He Can Make Some Big Money, but He’d Probably Pay for It

Mike Tyson, after describing how he would dispose of scheduled opponent Carl (the Truth) Williams and proposed opponents Evander Holyfield and George Foreman, said: “I will whip Tony Mandarich’s tail, also. Oh, yes, I would love to make him suffer. He is a big man. I would love to make him cry.”

Would Mandarich be wise to take such a match, even for $10 million?.

“Yes,” Dave Kindred of the Atlanta Journal writes. “For that much money he can get a private room, 24-hour nursing, a heart pump and a very nice neck brace. Accepting certain limitations, he has a chance to live a meaningful life.”

Add Mandarich: According to USA Today, a radio station in Antigo, Wis., had a weekend fund-raiser to help the Green Bay Packers sign Mandarich, their No. 1 draft choice. Mandarich is asking for $1.8 million. The fund-raiser netted $13.98.

Add Tyson: Says Matt Baranski, who has worked the corner in most of Tyson’s fights but was in Holyfield’s corner when the two squared off in a sparring session at the 1984 Olympic trials: “Evander did very well with Mike. It could have gone either way. But now, Mike will knock him out. I’ve seen Holyfield, and he’s too easy to hit.”

Add Baranski: He no longer works for Tyson, having been cut adrift when Tyson fired trainer Kevin Rooney, but he told the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union: “I was told that Mike still says I’m his main man. We were always good friends. I never interfered with his private life. Mike is a very intelligent kid, but some of the things he has done have given me second thoughts.”

Trivia time: What title was at stake in the Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight?

Now-it-can-be-told Dept.: Bud Grant, on how he learned about discipline playing for Paul Brown at Great Lakes Naval Station during World War II: “One day a player who had been drinking showed up for practice. Coach Brown ordered him back to his barracks, and when the guy got there, they already had his orders ready, shipping him to the South Pacific. From that day on, the rest of us were afraid to sneeze.”

It ain’t bluegrass: When Rick Pitino signed a reported seven-year, $5.7-million contract with the University of Kentucky, it ended speculation that he was using Kentucky to squeeze more money out of the New York Knicks.

Wrote Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Post: “Pitino couldn’t make that kind of money anywhere else and still be called Coach. And anyone who drives a Mercedes on an annual income of $35,000, as Pitino did a decade ago at Boston University, appreciates the color of money.”

Trivia answer: The World Boxing Council super-middleweight title, which was held by Leonard and retained by him, by virtue of the draw.

Quotebook: San Diego Padre Manager Jack McKeon, asked the name of a recently born granddaughter: “They haven’t decided. She’s the baby to be named later.”