BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : King’s Bombast Doesn’t Shift Tyson Spotlight

On the day Mike Tyson was indicted in Indianapolis on a rape charge, his promoter, Don King, ran a misdirection play.

Within yards of the courtroom, King began a harangue against Tyson’s estranged manager, Bill Cayton. He called Cayton an economic rapist and waved legal documents relating to an old lawsuit involving Tyson, King and Cayton.

What did it have to do with the rape charge? Absolutely nothing, which is the point. King wants everyone to stop talking about the rape case and start thinking of buying the pay-per-view telecast of the Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight Nov. 8.

King’s tirade, however, does serve to remind that the Indianapolis case isn’t Tyson’s only exposure to the legal system.

Cayton, 73, is Tyson’s manager until Feb. 12, whether King likes it or not. You don’t hear much about Cayton, though, because King began making moves on Tyson shortly after Tyson’s co-manager, Jim Jacobs, died of leukemia in 1988.

Tyson, who was closer to Jacobs than to Cayton, jumped to King in late 1988, shortly after knocking out Michael Spinks in one round. But Cayton never released Tyson. So Tyson, through King, sued.

The reason is simple enough: Cayton is entitled to 20% of Tyson’s purses through Feb. 12. For the Holyfield fight alone, Tyson will earn at least $15 million.

A pivotal element in the Tyson-Cayton lawsuit is a contract extension Tyson signed in 1988. Tyson claims he was summoned to New York City from Albany, N.Y., during a blizzard on Feb. 12, 1988, to “sign some papers” in Cayton’s office.

What he signed were extensions of a contract that would make Cayton Tyson’s manager in the event of Jacobs’ death, or vice versa. Three days later, according to court documents, Jacobs began chemotherapy for leukemia that had been diagnosed in 1975.

He died March 23, 1988, two days after Tyson’s knockout of Tony Tubbs in Tokyo. Tyson claims today, even under oath, that no one ever told him how seriously ill Jacobs was.

In January 1988, a month before the contract extension, Jacobs attended the Tyson-Larry Holmes fight in Atlantic City. Observers were shocked by Jacobs’ appearance; a former national handball champion, he was jaundiced, frail and had lost considerable weight.

Nevertheless, Tyson and King charge in the suit that Cayton committed fraud and violated his fiduciary responsibility to Tyson by “inducing” him to sign a contract extension without informing him of the seriousness of Jacobs’ illness.

It is also charged that Cayton, at the time of Jacobs’ death, was not a New York-licensed manager; that Cayton then took out a license and back-dated it.

A copy of Cayton’s 1988 license is included in documents, and the date does appear to have been altered.

In any event, King has seen to it that Cayton’s cut is 0%. Cayton says King has paid him nothing since the 1988 Tyson-Frank Bruno fight.

Through all the pages of documents released by King, one aspect of Tyson’s early days as a rising young heavyweight goes unmentioned--the fact that under Jacobs and Cayton, Mike Tyson was set up to be financially secure for the rest of his life. The same can’t be said for King’s stewardship of Tyson’s career.

According to Cayton, he and Jacobs bought Tyson two single-premium life annuities that will give the fighter a comfortable lifetime income beginning at age 28.

“When he’s 28, he’ll begin collecting a total of about $250,000 per year, and most of that will be tax-free,” Cayton said. “We were extremely careful investing Mike’s money. We built fences around his money, so no one could get at it.”

To the charge that he and Jacobs withheld from Tyson the seriousness of Jacobs’ illness, Cayton said the fighter must have known how sick Jacobs was, although, he said, he doesn’t remember discussing it with Tyson.

“The closest person in the world to Mike in those days was Cus D’Amato (Tyson’s legal guardian, who died in 1985), and Cus knew that Jimmy had leukemia, so Mike had to have known,” Cayton said.

Boxing Notes

Los Angeles policeman George Lopez recently won his eighth Police Summer Games boxing championship, and, at 31, hopes to compete for Argentina in the 1992 Olympics. Lopez, who has dual citizenship, defeated another Los Angeles policeman, Troy Laster, at the Police Games. Lopez, a light-middleweight from Sierra Madre, competed in the 1988 Olympics for Argentina but didn’t win a medal. His training suffered a setback last week; while chasing two suspects involved in a shoot-out, he crashed his car into a tree and suffered a broken left arm.

Greg Richardson, awarded what many considered an unjust victory over Victor Rabanales in a World Boxing Council bantamweight title fight last May at the Forum, lost it in Tokyo Thursday. He couldn’t answer the bell for the 11th round and surrendered his title to Joichiro Tatsuyoshi of Osaka, who has had only eight pro fights. Richardson’s loss also cost the Forum a title fight. It had an option on a future Richardson defense.

Recently we rapped the WBC for ranking Larry Holmes ninth among the world’s heavyweights. Now the International Boxing Federation has dropped Mike Tyson to fifth in its rankings. Come on, Tyson might not be on America’s most-admired-men list, but he is far better than the world’s fifth-best heavyweight.