining his formidable powers of speech, King interrupted Duva and said, “Thou doth protesteth too much.”

Answered Duva, also in phony Shakespearean English, the language of the day: “Thou art full of too much (excrement).”

All of King’s press conferences, if he can help it, sink to just this level of confused burlesque. But hardly ever are they occasioned by anything genuinely controversial. Most such outbursts are precision-orchestrated, as spontaneous as the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.

This was different. It was real and, even for boxing, ugly.

It began with a routine performance by Duva who, reading from some notes, attacked the heavyweight champion’s camp for going ahead and scheduling a defense against Larry Holmes for January. He thought that presumptuous.

“If they want to schedule a comeback fight for January, that’s their business,” the aggrieved Duva said.

Duva, gaining a little momentum, then began addressing Tyson directly, telling him what would happen when Biggs got through with him.

“Don’t be confused,” Duva told Tyson. “Tyrell Biggs has looked forward to fighting you. . . . He’s gonna teach you something that you’ve never been taught before or something that you haven’t taken time to learn. Who’s to blame? You’ll have to figure it out yourself.”

It was all very routine and harmless. Tyson stared absently into space through it all.

But Tyson’s co-manager, the very proper Jimmy Jacobs, appeared to blanch on the dais when Duva wondered aloud whether Tyson’s handlers would have to answer for their fighter’s incomplete education.

Jacobs got up and walked down the dais to the seat of Shelly Finkel, one of Biggs’ managers. “I am going to annihilate Lou for what he’s done,” he said, although Lou hadn’t done anything extraordinary up to that point.

Then, when it was his turn to speak, an uncharacteristically inflamed Jacobs said that he had asked Finkel “to control Lou Duva.” Since that condition was not met to Jacobs’ satisfaction, he said it was fair to divulge the following:

“About eight months ago, the managerial team of Tyrell Biggs came to me and told me they had a mental case on their hands--that he disappears, that an unfortunate thing happened.

“They told me there was no way HBO (Home Box Office) would accept a (Renaldo) Snipes or (David) Bey as opponents for Tyrell Biggs. Would it be humanly possible for me to get them as opponents for Tyrell Biggs as they were the men, the only two men, Tyrell Biggs was capable of beating?

“(Co-manager Bill) Cayton and I did everything we could and through our good offices with HBO got those opponents. They thanked me profusely and reiterated to me, ‘We don’t know about this kid.’ ”

That struck many as a low blow, especially surprising in that it was delivered by Jacobs, who has often lent dignity to boxing.

Said Duva later: “If there was a referee up there, he would have deducted two points.”

Certainly what Jacobs did, in telling an opposing fighter that his own management had privately expressed doubts about him, went beyond accepted press conference norms.

“It was a cheap shot of cheap shots,” said Dan Duva, Lou’s son and Biggs’ promoter. “An act of a desperate man.”

Also, a lie, Biggs’ camp maintained.

“I never met with him,” Lou Duva said.

Dan, who admitted that they had accepted Jacobs’ help in dealing with HBO, said he’s had maybe three conversations with Jacobs in his life, none of them about his fighter’s psychological leanings.

Finkel, a friend of Jacobs, likewise denied ever saying anything about Biggs’ mental condition to Jacobs.

“Of course,” Dan said, “when you’re negotiating, you don’t go in and tell the other manager what a monster your own fighter is. You always emphasize your fighter’s weaknesses.”

Still, he said, they would never say anything like that about Biggs, a fragile character who three years ago underwent treatment for cocaine addiction and who even now calls himself a “recovering addict.”

Said Biggs, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist who fell prey to his own success: “If that makes me a mental case, then that’s your opinion. All I know is I haven’t had any drug or alcohol in three years.”

Biggs appeared to be barren ground, if Jacobs was meaning to plant a seed of self-doubt. He shrugged the whole performance off.

Everybody else had a lot to say about it, though.

Jacobs defended his repeating something that presumably was said in confidence, citing Lou Duva’s “contemptible demeanor” at the lectern. Still, he did not single out any one thing as particularly offensive.

“They could not disparage my fighter without me revealing that,” he said. “The last thing in the world I wanted to do was say anything detrimental, but when they attack Mike Tyson, I cannot sit still. I did it because my fighter expected me to.”

Jacobs didn’t think it was that damaging a revelation, anyway. And soon Jacobs, the country’s pre-eminent boxing historian, was comparing this press conference to the great ones. It turns out he collects film of press conferences, as well.

“Do you remember the Ali-Liston press conference, when Ali held up a picture of Liston and put a fist through it?” he asked. “Or the Ali-Frazier one, when Ali started hitting that rubber gorilla? This one will fit well with those.”

As emotions cooled, the affair was apparently being entered into history, no harm done. Biggs’ camp was even claiming a psychological victory, saying Jacobs’ rash act indicates a failure of nerve. King was ecstatic, envisioning the next day’s free publicity.

For perspective, however, hear the words of young Mike Tyson who, given his turn to speak, calmly said: “This press conference has been entertaining but distasteful.”

With that, he was gone, at least his dignity intact.