Mike Tyson Loves Boxing; Mike Tyson Hates Boxing

Mike Tyson hates boxing.

And he loves it.

After three years and three months as the heavyweight champion of the world and an estimated $50 million in purses, the two words that best sum up Tyson’s mood these days:

“Boxing sucks.”

Tyson made that remark during a wide-ranging three-hour interview with Newsday recently.

At a maturing 25, Tyson is an agonizing blend of contradictions. He is a troubled man who says he still loves to fight but hates the business of boxing. He has a love-hate relationship with the sport he has exploited -- and, he believes, has exploited him. Proud of his talent, he is at the same time tormented and fearful of the rages that drive it. Surrounded by luxury, he feels trapped in the fishbowl of celebrity. Facing a possible long prison term and the premature end of his career, he claims to be at peace with his future and his place in boxing history.

“I’m no phony, rotten ... who needs the press to justify his actions,” Tyson said. “I once realized that to accomplish my goals there would be jealous people, devious people, and you have to accept that. (But) if that’s part of being happy ... there’s a lot more things that I can do to be happy. If this is having everything, the way people talk about you and look at you and lie, then I could do with a lot less. A lot less.”

Since he turned professional in 1985, Tyson has had trouble distinguishing friend from foe. In the wake of the collapse of his challenge to Evander Holyfield, Tyson’s latest search for friendship and trust has driven him to the door of convicted Wells Fargo embezzler Harold Smith and away from promoter Don King and “Team Tyson,” which has been his family and, at times, his tormentors since Tyson split with manager Bill Cayton in 1989.

For the past two years, Tyson rarely has been out of sight or touch with King or one of his hired minions. But for two days last week, Tyson managed to slip away.

“I’m not worried about it,” King said. “Either you’ve got something or you don’t.”

What King doesn’t have is a contract with Tyson. What he does have is some strong competition for Tyson’s loyalty. Tyson planned to dine with Smith Thursday night at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, but canceled at the last minute. “I’m taking my shot tonight,” Smith told Newsday that night. “I’m going to shoot all my bullets. It’s worth taking a shot.”

And why not? For most of his life, Tyson has bounced from one surrogate father to another, from juvenile counselors to Cus D’Amato to Jim Jacobs to Cayton to King. All, in one way or another, have let him down. It has made him a bitter man, sour on people and the profession that has brought him wealth and fame.

“How could I not be?” Tyson said. “I mean, being a kid all your life, trusting someone, thinking all the time that these are the guys you trust, and they screw you.”

Tyson has not been happy with King ever since the promoter signed him to a June 28 rematch with Razor Ruddock, who had given Tyson a very tough fight in March. Tyson did not want to fight Ruddock again, preferring to go right after Holyfield. But because the first one did such good business, King forced the rematch, and then, about a month before, told Tyson the fight was off because Ruddock refused to fight while his promoter was under suspension. Tyson broke camp and left for Los Angeles. Then, suddenly, the fight was back on, for the same date, leaving Tyson just three solid weeks to get into fight condition.

“Somebody played games with me,” Tyson said, leaving little doubt who he believed that somebody was. “It turned out to be a rush job. It was only a couple of days, but I broke the training mode and I couldn’t get back into it. That’s why it was such a tough fight.”

The latest betrayal of trust, Tyson intimates say, came when King tried to convince him to go ahead with the Holyfield fight despite a painful rib-cartilage injury that a Las Vegas orthopedic surgeon said would sideline him for six to eight weeks. When Tyson refused, King’s failure to get the fight rescheduled for a date before the scheduled Jan. 27 start of Tyson’s rape trial in Indianapolis once again had Tyson feeling betrayed. According to an L.A. friend of Tyson who is also a friend of Smith, the boxer cursed out King last week.

If he could do things differently, Tyson said, “I would have just been more of a distrustful person. (I was) very naive, very trusting with people in general.”

Tyson’s trust led him into a boxer-manager contract with Jacobs and Cayton that he now seeks to break in the courts, and into a disastrous marriage to actress Robin Givens that cost him millions of dollars and immeasurable prestige and self-esteem. Tyson says the Cayton affair, in which he believes he was defrauded into signing a contract renewal without being told Jacobs was terminally ill, is “the worst thing anyone has ever done to me.” His contention that Cayton double-dipped his purses is secondary to that perceived betrayal of trust.

That is why Tyson is less concerned with the fact that as of last December, King still owed him more than $2 million from the February, 1990, Buster Douglas fight, than he is with King’s sometimes underhanded manipulations. “I don’t care about money,” Tyson told Newsday back in 1986. “I’m just a guy looking for love, man.”

In 1991, he says, “I like money, but I don’t fight for money. I would fight Holyfield for nothing if I could, just to prove I could beat this guy.”

These days, Tyson’s only pleasure seems to come from boxing. His recent misadventures with the opposite sex, including the rape charge and a series of lawsuits based on his reported proclivity for getting familiar with unfamiliar women, have caused him to swear off nightlife. “Basically, I’ll choose my places where I go,” he said. “I’ll definitely never go out again to a club. Never. Man, you won’t see me.”

Even Tyson’s closest friends doubt the longevity of that vow, but in the six weeks or so that he trained for Holyfield, Tyson spent most of his non-workout time in the Las Vegas Country Club house owned by King, watching videos with constant companions and, some would say, watchdogs John Horne and Rory Holloway. His mood brightens only when the subject is fights and fighters, especially those who were the heroes of the young Mike Tyson.

Despite the rotten taste the boxing business has left in Tyson’s mouth, he still feels happiest and most confident in the ring. But even there, Tyson is aware of a dark side. Sitting in his dressing room before a fight, Tyson says he sometimes is engulfed by such a feeling of destructive rage that he frightens himself. It is on those nights, he said, that he fights his best.

He felt it before he fought Michael Spinks and Larry Holmes and Tyrell Biggs. Needless to say, he did not feel it on that bizarre morning in Tokyo when he was knocked out by Douglas. He fully expected to feel it before he began his walk to the ring against Holyfield, a walk that now seems very far away.

“I wish I didn’t feel that way,” Tyson said. “It scares me. It makes me think like there’s something wrong with me. It’s a miserable feeling. I hate it. But I also love it.”

His title fight on hold and his life in jeopardy, Mike Tyson waits for the day when that raging fire will build inside him once again.

“Boxing sucks,” he said. But he loves it.