Tyson Ignores All but King : Boxing: Freed former champion prays in mosque, flies home with promoter.

“Mike! Mike!”

In a Muslim mosque two miles from the prison where Mike Tyson has spent the last three years, Dan Meyer, a 24-year-old fan who has driven down from Milwaukee, thrusts three boxing magazines at the former heavyweight champion, begging for an autograph.

Tyson, expressionless, wearing a white knit skullcap, ignores him, ignores the media, ignores the congregation.

He has come straight from jail upon his release, at 6:15 a.m. (EST) Saturday, to offer a prayer of thanks. When it’s over, his entourage--promoter Don King and several bodyguards--whisks him out the back door into a black stretch limo, headed for the airport and a chartered jet home.

To Tyson, an involuntary Hoosier, happiness is Indiana in his rear-view mirror.

People throughout boxing have been hoping he’ll dump King, the promoter he no longer needs, at least not professionally. They hope a more independent Iron Mike can avoid the wild, lonely-at-the-top lifestyle that helped him blow most of the $60 million he had earned and led to his rape conviction.

“To me,” promoter Lou Duva said recently, “his life goes hand in hand with his boxing. . . . Unless he straightens out his personal life, his boxing life don’t mean a damn thing.”

Tyson has said he’ll take charge of his career but also has signaled his ambivalence and his intention to retain King by naming two of King’s minions his co-managers.

King is at Tyson’s side from the moment he leaves jail. Tyson has no family there. Aside from Tyson’s girlfriend, Monica Turner, a 28-year-old Georgetown medical student, it’s just professional associates and well-wishers like Muhammad Ali and Hammer.

As they walk down the front steps, King’s security people surround Tyson as if they expect sniper fire, like members of the Secret Service, huddling around the President. A tall bodyguard spreads his trench coat to shield Tyson, although there is no hope of hiding him. An international press corps with representatives from England, France, Brazil, Germany and Australia, waits behind police lines on the other side of the driveway, filming from every angle including the sky, where four helicopters chartered by news organizations are hovering.

The atmosphere is so charged--or King is so bent on showing Tyson how much he does for him--they’re treating this more like a prison break than a release. They make no statement and take no questions, which must be painful for King, who has rarely walked past a live microphone.

In the mosque, where the male members of the congregation kneel in rows--women and children are in the back or upstairs--Tyson is front and center. King, who is not a Muslim, is right behind him, bowing and touching his forehead to the carpet in submission and chanting, “Allah Akhbar”--”God is great”--along with the true believers.

Security is haphazard. A press cavalcade has followed Tyson, only to be turned away at the mosque by Hendricks County sheriff’s deputies. Fans line the roads. However, the deputies are only blocking the entry to the mosque, so fans and reporters get around them by hiking across a frost-covered field.

The mosque has a carpet, no furniture and unadorned white walls. There are narrow slit windows; congregants stand in front to keep TV cameras from filming the service.

Tyson’s appearance settles the debate among his local liaisons/spokesmen as to whether he has become a Muslim. Tyson has long been in search of a spiritual place to call home. Born a Catholic, he became a Baptist in 1988 (with Jesse Jackson helping to officiate) and now has converted again.

Hammer, attending the service, says he hopes Tyson’s experience will help him.

“It will enlighten him, strengthen him, make him more aware of this rough and tough society,” Hammer says.

When the service is over, the congregation is asked to make a path so that Tyson can leave without interruption. Nevertheless, the crowd presses in on him. At the eye of the storm, surrounded by taller bodyguards, desperate fans, the anxious press and adoring Muslims, he doesn’t look like the fearsome Mike Tyson, just an average-size 5-foot-11 guy in a skullcap.

Tyson is led out the back way, where the limo waits in a parking lot behind the mosque, with the helicopters still hovering overhead, hawking it. The choppers follow them to the airport, where the chartered jet waits to ferry him and his/King’s entourage to Ohio.

Tyson has a 14-room mansion ringed by a high iron gate in Southington, a village of 3,600 in the northwest corner of the state near Youngstown. It is not a place that attracts many wealthy people looking for solitude. King had a training camp nearby, which was what first brought Tyson to the area.

Tyson flies to Youngstown and is taken home in a Jeep. Someone has put up yellow ribbons along his driveway and signs that say: “MIKE, Welcome Back to Your Family” and “We Missed You, Champ.”

Nearby, two Ohio men hold up a sign that says: “O.J., YOUR WELCOME HERE, TOO.”

Ask Mike Tyson, there’s no place like home.