Fire’s Back in Attack, Tyson Says

Mike Tyson called from Las Vegas. He called to say he was fit. To say he was fine. To say he was looking forward to fighting Henry Tillman June 16 at Caesars. To say he was finally ready to climb back into a ring after what happened against Buster Douglas.

“I sparred 10 rounds yesterday. I ran this morning. I’ll run again tonight. I’m working. I’m excited,” he said.

But how about nervous?

“Nervous?” Tyson asked.

Yeah. Is Mike Tyson nervous?

“Hey,” Tyson said. “I’m very nervous.”

Not about beating Henry Tillman. Tyson, like most of America, believes he can do that and hardly get his mouthpiece wet.

If Tillman could beat Tyson . . . well, as Henry himself once said, “If ‘ifs’ was fifths, we’d all be drunk.”

Yet, something happens to a boxer when he gets beat for the first time. He is never the same. He is invulnerable no more. All those news conference ravings about what he will do to his next opponent, they sound hollow.

Defeat in a main event gets boxers rattled. George Foreman freaked out after he lost to Muhammad Ali. Roberto Duran went to seed after his rematch with Sugar Ray Leonard. Thomas Hearns’ mind was blown by Leonard, too, as was Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s.

Maybe Buster messed up Iron Mike’s self-confidence.

“I’m forgetting what happened,” Tyson said. “I’m moving forward now.”

Douglas has virtually disappeared. Top contender Evander Holyfield waits and waits and waits. Foreman, who will fight on the undercard of Tyson-Tillman, just gets older and older and older.

And Tyson, still young, still strong, still a man to take seriously, is about to resurface. What will he be like? Will he have his familiar old menace? Will he turn Tillman’s flesh into Silly Putty? Will he have any spring in his step, have that panther’s leap of his that struck fear into opponents galore?

Rufus (Hurricane) Hadley has been sparring with Tyson, same as he did way back before the Pinklon Thomas fight. He’s been mixing it up with Tyson, keeping an eye on Tyson, keeping an eye on Tyson’s left glove when it smacks against it.

“I have never seen Mike this intense,” Hurricane said.

Rodolfo Marin, the unbeaten young Puerto Rican heavyweight, has been sparring with Tyson. So has Elijah Tillery, whose amateur record is dazzling. They, too, have been impressed. They say he looks like the Tyson of old, the Tyson that should have knocked Buster Douglas from Tokyo halfway to Hong Kong.

How did Tyson look before the Douglas fight? That should have been the first tipoff. Greg Page put him on his back. Page ordinarily couldn’t topple Tyson if the former champion came into the ring wearing handcuffs.

So, naturally everybody wondered whether Tyson took the fight seriously enough. Or trained hard enough. Or had something wrong with him--an illness, mental or physical.

Tyson wants everybody to know he is all right. That’s why he’s calling.

“I feel great,” he said. “I’m in a great frame of mind.

“Sure, I’m nervous. I haven’t had an actual fight for a while. Anything’s possible when you’re fighting a guy. You just got to go in there and fight and find out.”

He wants no one to think of Tillman as a tuneup. He is preparing as though he is up against Holyfield or someone firmly established. He is running up to five miles a day. He’s only about five pounds over his fighting weight, and will probably come in a couple of pounds lighter than the 220 1/2 he lugged around against Douglas.

When Mike Tyson was in fighting trim, nobody could touch him. But that was the old Mike Tyson. Nobody knows what to expect from today’s Mike Tyson.

“I think you’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see I’m myself.”

He doesn’t want to recount the Douglas fight--not even the long count that saved Buster. Tyson’s tired of it. It does him no good to flash back. “It’s over, it’s done with,” he said. “Let it go.”

He isn’t asking you to let it go. He is reminding himself to let it go.

Tyson held the most important title in sports, and let that go. He thought he would wear that belt for a dozen years, as Joe Louis did. He thought of himself as indestructible, even though his steeltrap-mind for boxing history always informed him that even the great ones went down.

He never, ever, thought he would be nervous before a fight. Tyson never got nervous. Tyson had seen too much, done too much in his young life to ever get nervous about anything. A snake inside his sleeping bag couldn’t make him nervous.

Now, he starts anew.

“I got to find out something,” Mike Tyson said. “Not about Henry Tillman. About me.”