This Decision Isn’t a Knockout

The first time I met Mike Tyson, we were riding in a white stretch limousine to be on Roy Firestone’s show. Tyson was about 19 at the time. He was not yet heavyweight champion, but everybody knew he would be. There was nothing in his way but a lot of has-beens, never-will-be’s and fat old parties with a history of drug abuse.

“Did you ever dream two years ago you’d be riding around Hollywood in a stretch limo to go on national television?” Tyson was asked. “Two years ago, if I was around this limousine, I’d be stealing it,” the young Tyson said with a smile.

Tyson was a curious study. He would scare you to look at him. The eyes kind of glittered at times. The gold in the teeth glinted. His squat, massive body looked carved. You pictured him on the street with a knife in his teeth and you shuddered. You knew he could kill you with one blow.

But he had another, almost appealing side. He spoke with this almost sing-song voice with a little lisp. He didn’t look vulnerable, but he managed to sound it. He had this sense of humor. He was not educated, but he was intelligent. He spoke in full sentences and not in the cadence of the streets.

You wondered if you had another Rocky Marciano here. Marciano was a frightening physical specimen, too. In the ring, he was a bull, wild, homicidal. Out of it, he was as gentle and self-effacing as a butler.

Tyson would climb into the ring like a mugger. He scorned the niceties of showmanship. He wore no socks, his shoulders were covered with a frayed towel.

Other fighters came into the ring in jeweled robes, high socks, shoes with tassels. Tyson came into the ring as stripped for action as a tiger.

But he remained almost deferential in his early career. When he threw in a lackluster fight against Bonecrusher Smith in Las Vegas, he came into the media room afterward to apologize, almost as if he had done something dishonorable or was ashamed of himself.

It’s hard to pinpoint when he began to change. Sometime after the death of his mentor, Cus D’Amato, to be sure. He became contemptuous. He would put his head down and pretend to sleep at news conferences, rousing only to bait his opponent with sneering, schoolyard insults.

He became a walking 911 number. He got in 4 a.m. street brawls, he crashed cars into trees, he harassed women, he slapped parking lot attendants. He cut loose from Bill Cayton, the last voice of reason and responsibility in his camp, and threw in with Don King, a man who was in no position to moralize, a man who would be selling snake oil if this were another time, another place.

Not even getting knocked out could bring Tyson back to reality. History tells us that when the great Joe Louis got suddenly, shockingly knocked out by Max Schmeling, it might have been the best thing that ever happened to him. Tyson’s knockout by Buster Douglas actually seems to have escaped his notice.

But could anyone have predicted he would be so out of touch with reality as to commit rape? Against an 18-year-old beauty queen with impeccable academic credentials? This was no bimbo from the pages of the supermarket tabloids, no groupie, this was a girl of such spotless record even the defense lawyers couldn’t find witnesses to mar it.

It was a blowup of volcanic proportions. But, like the Douglas knockout, Tyson seems to have persuaded himself it never happened. The law had never scared him on the streets of Brooklyn, and it didn’t now.

Date rape is a new concept in the annals of crime in this country. Thirty years ago, the chances of a successful prosecution would have been nonexistent. Rape, by its nature, usually is a crime without third-party witnesses and was almost never punished when the victim knew the criminal.

Should the young woman have been in Tyson’s room at 1:30 in the morning? Of course not. Oh, Gloria Steinem would say she had a perfect right to be there if she wished, it is her constitutional right. I have a constitutional right to walk through Central Park at 1:30 in the morning, too. But I don’t think I’ll exercise it. Criminals seem to be the only ones able to exercise constitutional rights these days anyway.

Has Tyson even now faced the reality of his situation? The gravity? It’s doubtful. He is, after all, a valuable property, a walking vault of money to so many people. They are all there, television networks, cable companies, hotels, tours, ticket brokers, advertisers. They are already coming out of the woodwork. Donald Trump has already come forth with the proposal that Tyson be allowed to fight again as long as he contributes parts of his purses to rape victims.

To accept Trump’s deal would be a cynical reaffirmation that, if you have enough money, you can get away with any crime, no matter how heinous.

Will Tyson fight again? Very probably. After all, a conviction today is only a semi-conviction and Tyson has the money to go to the Supreme Court.

When the heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, flouted the law (even a law that was aimed discriminatingly at him) he had to flee the country and, ultimately, defend his title in Cuba. But Tyson probably will be able to have his title fight right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Wouldn’t the “public” boycott such a fight? Are you kidding? They’d break down the doors. The guess here is, Tyson will be able to have his title fight. There’s too much money at stake. There will be a public outcry from certain quarters. But from the country at large? Not the way to bet. Many of us would go to his hotel room at 1:30 in the morning.