BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Foreman Bout Tonight Might Be Last

As you watched him talk with spellbound audiences of about 750 this week in his parking lot training tent, you wondered whether you were watching the end of the amazing comeback story of George Foreman.

Foreman, 43, has said tonight’s fight against Alex Stewart might be his last, unless heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield’s handlers “show immediate interest” in a Holyfield-Foreman rematch, should Foreman beat Stewart, as expected.

However, there is also talk that Foreman might get in one more fight in 1992 before his wife, Joan, persuades him to stop.

HBO is asking Foreman to consider a summer fight against Riddick Bowe, which could actually wind up as a fight for a piece of a heavyweight title. If any of the governing bodies penalize Holyfield, the heavyweight champion, for fighting Larry Holmes on June 19 instead of higher-ranked Bowe or Razor Ruddock, the heavyweight title would be split for the first time since 1987.

Before his sparring workouts this week, Foreman stood on the ring apron and addressed the audiences, sitting on folding chairs in the Las Vegas Hilton parking lot tent.

“I want to meet the oldest person here,” Foreman said Monday.

A frail woman raised her hand, and was escorted up front to Foreman. She told him she was 80, that she remembered listening as a teen-ager to the radio broadcast of the 1927 Dempsey-Tunney “long count” fight on the stoop of her cold-water flat on Chauncey Street in Brooklyn.

Foreman presented her with a Foreman-Stewart fight poster, then posed with the woman for a picture.

That was Monday. On Thursday, Foreman’s training camp coordinator, Jay Edson, received a letter from the woman, Helen Miller of Las Vegas.

“Thank you and thanks to George Foreman for giving an old lady the thrill of a lifetime,” she wrote.

A small gesture, but multiply it by the dozens of times every day that tourists recognize him, the times that he happily poses for pictures and signs autographs, and it’s not difficult to account for his popularity. Big-time athletes are often surly, glaring out at the public through smoke-tinted limo windows.

Not Foreman. He loves the public.

“Hey, George, how far is your road work every day for this fight?” a man yelled to him before his workout Thursday.

“However far it is from the bedroom to the kitchen,” Foreman responded, and the audience roared.

Someone made reference to his having waved an American flag in the ring at the 1968 Olympics, when he won the gold medal, and the audience rose as one and gave him a standing ovation.

They remembered, and it made them feel good to let him know they remembered.

When Foreman missed an appointment with a few reporters waiting to see him Thursday afternoon, no one was really upset with him. He might be the most media-accessible big-name athlete in America. They were waiting in the room of Bill Caplan, his publicist.

There, they learned Foreman isn’t always ready to entertain.

Caplan finally knocked gently on Foreman’s door, to let him know writers were waiting.

Foreman’s wife told Caplan that Foreman was taking a nap. Caplan asked whether she could whisper in his ear.

“No,” she said, “you know what a bear he is when you wake him up.”

Mike Tyson will be given his Indiana prison assignment in about two weeks.

He is being evaluated by the Indiana Department of Corrections at the state’s Reception Diagnostic Center at Plainfield.

Tyson’s new attorney, Alan Dershowitz, was unable to get Tyson released on bail during the appeal of his rape conviction. He was sentenced to a 10-year prison term March 26, but Judge Patricia Gifford suspended four years of the sentence. It is expected he will actually serve three years.

The former heavyweight champion is expected to be assigned to one of five medium-security prisons in Indiana.

Kevin Moore, a Department of Corrections spokesman, explained Friday the difference between prisons in Indiana.

“The major differences are that the medium-security facilities have one perimeter fence with razor wire on top, and inmates may be assigned to outside work assignments,” he said.

“Medium-high facilities have double perimeter fencing with razor wire, and there are no outside work programs.”

At a medium-security prison, he said, Tyson could be assigned to dormitory living quarters or a single cell. He said the possibility that Tyson would be the target of other inmates will have a bearing on his assignment.

“There are fights in prison, and we’re aware he may need some special security arrangements,” Moore said.

“However, the more we are able to treat him like any other inmate, the better off he will be. An inmate who gets special prison treatment is often not looked upon favorably by other inmates.

“However, if he comes to us and expresses a need for special security arrangements, we’d have to listen to him.”

A maximum-security prison assignment is unlikely, Moore said, adding: “He definitely won’t be placed in a minimum security facility, either.”

Tyson won’t be allowed to do specific boxing training while incarcerated, Moore said. He said recreation facilities at medium-security prisons consist solely of gymnasiums, weight rooms, basketball courts, pool tables and Ping-Pong tables.

Boxing Notes

Mike Katz, New York Daily News boxing writer, reported recently that Mike Tyson’s promoter, Don King, is considering a partial retirement from boxing while Tyson serves his prison sentence. King, Katz wrote, has reportedly put two of his Manhattan townhouses--one of which is his office--on the market and has bought a home in Boca Raton, Fla. King was in Mexico City for Friday’s Julio Cesar Chavez fight and unavailable for comment, but King’s matchmaker, Al Braverman, denied the report. “There’s nothing to it,” Braverman said. “If Don is thinking about cutting back in any way, he hasn’t said a word about it to me.” Braverman confirmed, though, that King recently bought a home in Boca Raton. King also maintains residences in Las Vegas, Cleveland and Los Angeles.

Twenty-six members of the Harvard Lampoon staff are in Las Vegas, preparing a final 1992 issue on the city. And the Lampoon has made Foreman its Man of the Year because, as editor David Madel explained, “he is one of the great boxing figures of his time and he has a sense of humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously.” Foreman will visit Cambridge, Mass., on May 2 to receive the award.