Boxing : If You Ask Tyson, He’d Rather Fight Than Talk

Steve Lott, heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s assistant manager, said Friday that under certain conditions, he would make his guy a favorite over King Kong.

“Mike’s at his best when we first go to training camp,” he said.

“The part about boxing he likes the least is all the interviews, the promotional part of it. He’d rather just walk into a gym off the street and fight someone. So, when we first get to training camp, he’s got all kinds of enthusiasm.

“Let me put it this way: If we drive (from New York City) up to the Catskills to our little gym, Mike suits up and goes into the ring and sees King Kong in the other corner with gloves on, I’d make Mike a slight favorite.”

Lott said he expects Tyson to weigh between 228 and 230 when he begins training late this month for the battle with Michael Spinks June 27.

“Mike has no trouble getting to his fighting weight, around 218-220,” he said. “The extra 10 pounds is gone in two weeks.”

Four weeks is about average for a Tyson training camp. For his last seven fights, Lott said, the longest was 4 weeks 3 days for Tony Tubbs, the shortest 3 weeks 4 days for Larry Holmes.

Spinks and his manager, Butch Lewis, will split the $13.5 million that Spinks is guaranteed for the Tyson fight. And apparently, the Hilton Nevada Corp. intends to try to extract some of Lewis’ half from him.

When Lewis pulled Spinks out of Don King’s heavyweight unification tournament at the Las Vegas Hilton last year, Hilton Nevada, which owns the Las Vegas Hilton, sued him.

At the time, Las Vegas Hilton chairman John Giovenco said: “If I have anything to say about it, Butch Lewis will be in court for a long, long time.”

The trial has been set for July 25, with a pretrial hearing scheduled for July 8.

Virgil Hill, the WBA light-heavyweight champion who will fight Ramzi Hassan on the Thomas Hearns-Iran Barkley card at the Las Vegas Hilton June 6, won the unofficial “reddest face” award at the 1984 Olympic Games boxing tournament.

Hill, the U.S. middleweight who went on to win a silver medal, made a big deal about being from North Dakota at the Olympics. Whenever he entered the ring, on worldwide television, he waved a North Dakota flag.

His “See North Dakota!” message irked some Olympic tournament officials, who asked him to knock it off. The flag waving stopped, but in the interview room, at his post-bout interviews, Hill continued telling the media what a fabulous place North Dakota was.

At one session, Hill said the governor of North Dakota had personally presented him with the state flag he’d been waving in the ring.

One reporter, who was actually writing it all down, asked: “Virgil, who is the governor of North Dakota.”

Hill grew silent. Then he got red in the face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know his name.”

Boxing Notes

Lindell Holmes, the U.S. Boxing Assn.’s super-middleweight champion, and Stevie Darnell are the headliners in Monday night’s bouts at the Forum. Holmes, with a 35-4-1 record and 33 knockouts, is rated No. 2 by the WBA, No. 7 by the WBC. Darnell has a 25-1-1 record. Preliminary bouts will begin at 6:30. Two Stroh’s tournament super-bantamweight bouts are also scheduled: Robert Shannon, 5-2-2, vs. Sweet Irving Mitchell, 32-7, and Alberto Mercado, 29-7, vs. Paul Banke, 12-3.

There is no date or site yet, but Don King says Mexico’s Julio Cesar Chavez will fight countryman Jose Luis Ramirez in August, in a WBC-WBA lightweight title unification bout. Chavez is 57-0, Ramirez 102-5, and most recently the winner in a disputed decision over Pernell Whitaker in Paris. . . . Johnny Du Plooy, South Africa’s white heavyweight prospect, said he’ll box next in the United States. He scored a 2-round knockout of Mike Weaver in Sun City, South Africa, last weekend. Du Plooy’s manager said his fighter has a June 25 date with Tim Witherspoon in Atlantic City.

Gerry Cooney and his former manager, Dennis Rappaport, say they will hold their second boxing show in Atlantic City June 26, the night before Tyson-Spinks . . . .Boxers took the first four spots in Sport magazine’s 100 highest-paid athletes list for 1987. In order, they were Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tyson and Spinks. Hagler earned the top spot for one fight, the $15 million he earned against Leonard. The only other boxer on the list was Cooney, in 38th, for the $1,666,667 he earned for getting knocked out by Spinks. Tyson will move to No. 1 for 1988. He started out with $10 million from the Japanese for the Tony Tubbs fight, he’ll earn about $20 million for the Spinks fight, and he’ll also earn a chunk of his $26.2-million deal with HBO this year.

Last add Tyson-Spinks: As of Friday afternoon, contracts for the fight still had not been signed. . . . Heavyweights and super-heavyweights from the United States and the Soviet Union will meet in a 10-bout show at Harrah’s Tahoe May 21. . . . Heavyweights Duane Bonds and former California champion Mike Hunter will fight May 18 at Riverside’s Convention Center. State lightweight champion Rico Velazquez will box Robert Anderson on the same card.