Don’t Blame Boxing, Don’t Blame Ghetto--Blame Him

Can boxing stand such a black eye? Can it bear up under the sight of a Marion County Sheriff’s van driving former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson off to an Indiana state penitentiary?

Of course it can. The better question might be: How is it that boxing didn’t die under the weight of its sins 50 years ago?

As boxing journalist and historian Bert Sugar put it so aptly not long ago: “Hey, boxing ran out of black eyes around 1909.”

One thing seemed certain Monday night, after Tyson was found guilty on all three counts of rape against him. Unless his high-powered attorneys can find a way to overturn the verdict on appeal, another famous boxer is on his way up the river.

Welcome to the club, Mike.

Tony Ayala’s case is a parallel to Tyson’s. He looked like a world class middleweight in the making in the early 1980s--until he sexually assaulted a woman in New Jersey, in April of 1983.

He was 19 and 22-0 when he was packed off to prison for a 35-year sentence. Now 28, he won’t be eligible for parole until 1997.

Troubled fighters, troubled sport. Old theme. Simply a new face, that’s all.

Boxing’s first world-prominent figure, John L. Sullivan of Boston, beat up men and women. His problem was he drank whiskey from steins. Often, he woke up on the floors of jail cells and couldn’t remember how he got there.

That was more than 100 years ago. A 1960s middleweight world champion, Carlos Monzon, is in an Argentine prison for the murder of his mistress. Seems he threw her off the balcony of his high-rise apartment.

Tyson would be at least the fourth heavyweight champion to go to prison. In addition to Sullivan, there was Jack Johnson, the titlist from 1908 to 1915. He served a year at Leavenworth--but on trumped-up charges that he had violated the Mann Act by taking a woman across a state line for immoral purposes.

Sonny Liston (1962-1964) had done two prison stretches before he became a prominent heavyweight in the late 1950s.

Two middleweight champions, Joey Giardello and Jake LaMotta, did time. Giardello pulled a stickup at a gas station. LaMotta was jailed for pimping. Rocky Graziano signed up to fight the Germans in World War II, but never made it. He struck a sergeant during basic training, spent a year in the brig, and got a dishonorable discharge.

And earlier Monday, former heavyweight champion John Tate was charged in Knoxville, Tenn., with aggravated robbery for allegedly robbing a man of $14.

So boxing will survive this. This one’s easy. More strong, tough young men from the rough and tumble inner-city streets are on the way. There will always be an ample market for strong, tough young men who can fight--as long as fans willingly pay to see prize fights.

Don’t blame boxing for this one. This tragedy is all Tyson’s--his and his alone.

So the world may be deprived of ever seeing his big showdown with Evander Holyfield. So what? How high should this really rate on anyone’s disappointment scale? Should it rate with lousy schools, the homeless, cancer?

Let him go. Wave goodbye. Send him a post card. Meanwhile, let other stalwart young men step forward to claim his fortune. Riddick Bowe, Lennox Lewis, Razor Ruddock . . . or let old stalwart men step forward: George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Tony Tucker. . .

As for Tyson himself, how could it have happened? How could a guy in his 20s with so much talent--he grossed $50 million in 1988--wind up on a behavior track that seemingly dead-ended in an Indianpolis courtroom Monday night?

And please, don’t blame it on the ghetto. No, not this time. Evander Holyfield grew up in a ghetto, too. And it wasn’t him standing before the judge Monday night. It was Michael Gerard Tyson.

One reason why Tyson wound up in court was because he has never learned to be responsible for himself. Or for anything. An interesting insight to his life came during trial testimony last week by his friend John Horne.

Horne, asked to explain why Tyson needed his bodyguard, Dale Edwards, to unlock his room for him, replied: “Because Mike can’t keep anything on his person--keys, money--he loses stuff.”

A little more than two years in Tokyo, a few days before the Douglas fight, Tyson consented to an interview with a half-dozen U.S. boxing writers.

When we came upon him, he sat on the floor, watching a martial arts movie. He was cheerful, friendly--but his attention didn’t waver much from the movie. As he answered a question, the credits rolled at the end of the movie. A pile of videos lay at his feet.

All he had to do was reach over, grab one, and stuff it in the VCR.

Nah. The champion never does stuff like that. Tyson turned and glared at friend Rory Holloway, who had fallen asleep at the switch. Tyson whacked him on the leg with his elbow, and Holloway leaped to action, scrambling on the floor to find a new video.

One wonders now, at long last, if Tyson finally sees his future and knows he is not going to get there in a limousine.