Tyson’s Unfulfilled Promise : Boxing: A reporter remembers that the fighter, under Cus D’Amato, was a teen-ager who seemed to be on the right track.

The year was 1984, the scene a hotel in Ft. Worth, where a group of America’s most talented amateur boxers were quartered during the Olympic trials, their dreams laced with gold.

A bull-necked youth with the physique of a bodybuilder, riveting eyes that seemed almost menacing and two gold front teeth that glittered ominously when his lips parted--infrequently in those days--sat in the lobby with his manager and me.

Michael Tyson was 17 then, virtually unknown to the public but clearly destined for stardom as a professional boxer. Many ring experts openly predicted that one day he would reign as the world heavyweight champion.

No one predicted, however, that one day he also would appear in a court of law, convicted of a felony--the crime of rape.

The most devastating puncher in the amateur ranks at the time, Tyson thrilled spectators with his unrelenting style, his brutal power, his sensational knockouts. But amateur boxing officials, for the most part, were not thrilled.

Many resented his unskilled, “unsportsmanlike” savagery inside the ring. In their eyes, he was no more than a street fighter, a thug who had no respect for the Marquess of Queensberry rules, no interest in the gentlemanly art of self-defense. He was a nonconformist--even, in the opinion of some Olympic officials, an embarrassment.

True, Mike Tyson was not out to flick point-scoring jabs at opponents, merely to impress judges. He was out to render his opponents unconscious, a goal he often accomplished. Fans went wild when his outclassed victims collapsed in a pathetic heap; judges cringed.

Assigned to cover the trials for The Times, I arranged with Tyson’s manager and guardian, Cus D’Amato, to interview his young protege in the hotel lobby that warm June day.

D’Amato, a grizzled, 76-year-old veteran manager who had guided Floyd Patterson to a 1952 Olympic gold medal as a middleweight and to the world heavyweight championship as a professional four years later, knew the value of publicity. He welcomed an opportunity to gain exposure for his then-obscure prospect.

As the interview began, it was apparent that Tyson, sullen and unfriendly, was in no mood for questions pertaining to anything. Clearly, he wouldn’t have granted the interview had it been his choice. But he worshiped D’Amato and usually obeyed him without question. So, he tolerated me, for a while.

“I had a lot of street fights when I was around 10,” he said reluctantly. “I would just fight to fight, no reason. I got my share of getting beat up.”

It was the longest string of words he managed to connect during the interview. No gestures. No smiles. No spontaneous comments.

At one point, when asked if he had any hobbies, he responded with a one-word, almost inaudible reply. Asked twice to repeat the word when he failed to make himself understood, he jumped up explosively, stalked off and joined some friends nearby.

Embarrassed by Tyson’s behavior, D’Amato apologized for him, explaining that he was young, sensitive and temperamental, but really not a bad kid. Minutes later, D’Amato persuaded him to resume the interview.

“Pigeons!” Tyson blurted out upon his return.

“Pigeons?”

Restraining his anger as best he could, he sarcastically informed me that some people have dogs or cats as pets; he has pigeons--his hobby, as he put it.

As days passed and Tyson advanced in the tournament to determine America’s Olympic boxing team, he avoided me as much as possible, and I made no attempt to be friendly with him. I did my job, of course, but focused on other athletes.

However, when The Times ultimately published the story based on the interview and Tyson read it, our relationship suddenly changed--drastically.

Mike Tyson became my pal. He joked with me, occasionally threw his arm across my shoulders, even shared a few secrets with me. I found him to be more intelligent than I had initially suspected, and an underlying sense of humor emerged as well. Obviously, he liked the article and the adulation that resulted. He liked the attention of his peers, the feeling of importance.

Before that summer of ‘84, before being featured on the sports pages of a major newspaper, Michael Tyson had sparked little or no interest from the media.

Who cared that Tyson, like Floyd Patterson, had grown up on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where he battled on concrete long before his feet ground rosin on canvas?

Who cared that he got into trouble and was sent to a boys’ detention center, that he never knew his father or that his mother died of cancer when he was 15?

The irascible D’Amato cared, if reporters did not. He became Tyson’s legal guardian when the boy was 14, and the two were inseparable.

“He was difficult when he came to me--suspicious,” D’Amato said eight years ago. “He took a wrong turn. I think I have his complete confidence now. It took him a couple of years to straighten himself out. He’s a damned good example of a boy who has done the right thing.”

If D’Amato were alive today, I wonder what he might say. He died before Tyson became world famous and a multimillionaire, before he won and subsequently lost the heavyweight title, before he married and divorced actress Robin Givens in a violent soap opera relationship, before he became involved in incident after incident . . . culminating, finally, in the rape of a young beauty contestant.

I wonder how Mike Tyson might have conducted himself had D’Amato lived and continued to help shape his life.

I would like to think things might have been different, that the young man who “straightened himself out” might have stayed on track as a gifted athlete, instead of making a mess of his life.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be.

Nonetheless, looking back at Michael Tyson, who failed to make a U.S. Olympic team because, as many experts contended, he refused to conform to the guidelines that govern the sport, I can’t help but feel compassion for him.

At 17, he really wasn’t a bad kid.