King Finally in Control of Tyson

When you hear the cackle of promoter Don King, a laughter that not even a desert can swallow, Mike Tyson can’t be far behind. So it was that when King walked into a big showroom here where Vegas idol Wayne Newton would shortly be on stage, Tyson was locked in step directly behind him. No wonder King was laughing.

For the first time, King was in control of sport’s hottest property--if only King can keep Tyson in the ring, where his record surpasses his performance outside it.

King reportedly has negotiated a shocker of a four-year contract with Tyson--for a third of his net earnings. A third was what Tyson criticized his discarded manager, Bill Cayton, for taking, causing Cayton to reduce his share to 20% of Tyson’s purses and even less for deals outside the ring.

“Everything’s pretty cool nowadays,” said Tyson.

Tyson may be no mathematician, but he looks marvelous--a sculpted 217 or 218 pounds after ballooning to 255 to 260 following his demolition of Michael Spinks in 91 seconds last June. Tyson is a 9-to-1 favorite to make the slow-footed, glass-jawed Frank Bruno his 36th-straight victim tonight.

“He’s in some trouble,” said Tyson.

For now, King has calmed his crisis-stricken fighter, leaving him to take all the fury from his personal life out on Bruno and send him back to Britain after he’s been revived.

On the last day of Tyson’s heavy training, security guards cleared Johnny Tocco’s Ringside Gym (which is like sweeping out a closet).

But word emerged of devastation inside.

“Did you knock out somebody?” Tyson was asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cold?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Barnes. His name was Barnes.”

Tuesday Barnes, tonight Bruno.

With unassailable logic and unswerving confidence, Tyson said he could take anybody: “Put him in one corner and me in the other corner and by the time the fight is over I’d be victorious.”

He thanked King, at his side, for everything.

“I feel more comfortable. It’s not complicated as it was before. I’m very happy at this particular moment in my life.

“Don, he put a big hand in it.”

King, with a straight face: “Thank you, Champ.”

So there it is. Tyson’s troubles apparently are no factor when it comes to fighting Bruno. And did he have troubles. To mention a few, he:

--Broke his right hand (it’s fine now, he said) during an altercation with Mitch Green in Harlem.

--Drove his car into a tree and landed in the hospital.

--Sat by and was humiliated by former wife Robin Givens during an interview with Barbara Walters, Givens calling life with Tyson “torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could possibly imagine.”

--Threw an andiron through a window in his house in Bernardsville, N.J.

--Stirred trouble in a hotel lobby in Vancouver.

--Got divorced from Givens on Valentine’s Day.

What’s more, he has sued Cayton a second time for separation. And, most recently, he’s been sued for $10 million by fired trainer Kevin Rooney, who earlier said some things about Tyson’s out-of-ring behavior. Tyson said Rooney “absolutely” had a chance to return before the suit, but no longer.

“I had nothing personal against him,” said Tyson. “It’s just that he did something unprofessionally. (Now with the lawsuit) he went out of the way to make it personally, and now he never has a chance to be involved with me. Never.”

Not so logically, Tyson put it: “Kevin Rooney never hit anyone for me.”

But with Bruno approaching, Tyson isn’t thinking much about his tumultuous times, except to say he’s made mistakes. He sounded sorry, perhaps King’s work again. Tyson said King led him to religion. (Tyson was baptized six weeks before he threw a photographer’s camera across the hotel lobby in Vancouver.)

“Around the Spinks’ fight, there was a lot of chaos,” said Tyson. “Because there were constant lies being fed to the press, and especially within my own camp. People who I trusted continued to tell stories to the paper.”

His problem, he said, is that he reacts to his problems too emotionally.

“A friend of mine, when I was in Brooklyn not long ago before I began training, he said, ‘When you didn’t have any money, you had these feelings, you been with this before (meaning trouble). You shouldn’t allow this to get to you.’

“It’s just part of life that you have to deal with. And I went about doing a lot of things wrong. I made a lot of mistakes. . . . I screwed up.

“But now, this is where I dominate. I dominate in the ring. That’s where I do best.”

He paused.

“People are sympathetic, and I ask for no sympathy. I despise sympathy. People say, poor guy, why don’t they leave him alone. If I wanted people to leave me alone, if I didn’t want the problems, all I would have to do is lose the fight.

“I see on television, ‘This poor guy,’ like I’m some little innocent guy. Things happen, you know what I mean. You’re naive and sometimes you get in trouble. You just don’t know and sometimes you become a victim of things. I know basically what’s going on. It’s just that you get emotional in situations and, Oh God, I guess I screwed up again.

“I had a fight with Mitch Green. I went to Vancouver and had problems. This is not the first time. When I was 18 or 19 I had problems in a mall. I’m a human being. I’m bound to slip on a banana peel and it probably won’t be the last time.

“I never took drugs in my life,” he continued. “I’m not trying to put down any other athlete or anything. But we all know drugs are bad. I never took drugs or anything. I’m just totally against it.

“But there’s things that I do, not great things. Maybe sometimes I have a barroom mouth. But that’s just the way I am.”

Reliable as he is in the ring, Tyson has been unpredictable out of it. One never knows what he’s going to say, nor apparently does he. Consider his answer to a local reporter’s question: How did he like returning to Las Vegas where he’d had so much success?

“Around this time, around the hotel, you see people, close to the fights. Las Vegas is a good town. But you know, when there’s nothing happening here it’s the most boringest town in the world.”

King’s smile vanished. Las Vegas has helped make King a rich man. He let out a cry as if someone had grabbed his wallet: “Aaaaagh.”

Then this combination P.T. Barnum, Casey Stengel, used-car salesman and self-made success never studied in Ivy League schools of business jumped in with fast talk about the first thing that came to his mind about Las Vegas, college basketball.

“The Runnin’ Rebels,” he started up, professing love for the city, its basketball team, its coach, you name it, if it was in Las Vegas he loved it and so did Tyson.

“We love Tark, you know, Tark the Shark. He’s indicative of what Las Vegas is all about. This team, he gives many young kids opportunities that other coaches would not give. You watch him, you watch this team play, it’s just an inspiration. He’s a terrific coach and it’s a great team and he does it with guys, a lot of them would be lost out, disenfranchised, forgotten. But Tark has always been that way. His record is indicative of that. And he’s made the school the right thing with Rebels. A Rebel with a cause, not a Rebel without one.”

King gave off his cackle-laugh.

“He’s a pain, but he’s brilliant at what he does,” said Bruno’s manager, Terry Lawless. “If it wasn’t boxing, it’d be Roller Derbies or all-night dancing.”

“Greatest country in the world, I’m tellin’ you,” said King, still full of air. “This is a wonderful atmosphere, don’t you think? Here’s a guy, look how loose as a goose he is. Look how beautiful he looks. Magnificent with his shorts on. He could be in SQ or GQ, Esquire.”

King laughed again, and Tyson, King’s man, laughed right along with him.