Getting Back on His Feet : Boxing: Henry Tillman, a one-time felon caught against the ropes of life, is trying to resurrect a once-promising career.

Henry Tillman, the 1984 Olympic heavyweight gold medalist, brings his comeback to the Country Club in Reseda Tuesday night. What he is trying to come back from is a nasty habit he seemingly has acquired of falling groggily to the canvas after someone punches him on the jaw, a practice that is inarguably a detriment to a boxing career.

It is not, however, the worst habit Tillman ever picked up.

That award would go to a particularly frowned-upon custom--one that he has since outgrown--of waving a weapon in a person’s face and then informing the somewhat-startled person that all of the money in his pocket was about to change owners. Ditto the wristwatch.

For that habit--which led to an armed-robbery conviction--Tillman spent nearly all of 1981 in the California Youth Authority facility in Chino, a facility that some people refer to as prison.

It was during that year that Tillman was introduced to boxing, a science he previously would only resort to if he had misplaced his knife.

And boxing, Tillman says, saved his life.

Now he is trying to save his career, which once seemed limitless as he hammered his way through the Olympians and then through his first nine professional opponents.

But, early in 1986, along came Bash Ali, owner of the North American Boxing Federation’s cruiserweight championship.

And Tillman nearly killed him.

The Los Angeles fighter crushed Ali with a right hand just seconds into the title fight and proceeded to beat him senseless, knocking him out little less than a minute into the fight. The Olympic champion now was, after just 10 fights, a professional champion, even though the average person on the street doesn’t know NABF from NASA.

“It was the worst thing that could have happened to me,” Tillman, 29, said in the Van Nuys offices of Ten Goose Boxing, the organization that signed him to the Country Club fight against Gerardo Valero of Tijuana.

“People forgot that I had boxed less than three years before the Olympics. The other guys on that team had more knockouts than I had fights. I never learned much of anything. I just got by on some natural ability. Then, before I can learn much of anything as a pro, I win the NABF title. And, all of a sudden, I can’t fight anymore just to get experience. I can’t fight the 25 or 30 fights that I needed to learn from.

“All of a sudden, I’ve got to fight only the top guys. Title fights. And I just wasn’t ready.”

Later in 1986, less than two months after winning the NABF title, he was scheduled to fight World Boxing Council cruiserweight champion Carlos de Leon.

Tillman worked himself into a nervous frenzy for the veteran de Leon. But three weeks before the scheduled June 22 bout, the fight was canceled. The reasons differ, depending on whom you talk to, but let’s leave it at this: Don King was involved.

Tillman’s main handler, Mercer Smith, and others associated with the boxer wanted to continue to capitalize on Tillman’s Olympic fame and early pro success and pushed him--with some urging from CBS Sports--into a replacement bout June 15 against puncher Bert Cooper, who proceeded to knock Tillman down twice in the second round en route to an easy victory.

And Tillman has never been quite the same fighter since.

He stopped a nice gentleman named Cedric Parsons in the first round of his next bout and disposed of equally inept Stanley Ross a few months later, but early in 1987, even though the 6-foot-3 Tillman was finding it nearly impossible to keep his fighting weight under 200 pounds, he accepted a $50,000 payday to take on former Olympic team roommate and then World Boxing Assn. junior heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield at the 190-pound limit.

Holyfield thrashed Tillman, knocking him down several times before the referee mercifully stepped in during the seventh round and halted the fight.

For his next performance, Tillman, who weighed nearly 40 pounds more than he did against Holyfield, lost a decision to a recognized tomato can named Duane Bonds in Las Vegas.

In March, 1988, Tillman took on Canadian Willie de Wit, whom he defeated in the gold-medal bout in the Los Angeles Olympics. De Wit beat Tillman this time, posting a unanimous, 10-round decision in Edmonton.

And for more than a year and a half, there was no news about Henry Tillman. It seemed he had retired, leaving behind these accomplishments: He won a gold medal and he beat a teen-aged Mike Tyson twice in the 1984 Olympic trials and subsequent box-off, winning a pair of decisions even though Tyson knocked him down early in one of the fights.

Tillman opened a boxing gym for youths at 48th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles. He dedicated the next 18 months to helping kids, hoping to keep a few of them from taking the path of crime he walked as a youth.

“I wanted to give something to underprivileged kids,” he said. “I figured I could show some of them the discipline it takes to be a boxer, and that maybe it would put some of them on a better road.”

Tillman had, by all accounts, turned his life around.

But late last year, he decided it was time to try to turn his star-crossed boxing career around too. He got back into the ring in Florida in December against Danny Wolford and scored a unanimous 10-round decision.

And Tuesday night, Tillman (18-4 with 12 knockouts) continues his march back with a scheduled 10-rounder.

“Everyone gave up on me after a few losses,” Tillman said. “My managers were trying to turn me into an opponent. They just wanted me to make some more money for them, but they really didn’t care about my career anymore.”

His association with Dan Goossen, president of Ten Goose Boxing and the man who launched the career of International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Michael Nunn, is, according to Goossen, just for Tuesday’s bout.

But both he and Tillman hinted that a longer relationship might be formed.

“I had always heard that Henry Tillman was a great person with a great heart,” Goossen said. “Everything I heard about him is true. Now, he is willing to pay the price to get back to the top, and this is where the climb starts, at the Country Club. He knows there are no shortcuts back to the top.

“We’re talking business now, talking about the future. Maybe we’ll get together and maybe we won’t. And we have no schedule. When he’s ready to advance, he will advance, even if it takes six months or a year or two years to get to the top. We won’t dictate a timetable.”

Tillman said he wants to fight at least once a month in an effort to get the fight experience that he missed in his meteoric rise from street thug to Olympic champion and then to the NABF championship.

“Now I’ve got to stay active,” he said. “I’m hungry to fight and I don’t care where or who I fight. If this next guy I fight is a bum, then I’ll get rid of him right away. And if he’s good, I’ll get still rid of him, but I’ll do it in style.

“I know at this point that I can’t let anybody beat me. A loss now would be devastating.”

But a loss is not what Tillman expects anytime in the near future.

“I was born poor, in the ghettos,” he said. “And the way I was raised and where I came from has prepared me for this comeback. I’ve come a long way in my life, and I did it by not quitting. And I don’t intend to quit now.

“My goal is to win the heavyweight championship. It will take a while, but that’s OK. But I haven’t come back to fight at small places for the rest of my career. I want to get ready to fight the top guys again. And I don’t care who the champion is when my time comes. If it’s still Mike Tyson, fine.”

After all, he already has beaten him twice.