Ex-Associates Wonder if Tyson Has Lost It : Boxing: Former champion reportedly had terrible training sessions before Douglas fight.

Matt Baranski and Johnny Tocco, veteran boxing trainers who have worked extensively with former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, are wondering if Tyson will ever be the same after the beating he absorbed from Buster Douglas in Tokyo.

Before Tyson fired him and trainer Kevin Rooney in 1988, Baranski had worked as the cut man in Tyson’s corner for 35 fights.

Baranski, who lives in Selkirk, N.Y., said Thursday that he had visited Tyson for an hour recently in nearby Catskill, N.Y., where Tyson lives, and found the former champion unwilling to even talk about the Douglas fight.

“He said he’d be back, that he’d get his title back, but that was about it,” Baranski said. “He didn’t want to talk about the fight. All he told me was, ‘I’ll be back.’

“When I asked him if he was interested in getting back with Kevin and me, the old team, he just kind of shrugged his shoulders.

“Right now, I think it’s a case of pride . . . he doesn’t want to swallow his pride.

“He took a beating, and he knows it. Mike has a lot to think about. I don’t think Mike can be a better fighter than he was, not after this fight. But I think he’ll beat Buster the next time. “People don’t realize it, but Mike has taken a lot of shots in the gym. I didn’t see him train for Douglas, but I’ve heard he looked really bad in sparring. I heard Trevor Berbick gave him a hard time in sparring and if that’s true, then Mike is really gone.

“The ninth-round punches Mike took from Douglas hurt him more than the ones in the 10th that took him out.”

Tocco, the 79-year-old trainer and owner of the Ringside Gym in Las Vegas, said much the same of Tyson, who trained at his gym for two weeks before leaving for Japan in mid-January.

“It was the worst I’ve seen him,” Tocco said. “He was not in condition when he left here.

“He was having a rough time with Greg Page, he could do nothing with Trevor Berbick and even Oliver McCall gave him a bad time one day. Page hadn’t looked that good against anyone in years.

“To me, (Tyson) isn’t the same (as) when the other people had him. He’s too protected now. When Bill Cayton and Kevin Rooney had him, they’d walk in the gym, say hello to everybody, and work out with everyone else who was here.

“Now, (promoter Don) King’s people walked in here the first day and ordered everyone out of the gym. I said, ‘Hold it, I own this gym, not Don King. These guys stay.’

“Mike’s problem is Don King, period. Here’s a kid off the streets, a multimillionaire, a pretty bright kid actually. I give him a lot of credit for what he’s done in a short time.

“But he’s changed so much with King managing him. He doesn’t have to make decisions for himself anymore. Used to be, he’d come in and talk to me in my office when he’d work out. Now, hardly ever. It’s not the same Mike Tyson.”

Tyson’s estranged manager, Bill Cayton, wants Tyson to undergo a neurological exam before fighting again.

“If Mike will talk to me, I’ll strongly recommend he have an extensive neurological checkup before he resumes training,” he said.

“I place major importance on that. I believe he’ll check out OK, but I want that done before he does anything.”

Cayton also resumed his unloading on King.

“Don King has been a disaster for Mike Tyson,” he said. “First he cost (Tyson) his credibility, then he cost him millions of dollars, now he’s cost him the heavyweight championship.

“I never would have permitted Mike to face Buster Douglas, unless we were forced to through a mandatory defense. And under no circumstances would I have put that fight overseas. I knew when King made that fight it would be a tough fight for Mike.”

Cayton said he didn’t favor a June Tyson-Douglas rematch, as King did. It appears that Douglas will make his first defense against Evander Holyfield in September.

“I want Mike to have three fights between now and next February, against carefully selected opponents,” Cayton said. “HBO still wants to televise Mike’s fights and will pay him well. I think if we can get Mike back with us, into the disciplined program he was in before with us, he’ll be fine.”

After the one-round knockout of Michael Spinks in June of 1988, Tyson left his Cayton-Rooney-Baranski team and aligned himself with King, who to this day has no legal standing with Tyson. At the time, in a parting shot, Tyson called Cayton “Satan in disguise.” Cayton’s managerial contract with Tyson runs into 1992.

Said Cayton: “I’m not looking for any apologies. None of us are. I just want Mike to show up one day and say, ‘Hi, I’m ready to go back to work.’ ”

In 1988, Tyson’s gross income approached $50 million. In 1989, according to an Inside Sports magazine study, he earned $14 million.

King has rebutted Cayton’s charges of mismanagement of Tyson.

On Wednesday and Thursday, repeated attempts to reach King for comment through his spokesman, John Solberg, were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, those who have worked with Tyson as well as a fighter who once lost a championship to Tyson are even wondering if Tyson, who though only 23 has been fighting virtually full time for 10 years, has suddenly lost it.

Berbick, a $1,500-a-week sparring partner for Tyson in Tokyo, reportedly had the best of it in some sparring rounds. On November 22, 1986, a 20-year-old Tyson knocked down Berbick three times and won his first heavyweight championship, the World Boxing Council’s version.

Said Las Vegas matchmaker Bruce Trampler: “Berbick called me from Tokyo. He told me everyone was beating (Tyson) up in the gym, even him. He said: ‘This guy is in terrible shape--he’s got no reflexes, no zip, no life.’ ”

Said Baranski: “Trevor Berbick is as slow as molasses. He can’t get out of his own way. If (Tyson) was having problems with Berbick over there, then Mike is really gone.”

Possibly, Baranski suggests, after a decade of fighting, Tyson has simply lost interest.

“He told me before the Spinks fight that he was tiring of the big-fight scene, all the people,” Baranski said. “He told me liked the old days best, when it was just him, me and Kevin, and we’d drive down to Atlantic City the day before a fight, have the fight, then jump in the car and drive home the next morning.

“Also, Mike’s got big wads of money in his pockets, all kinds of freeloaders hanging around him. . . .

“I really can’t guess what he’ll do. He’s not predictable. A month before he went to King, he said to me: ‘People are talking about me making a move to Don King--that’s ridiculous. I know Don King is a thief . . . no way in the world I’d do that.’

“Well, a month later, he did exactly that.

“I want Mike to come out of this successfully somehow. I’ve got a lot of my life invested him in. I figured out once I had to live in Las Vegas hotel rooms for 27 weeks because of all his fights there.”