Enough of the Tales of Tyson!

All right, everybody who is tired of hearing about Mike Tyson, raise your fist.

I don’t care anymore who Mike Tyson puts his hands on next, unless of course it turns out to be Barbara Walters.

I am tired of people wondering whether Robin Givens was better at robbin’ or givin’.

I am tired of waiting for the latest quarter-hourly traffic report on which tree Tyson has turned into a BMW hood ornament, or which luxury car Tyson has abandoned because the defroster didn’t work.

I am tired of conflicting reports as to whether Tyson’s official manager is Don King or Bill Cayton or one of the Dundees, Angelo or Crocodile.

I don’t care if the date of the big Frank Bruno fight has finally been set, because the big Frank Bruno couldn’t draw blood from Mike Tyson unless he starved two Dobermans and let them sniff Tyson’s shoes.

I don’t care what Tyson was doing at 4 in the morning, unless he was doing it on my lawn.

I don’t care to see or hear anything Mike Tyson does from now on, unless whatever he is doing is preceded and concluded by the ringing of a bell, and unless he doesn’t open his mouth except to remove his mouthpiece and spit into his bucket.

Tyson the prizefighter is as good as fighters get. The man is made of marble. He’s he-man of the universe. He’s the meanest motor scooter ever to wear EverLast on his waistband. He’s a guy who could beat another boxer half to death while wearing mittens.

His life outside the square circle, however, has become the most lame-brained, long-running situation comedy since Shirley took an apartment with Laverne.

Day after day, I pick up the morning sports page with dread. I turn on the evening TV sports report, knowing full well that sometime between the Quebec and Hartford hockey results and the time the anchorperson says, “Well, another busy day in sports,” I am going to be regaled with another exciting episode of What Mike Tyson Did Today.

Did he get into another street fight with a toothless cretin in front of a Harlem haberdashery at 4 a.m.? Did he get a million-buck lawsuit filed against him by another disco mama who accused him of illegal use of the hands?

Did the cops come rushing to his mansion in the middle of the night, wondering if the heavy bag Tyson was punching was anyone related to him? Did the heavyweight champion of the world make a bizarre suicide attempt by driving his automobile hoodfirst into a tree, opening himself up to two counts of involuntary plant slaughter?

Will the tree file a lawsuit against Tyson? Will Tyson sign to fight the tree at Caesars Palace in March? If Barbara Walters asks the tree if it could be any human being in the world, would the tree want to be Mike Tyson?

No more, I beg you. Where’s my towel? Throw it in. Let’s all give up Mike Tyson until Lent. Give the guy the holidays off. Leave him be. Let’s not quote anybody--the boxer, the wife, the mother-in-law, the manager, the trainer, the promoter, the bums, the bimbos, the woman who raised him, the wolves who raised him, I mean nobody.

Let’s all just cool it until Tyson and the big Frank Bruno step into that Vegas ring on Feb. 25 and go toe to toe for at least 11 seconds. Bruno is eminently qualified to fight the heavyweight champion of the world. After all, when Bruno tangled with Bonecrusher Smith and Terrible Tim Witherspoon, he did a very nice job on each occasion, finishing as high as second.

I can’t wait to get a bet down on this one. If you put up $100 with a bookmaker, you can make $125 on Bruno, easy. All you have to do is correctly guess which way he falls, backward or face first. I got an extra sawbuck that says he lands on top of LeRoy Neiman.

Boxing is a hilariously horrifying sport, full of the sorts of characters that only Charles Addams could draw. Everybody connected with the sport is kooky or altogether ooky, but most of them have a kind of grotesque charm, like exotic zoo animals, and we have trouble taking our eyes off them.

Hollywood has always taken a special interest in the sexy, violent world of boxing, and perhaps someday soon, after theatrical films and made-for-TV movies about LaMotta and Dempsey and Marciano and Graziano and Mancini, somebody might even make another picture about a boxer who wasn’t white.

I see where Muhammad Ali, one of the most compelling figures of 20th Century sports, is in the news again after a long absence. It seems that during the election campaigns, Ali started placing phone calls to certain prominent politicians, Ted Kennedy and others, to chat and offer advice.

Well, turns out somebody reported that it wasn’t really Ali after all making those calls, but a friend of Ali’s, impersonating his voice. I can only assume that if this person was, indeed, an imposter, he gave himself away to Sen. Kennedy when none of his poems rhymed.

I miss old Muhammad. His personal life certainly had its ups and downs, but it was a lot more dramatic and a lot more amusing than any of this Tyson dramedy. Keeping up with Tyson’s nonsense almost makes me long for the days and nights of Larry Holmes. Holmes was a mope, but at least he usually kept to himself.

I hate to think what might be in this week’s news about Mike Tyson. He and Robin are dating again. Aren’t. Are. Aren’t. Are. A retrospective of Robin’s films will be scheduled any weekend now. Tyson will drive his car into the lobby of the theater. Robin’s mother will swing her purse at Tyson’s head. He’ll duck, but the blow will accidentally knock out Frank Bruno. Bruno, groggy from the blow, will propose to Robin.

Well, enough about boxing for today.