Bill Cayton Still Can’t Figure Out Tyson : Boxing: Former business manager has yet to mend avenues of communication with the former heavyweight champion.

In boxing, some guys just don’t know when to quit.

For a change, however, we’re not talking about a fighter. This one who refuses to hang ‘em up is a manager, and a well-heeled one at that.

Last week, Bill Cayton sent a letter to his wayward heavyweight, Mike Tyson. It was not a love letter. As has been well-documented, Cayton and Tyson have been estranged for most of the past two years, for various reasons, if you believe Tyson. Or, if you believe Cayton, for one reason -- Don King.

Cayton, seeing an opening to perhaps move back into an active role in Tyson’s career now that he has lost his title to Buster Douglas, fired off the letter, dated April 4, 1990, and had copies of it sent “everywhere Mike Tyson could possibly be.”

Including King’s office?

“Of course I did not send it to Don King’s office,” Cayton said.

Before we get into the specifics of the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Newsday, it bears repeating that as a manager, Cayton has yet to be proven guilty of anything except exceptional -- some would say excessive -- competence. When Tyson-King sued Cayton last year to break the managerial contract alleging thievery, Cayton produced documents accounting for every penny taken in and paid out in every one of Tyson’s bouts up to the Spinks bout. Tyson and King said, don’t let that fool you, we have proof that Cayton is a thief. They have yet to produce one scrap of it.

But as a human being, Tyson has said Cayton is lacking something. He is not a warm fellow, despite his somewhat awkward attempts to be one. When Tyson was beset with personal problems, Bill Cayton was not the man the then-21-year-old felt he could turn to for emotional support. King, of course, was only too willing to provide same, even if his sincerity was no more genuine than Cayton’s.

Which brings us to The Letter. It was intended to patch things up. But it is, perhaps, one of the finest examples ever written of “How to Further Alienate Someone Who Already Thinks You’re a Jerk.”

Here is the opening line: “Dear Mike: What does it take to wake you up?”

It is tough to imagine Mike Tyson getting past that. He probably tore the paper into confetti at that point and sprinkled it around the room, or the car, or the nightclub, or wherever he happened to be. Nothing like being called a nitwit right off the bat.

If, somehow, Tyson delved any further into this correspondence, he would have read the following:

--That he was backstabbed by King, who has cost Tyson more than $50 million between the loss of the title and subsequent endorsements and TV commercials;

--That King is trying to rush him back into the ring without the proper medical examinations, and that his only interest in a Douglas-Tyson rematch is to cement a relationship with Douglas;

--That Cayton would prefer Tyson to fight Alex Stewart in June, Renaldo Snipes in September and “a particularly appropriate opponent” in November or December, before meeting the winner of the proposed September Douglas-Evander Holyfield fight in early 1991.

All well and good, sound business advice from a consummate businessman. But then, in the final two paragraphs, Cayton the cold fish, the snobbish autocrat, rears his head again.

“As far as you and I are concerned, I want you to know that I do not want nor expect any apology,” Cayton writes. “Remember through all your comments about me, I never said one bad word about you. I am your manager

Cayton goes on to say that a reconciliation “would mean that you would have Kevin (Rooney), Steve (Lott) and Matt Baransky working with you. The team that brought you from your amateur days ...”

A call was put in to the Catskill, N.Y., house that Tyson grew up in, and to which he has returned since the Douglas loss. Remember that Tyson has not spoken with Newsday, or any other paper -- with one glaring exception -- on a regular basis since King took over. This time was no exception. Tyson’s friend and cornerman, Jay Bright, relayed some quotes he said Tyson had dictated to him over a car phone.

The full text of Tyson’s reply, according to Bright: “The letter speaks for itself. The content and intent is degrading and insulting, as if I would run back, tail between legs, because of what happened. Bill has neither the mind nor the imagination to deceive me into that slave-master mentality. He’s pompously dangling what he perceives as bait. Let him direct that pimping mentality somewhere else, to someone more gullible who finds it a little less offensive.”

Cayton, awaiting a personal reply from Tyson, reacted with shock when told of Tyson’s response to the letter. “Can you believe that?” he said. “This guy has been so poisoned by Don King that he reacts that way to a letter in which I was very positive? I can’t believe it.”

When it was pointed out to Cayton that perhaps the greeting was a tad strong, and perhaps he should not have adopted a dictatorial style in his close, Cayton seemed surprised. “Do you think it was strong? It might have been, I guess. But I can’t get to him except by using strong language. I thought I needed a strong opening to get his attention.

“There would never have been a Mike Tyson if not for Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton ... He would never have been anything without me. We took him out of a prison ... He has said some terrible things about me, and I have never responded ... I treated him better than any fighter in the history of boxing ...

“What does it take to reach him?”

Obviously, Bill, you will never know.

And in boxing, some guys just never change. King, always quick to scream racism when it suits him, used some of the most racially insensitive blather in discussing his absent lightweight, Azumah Nelson, at a news conference last week to announce his upcoming bout with Pernell Whitaker.

“The true reality is we are African Americans,” King said. “But this poor kid (Whitaker) only has the seeds of the heritage. He’s up against a real animal out of the bush. A terrible warrior from Ghana. Azumah’s running through the jungle right now with a loincloth. He’s wrestling tigers. Azumah will eat him up like a well-done steak or raw piece of meat.”

Nothing like keeping alive those degrading stereotypes when there’s a buck to be made, is there, Don?

Last week, it was written here that the WBA, WBC and IBF make no accounting of what happens to the exorbitant sanction fees charged for their title bouts. Wednesday, Gabriel I. Penagaricano, the WBC general counsel, sent a letter that provided some of the answers: The money, he said, is used to fund a continuing boxing medical research project at UCLA, and to help indigent families of former boxers, among them the three teen-aged children of former lightweight champ Esteban DeJesus, who died last year of AIDS.

Middleweight champion Michael Nunn, who broke from longtime manager Dan Goossen and trainer Joe Goossen in a contract dispute, will fight welterweight champion Marlon Starling Saturday night in Las Vegas with former pro welterweight Cassius “Bo” Green in his corner, ably assisted by Donny Dothard, Nunn’s best friend from Davenport, Iowa, who has never worked a fight corner in his life. Incidentally, the odds favoring Nunn have dropped, from 7-1 to 5-1. Any connection?