No Mask, He Wears a Smile

When Floyd Patterson lost the heavyweight championship by knockout to Sonny Liston, he felt such mortification and disgrace, he donned a false beard and mustache and dark glasses--at night--and sped out of town to go home to the Hudson Valley and presumably climb up a tree and huddle there in misery. He felt he let the country down.

When Joe Louis lost by knockout to the flower of Nazi Germany, Max Schmeling, in 1936, the height of Hitler’s reign, he felt he let the world down and only emerged, days later, to pose with swollen jaw for a photo pointing to his “KO” license plate and vowing vengeance.

When Jim Jeffries lost by knockout to Jack Johnson in 1910 and there were riots in the cities, he felt he let the white race down and he retreated to his Burbank farm to lick his wounds and avoid the neighbors.

But if anyone is expecting a somber, chastened, contrite Mike Tyson to be hiding from the public as a result of his knockout at the hands of Buster Douglas last February, boy, have you got the wrong guy!

If you were expecting sackcloth and ashes, a hairshirt, a monastic attitude or a penitent pulling at his forelock, you were in for a shock.

Mike Tyson showed up in town Wednesday wearing a pair of designer bib overalls, a gold-toothed smile and the jaunty attitude of a guy who just won a lottery.

He just lost the heavyweight championship of the world?! Pfui! He’ll get it back.

He just got publicly humiliated in the ring by a guy who didn’t figure to warm him up? Oh well, these things happen.

No false whiskers and smoked glasses for Iron Mike. Sing no sad songs for Mr. Tyson.

It was just a knockout. Mike laughs when he talks about it. No big deal. Just a little accident. Happens in the best of families. Sort of like slipping on a roller skate at the top of the stairs. Just carelessness, not catastrophic.

Mike even admits he watches the debacle on tape. He jokes about that, too: “I sit there and I tell myself, ‘Hey, man! Duck!’ But on screen, I don’t duck. I scream, ‘Duck, you dummy!’ But the dummy don’t listen to me.”

It was probably the most shocking upset in the history of pugilism. Schmeling’s knockout of Joe Louis and Jim Corbett’s KO of John L. Sullivan are the only ones that come close.

But Mike Tyson is not apologizing to anybody. He is not ready for a monastery yet. One reporter wanted to know if it made him suicidal. Mike thought that was hilarious, saying: “Hey! I got lots of money to spend before I kill myself!”

Mike is even baffled as to why anyone should think he would be ready for a rubber room. Hey! It’s just a fight!

“You have to deal with things like this every day,” he says. “Did I cry? I wish I could cry! The last time I cried was when I got my divorce. That’s when you cry.

“Actually, can I tell you something? It was a relief, is what it was. It was relief of a lot of pressure.”

It is the concerted belief of the fight mob that the worst damage of a knockout is to the brain. The medical profession would certainly agree, but the fight mob doesn’t mean pathological, it means psychological. “It gets a fighter thinking to lose,” the old-time manager, Willie Ketchum, once explained. “Fighters are pessimists.”

Tyson isn’t pessimistic, just realistic: “He fought a good fight, I fought a bad fight. I got to deal with that. I’m not the type guy to get down on himself.

“You know, if I was, like, half the fighter I am and I lost the title to someone, and I knew I could never beat this guy, that might, you know, tend to dishearten me. But this is something you know isn’t going to last forever.”

Tyson’s position is, the title is just on temporary loan. Does he feel Douglas has his number, will be able to repeat? Tyson looks amused. “You don’t see him rushing to sign a rematch, do you?” he challenges.

Neither does the notion of vengeance consume Tyson. He doesn’t have a picture of Douglas pasted up on his room wall. He doesn’t brood, spend every waking hour plotting to get even. “You deal with it!” he protests. “Hey! These things happen. When I was running the streets, I used to have worse things happen. And that was where you knew what you were doing was wrong to begin with.”

Tyson says his frame of mind will be “perfect” when he climbs into the ring on June 16 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to fight Henry Tillman, the heavyweight who twice beat him--in three-rounders--for the right to represent the United States in the Olympics. It is to be his “comeback”--if a man 23 years old can be said to need a comeback.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Tyson says with a smile. “I didn’t have enough respect for the title. I kind of took it for granted. I won’t do that again.”

For Tyson, defeat is no agony, just an annoyance. His attitude is reminiscent of Joe Louis, who lay on the rubbing table the night he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano, then looked up to see a whole locker room full of sobbing, weeping people. Joe was irritated. “Hey!” he protested. “I knocked out lots of guys!”

So has Mike Tyson. And, to hear him tell it, will again. Save your tears.