COMMENTARY : Tyson Doesn’t Need a Tuneup

Everybody wants to know, who will Mike Tyson fight first? How many tuneup fights will Tyson take? Will he head straight for Foreman or Bowe?

Although Tyson holds no official title, it was clear from the moment he walked out of the Indiana Youth Center on Saturday that he is the heavyweight champion in everything but name. Tyson is a far bigger figure in boxing than Bowe or Foreman or Oliver McCall or Lennox Lewis or any other heavyweight toting a bejeweled belt around. If boxing is going to make any sort of comeback, it’s going to revolve around Tyson.

Three years is a long time, though. Three years with nothing to do, but think.

Tyson did not throw a single punch in prison; unlike some states, Indiana doesn’t allow prison boxing. So while Tyson may appear to be in great physical shape, he isn’t in boxing shape. He hasn’t hit anybody, or been hit in three years. The glory of boxing lies in punching somebody else, but the reality of boxing lies in being punched repeatedly, and wading through the punches to deliver some of your own.

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Everybody assumes Tyson is going to fight again, and so do I. But I’ve read about Tyson’s religious conversion, and his voluminous reading of great books. It seems to me that after three years of confinement a person’s outlook and values might change.

What if Tyson finds he doesn’t much like boxing anymore? What if he finds he doesn’t have the taste for it he once did? What if the inner fury that drove Tyson is gone? (Let’s remember that the fury seemed to be evaporating even before Tyson went to jail; he was fat and listless when Buster Douglas knocked him out, and he didn’t look very good against Razor Ruddock.) People who’ve spoken at length with Tyson in the last year or so report Tyson is very changed. What none of us knows is whether these changes will affect his boxing.

This is why I would counsel Tyson not to take any tuneups fights, but to go for the big money first crack out of the box.

Avoid Bowe. (Sorry, Rock.)

Take Foreman.

There’s too much downside in tuneups (though if I were Tyson, I’d be tempted to start my comeback by punching my lawyer first). What if some palooka pops Tyson? The guy hasn’t fought in almost four years. How can you take a chance on blowing a huge-money bout to get a tuneup?

It’s not like when Ali came back and needed a couple of tuneups to get ready for a great fighter like Frazier; there are no Joe Fraziers out there. Although with Foreman, 46, and Larry Holmes, 45, there are people who fought Frazier! Hey, for this money maybe Frazier himself would come back.

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There’s too much downside in fighting Riddick Bowe. Bowe hasn’t progressed the way people hoped he would. But he’s 6 feet 5 and comfortable at 235 pounds--much bigger than Tyson--and he’s young, he has stamina and he can box. Why would Tyson want to fight Bowe in his first fight back? For Bowe, he’d need a tuneup.

But Foreman, ah, that’s the ticket. This is possibly a $100 million gate. Who could resist pay-per-view on this? These are the two most charismatic fighters since Ali.

Everyone loves Foreman, and everyone fears Tyson. It would surely be Foreman’s last fight, and people would tune in with a hint of ghoulishness that Foreman could be carried out on his shield. The fight would have every classic story line: good vs. evil; the oldest heavyweight champ vs. the man who was the youngest heavyweight champ; the man who made boxing fun vs. the man with the perpetual scowl.

Boxing experts would decry it as a joke and a mismatch, insisting a 46-year-old man shouldn’t be allowed in the ring with Mike Tyson (and as a 46-year-old man let me say that I wouldn’t get in the ring with Tyson unless I had a chain saw).

But then you’ll start hearing from the people who’ll say Tyson is a perfect fight for Foreman, because Tyson will go straight at Foreman, and stand right in front of Foreman, and Foreman won’t have to move at all, and he can throw those powerful chopping right hands down at Tyson and club him.

Folks will say that Foreman can actually beat Tyson, particularly a Tyson who hasn’t fought in four years. And there’s the beauty for Tyson in fighting Foreman. If Tyson loses, he can chalk it up to ring rust. He’ll be forgiven. He’ll still be a huge draw if he wants to fight some more.

AND HE CAN KEEP THE MONEY!

(I should concede that my wise friend Seth Abraham, head of HBO sports, says Tyson needs at least one tuneup bout before fighting Foreman--not simply to shake the rust out, but also to get the public’s image of him away from jail, and recast himself as a professional boxer so as to realize the fullest economic potential of the bout. Abraham is undoubtedly right, but then my column would have only been two paragraphs long.)

The other big question about Tyson is whether Don King will exercise as much control over Tyson as he did before. The hint that he will comes from the photographs we’ve seen thus far of Tyson as a free man. King is in every one of them, a foot or so behind Tyson. If this was a wedding King would be your Uncle Morty, who followed the photographer from table to table and stuck his big fat puss in every picture.

There are some who say King won’t be as influential as before, because he isn’t a Muslim, and Tyson’s Muslim friends will influence Tyson to recede from King. Monday’s New York Daily News had a story that King made a faux pas by catering a spread of champagne and shellfish for Tyson’s return to Ohio; Muslim dietary law prohibits Tyson from drinking alcohol and eating pork or shellfish. Of course, King could maybe get back in favor by becoming a rabbi, since they’re not allowed to eat pork or shellfish either--and you know King would be great giving sermons.