Harnessing the Rage : Moorer Will Try to Direct His Intensity Toward Holyfield

Michael Moorer, whose moods often swing from bad to worse to “Get out of my face!”has shut his eyes. But his mind, as always, is alert--wary, and suspicious of bad intentions.

Waiting, if necessary, to hit back, hard.

His trainer, Teddy Atlas, calls Moorer a reluctant dragon because, although he almost never launches the attack, once stirred, his rage is volcanic.

He has counter-punched his way through life, inside the ring where he is considered the hardest puncher since Mike Tyson, and out of it, with incidents involving police, bar patrons and trainers.

At 26, he has wandered into this situation--with a real chance to emerge Friday as the first left-handed heavyweight champion in history--trusting almost nobody, slamming back at everybody who attacks him, with a chip on his shoulder he displays with stubborn pride.

Is it time to attack now?

“Whatever you have to say, say it, “ Moorer orders his questioner. “You don’t have to beat around the bush and try and trick me. Whatever you’re saying, I know what it is. You can’t fool me.”

Weary after seven weeks of training for Friday night’s bout against heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and dreading hours of packing as camp breaks in Palm Springs, Moorer speaks in a low whisper, a grumble.

His body is tensed, and his responses are quick, often brutally frank.

“I understand what’s going on and I’m not going to give in to society,” Moorer says when asked if he cares that many consider him a bull-headed rogue. “I’m going to voice my opinion in whatever way I want to and I’m going to be the way I’m going to be.

“That bothers you? I’m not a tough guy. People want to put that label on. I’m not a tough guy, I’m just me. I’m a tough guy because I may say something or I may respond to something that they think is wrong? They don’t know me.

” . . . You probably think I’m a bad person. I’m myself. I’m not a bad guy, I’m just thinking I’ve got to pack, which I don’t want to do.”

Then, he finishes, almost silently, winking, “I don’t want you to get a bad impression of me.”

Moorer, called an introvert by former trainer Lou Duva, is the man who, when one of Palm Springs’ older residents complains about the X-rated lyrics of the rap song playing while he trains, shakes his head and eventually turns the music off.

Later, when Snoop Doggy Dog is turned back on, loud, Moorer tells the small crowd, “I’m sorry, but there’s cuss words, so if you’re offended, I apologize.”

Contradictory? Maybe. But for Michael Moorer, winner of all 34 of his fights, including 30 knockouts, heavyweight contender, soon-to-be-millionaire and proud father, nothing is more contradictory than all that surrounds him.

The sycophants. The parties. The false friends. The posing. The fight game.

“I want to get the hell out of this game by the time I’m 28, 29,” he has said earlier. In the midst of his Palm Springs ennui, he moves the retirement schedule up to minutes after he wins the title.

“It’s too psychological, too mental,” he says. “There are a lot of fake people that are around you. People will be your friend, talk to you like they care about you, and behind your back talk stuff all the time.

“See, society thinks that boxers are just dumb. They think they’re limited to just boxing. I’m not one of them. I don’t care. I can get out of this game and do something else.”

This is also the man whose run-in with the Monessen, Pa., police cost him $250,000 to settle, but who says he wants to be involved in law enforcement when he retires.

This is the man whose wife, Bobbie, from whom he has been separated for about a year, served him Monday with a $6-million civil suit regarding an incident six months ago in which she was removed from his Detroit apartment.

“Mike has a lot of sympathy, he likes to be a protector, you know, with law enforcement,” says Henry Smith, Moorer’s grandfather and the man who had a huge hand in raising the fighter. “He will help you.

“But if you step on his corn, there’s something inside of him. He is not going to take this. It would be a shame if all he’s known for is his temper, but he’s a good-hearted boy.”

Moorer grew up in Monessen without a father. He was reared by his mother, Paulette, and Smith, his grandfather, who took Moorer to the gym he ran when Moorer was 12.

“He was a natural puncher,” Smith says. “I tried to ignore it at first, because he was family and I didn’t want him fighting. His mother forced me to take him to the gym.

“I said, ‘Get those gloves on, hit the bag,’ and I went over to work with the experienced fighters. He went over there-- Bam! Bam-bam-bam! I turned my head, looked, and thought, ‘The fool’s going crazy.’ I said, ‘Go get that other pair of (lighter) gloves,’ and he hit the bag so hard he knocks it down, falls off the racks.”

As a promising 175-pound amateur, Moorer was taken to Detroit’s Kronk Gym, an impressionable teen-ager who was swept up by Kronk founder Emanuel Steward’s engaging personality and boxing knowledge.

He moved from light-heavyweight to heavyweight. Then he had a few disappointing performances and a near-disastrous knockdown by Bert Cooper, and Steward sold his share of Moorer’s management contract.

“Emanuel and I were real close,” Moorer says. “He was like a father to me. I didn’t leave Emanuel. Emanuel left me. So I had to go on.”

Did he feel abandoned?

“Ask the question that you want,” Moorer snaps. “You’re asking if Emanuel is fake, right? Emanuel’s a fake person as far as trying to do something that he’s not.

“He’s trying to put on too much, and he can’t handle it. The kind of lifestyle he has, he’s putting up a lot of fronts.”

His boxing career in chaos, Moorer’s violent temper seemed to rage.

In 1991, the 6-foot-2, 217-pound Moorer was involved in a brawl with Monessen police, one officer suffering a broken jaw.

“I had no problems with him whatsoever,” says Alex Shearer, who worked with Moorer while Shearer was with Kronk. “But he’s a guy growing up into manhood, starting to make large sums of money, starting to deal with outside pressures. . . .”

Says John Davimos, Moorer’s manager, “In the long run, Emanuel leaving helped Michael tremendously. It allowed him to become a man, allowed him to go out there, be confused for a while, be scared for a while, and find his own way.

“I think initially, though, it hurt him a lot more than maybe he would admit or realize.”

With Lou Duva and George Benton, Moorer rose to his current No. 1 ranking in the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation, but seemed to lack the fire necessary to win a major championship.

He tended to fight hard only when pressured. If the other fighter merely wanted to survive, Moorer seemed happy with that.

That led to his eventual teaming with Atlas, whose directness seems to have stirred something within Moorer.

“There was a part of him, when he was under pressure, he would waiver and make excuses and do things that were contradictory to a person who wanted to be successful,” Atlas says.

“He was waiting and hesitant in fights. To me, that’s a problem where he’s not disciplining himself to make things happen. That’s a person not in control of himself.”

Atlas, who worked with Tyson in the early Catskill, N.Y., days, says there are some similarities between the two, quiet but dangerous men.

“(Moorer) will protect himself by acting in a way that he doesn’t really feel,” Atlas says. “Put those roles on. He’s really a sensitive, and sometimes unsure person.

“Tyson, in some similar ways, was sensitive, and he’d put on those roles that he wanted to be around gangsters, and that was all a role. That was Tyson’s way of getting people to believe him.

“Michael’s an emotional person, just like Tyson, and he feels the pressure just like Tyson did. But Michael’s not as malicious as Tyson. He might fool you. But Michael’s not a malicious person.”

Sometimes Moorer claims that his fearsome image is a useful selling point--he walked into a news conference Tuesday wearing a T-shirt that read: “U have the right to remain violent.”

But Moorer acknowledges having a quick temper and some embarrassment over the incidents--including at least one fight in a bar--that have dotted his career.

“I used to have a bad, bad temper,” he says. “Used to be very destructive and very mean. But I’ve controlled it a lot. I knew it was a problem for me because I would get (angry) at the littlest things outside of boxing. I’ve made a 180-degree turn. I don’t get that way.

“I just sat down and said, ‘I’m not going to do that because I’m going to end up killing myself one day.’ My son being born--there was a purpose to me being here. There’s a lot of people who have babies who don’t want to be fathers.”

And as he prepares to fight Holyfield, the premier example of a fighter who apparently has achieved success mostly through discipline and will power, Moorer understands that it is time to regain control of his own emotions.

His eyes open wide when he talks about it, and his voice finally is beyond a whisper.

“Evander, it’s all within himself,” Moorer says. “It’s all in his heart and his mind. He’s a real mental-type of person, like I am. We don’t let you know what’s going on on the outside, but in the inside, we’re always thinking.

“It’s minds. It’s a meeting of minds.”