COLUMN ONE : Can Tyson Put Punch Back in Boxing? : He will be paid $35 million for six fights, a bounty that shows how vital he is to the sport. Blurred by hype is the moral issue of rewarding a convicted rapist.

By TIM KAWAKAMI

Aug. 6, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

The room was damp and desperately overcrowded, choked by heat, humidity and heavy expectations. Nobody could breathe, nobody could leave.

Then, Mike Tyson materialized and everything started to move and shake. Bodies pitched forward and scattered back, and the makeshift tent walls flared against a rush of furnace-hot air.

Wheeling through a door at full stride, already sweating in his white suit, Tyson led a host of associates who had to find space where there was none.

But for Tyson, the way was made clear.

Tyson: a Brooklyn native being welcomed “home” in Harlem. A converted Muslim embraced by Christian ministers. A convicted rapist and former champion succored by a boxing world starved for his power and pathos.

His return to boxing has raised contradictions and provocative moral questions, and has evoked images of both the sport’s sad and savage history and the turmoil that afflicts its present and its future.

For him, boxing has redrawn its boundaries and its powerbrokers have opened their bank vaults, wrestling with their consciences and their instinct for survival.

But for Tyson, the way back--from three years in prison--has been made clear. A single workout in Las Vegas drew more than 50 reporters last week, and he has landed the largest long-term boxing deal ever--six fights for more than $35 million. Some have protested the attention and anticipation surrounding his return, but, as evidenced by this day in Harlem, the public’s fascination is greater than ever.

Now, on the dais at this “homecoming salute” news conference, he sat silent, scowling over the chaotic scene.

“We are a community of broken dreams and second chances,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize the early summer event.

“And Mike Tyson is our brother. Whatever he did wrong, we’ll help make it right--if he did wrong. . . . But, if he’s dirty anywhere, we’ll clean him.”

Then, the flamboyant promoter Don King spoke. Perhaps realizing the audience was wilting, he cut down his usually lengthy remarks, ending with a brief, roaring introduction to the crowd:

“Our son, our future . . . Mike Tyson!”

Tyson spoke softly, answering a few questions from the media about his return to boxing--”The only thing I do is pray and fight,” he said--and a few questions shouted from the star-struck audience. Then he bolted out of the tent, into a limousine.

Afterward, reporters cornered Benjamin L. Hooks, former head of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

“If you look at the community, there’s hundreds of young men from this community in jail today or facing jail,” Hooks said. “We’ve got a real serious problem in America, and we’re trying to trivialize it by making it one man or one woman. It’s much bigger than that. The question is whether we can save and redeem the soul of America.”

But how do you redeem a nation’s soul by paying a convicted felon $35 million to fight again?

“I don’t know about that,” Hooks said. “If he doesn’t fight well, he won’t make more money, you better believe that.”

Back Into the Ring

The arena will be plush and air-conditioned on Aug. 19. The rich and the beautiful, who will have paid up to $1,500 ringside ($200 for the cheapest seats), will mill around as they always do in the moments leading up to the main event.

“It’s going to be a happening, it’s going to be awesome,” said Alex Yemenidjian, president and chief financial officer of MGM Grand Inc., parent of the hotel-casino that will host Tyson’s first six fights after prison. “The magnetism, the electricity, will be unparalleled with any other event.”

Tyson is not the first boxer to walk the unsteady path between a broken life and the sport’s main stage. Sonny Liston did jail time before winning the heavyweight title, and countless others have had bouts with the law or drugs. But Tyson may well be the most famous athlete-in-his-prime to be incarcerated, and surely the only one who will re-enter a sport more famous than when he left.

Tyson has maintained his innocence and refused to apologize to Desiree Washington, the beauty pageant contestant he was convicted of raping in an Indianapolis hotel room in 1992--even when an apology could have meant a lesser jail term.

He has settled a civil suit filed by Washington, for a figure reported to be close to $1 million.

But on Aug. 19, much of that won’t matter.

For that first fight and five others, Tyson will earn more than $35 million from the Showtime cable network and the MGM Grand. His first opponent--little-regarded Peter McNeeley--reportedly will get $700,000, his biggest purse by far.

“We’re not repackaging [Tyson], we’re not remaking him,” said Jay Larkin of Showtime, which will pay Tyson a reported $20 million or more to televise the bouts. Showtime and the MGM Grand, which reportedly is paying him at least $15 million, gave him about a third of that money up front.

“Tyson has the quality, it’s an undefinable quality, that is a magnet for people and the media. The drama of his life is so extraordinary that a lot of us are waiting to see what the next chapter is.”

That life has taken him from troubled teen years running the streets of Brownsville, N.Y., to an apprenticeship under legendary Catskills trainer Cus D’Amato, to being the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, to a marriage and breakup with actress Robin Givens, to an unimaginable 1990 loss to Buster Douglas, to prison.

And as he has caromed from crisis to championship to chaos, boxing has twisted along with him, tied to the ferocity of his ring presence. Indeed, for three years--he went in at age 25, got out this March at 28--he was imprisoned. And boxing waited.

“He hasn’t done anything for . . . years, and already he’s heralded as a savior without lifting a glove,” veteran trainer Emanuel Steward said. “It just shows you the sad state of boxing. People are looking to Mike to rescue the sport.”

Since his release and announcement that he will fight again, Tyson has been carefully sheltered, sparring in secret. Some of his public relations people admit that the mystery is cultivated, but they also say he needs privacy to rediscover himself. He was not available to be interviewed for this article but recently started giving selected interviews.

“The transition Mike’s been going through the last four years, [including trial time] it’s been different than anything that’s ever happened before,” said his co-manager, John Horne.

And so is the amount of money flowing his way.

Why? Because, in a time of dropping profit margins and public distaste for the sport, and with the heavyweight division splintered and sluggish, boxing knows Mike Tyson, with his 41-1 record, is a blockbuster name, maybe the last blockbuster name.

Even though Aug. 19 ticket sales are slow--an internal document mistakenly faxed to the outside revealed that, while King was announcing 12,000 tickets had been sold, the real number was 2,300--event officials insist that the 16,736-seat arena will be filled.

For the fight, Showtime’s pay-per-view arm, SET, is suggesting a retail price of $39.95 to $59.95, the highest ever for a non-title bout--especially between someone who hasn’t fought in four years and someone generally considered poor even by journeyman standards.

The nation’s two major pay-per-view distributors, Request and Viewer’s Choice, balked when SET initially asked that it receive more than the usual 50-50 split. That dispute has been ironed out, and SET executives say the operators will get an equal split if enough homes buy the fight.

Both Larkin and Yemenidjian acknowledge that it is quite possible neither the network nor the hotel-casino will make money on their Tyson deals--”it’ll take a little while,” is how Larkin puts it--but both stress the importance of being associated with such high-profile spectacles.

Still, others criticize the deals--and the lack of control the MGM, specifically, has on when and who Tyson will fight. Though Yemenidjian says Tyson will fight for a title before the end of the contract, he isn’t sure when that will be and which titleholder will be the opponent. “That is up to Mike Tyson,” Yemenidjian said.

Tyson could face World Boxing Council champion Oliver McCall--a former Tyson sparring partner--or World Boxing Assn. champion Bruce Seldon (both are King fighters) as soon as Nov. 4, his second scheduled bout, or not until the middle of next year. Tyson’s co-managers say he plans four bouts in 1996.

Tyson’s plan to fight on Nov. 4 already has sparked a confrontation between boxing’s two cable networks, the sport’s primary source of income. TVKO, the Time Warner pay-per-view arm, has scheduled the third Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield fight for that day, also in Las Vegas. Neither side is backing off because the first Saturday in November is the season’s prime pay-per-view date.

Perhaps coincidentally, Bowe and Holyfield, neither of whom now holds a major title, are mentioned as the biggest potential opponents for Tyson. Until he fights one of them, many are asking how long he can go on fighting no-names.

“Those high prices for bums?” said rival promoter Bob Arum, who represents George Foreman and who has been unsuccessfully seeking a Tyson-Foreman bout. “If they put Tyson in with another bum Nov. 4, Holyfield-Bowe will blow them out of the water. The MGM can’t be very happy campers.

“It’s been described to me as the worst deal ever made by a casino.”

So much money, so many questions. Will the public spend $50 to watch Tyson against someone like McNeeley? And who will be the next opponent--another nobody? When will he fight Holyfield or Bowe or perhaps even Foreman?

And can Tyson compete with today’s top heavyweights?

“Tyson right now is the biggest question mark in boxing,” said Time Warner’s Seth Abraham, who concedes he would have loved to have signed Tyson but never was given the chance by King to present an offer directly to Tyson.

According to Yemenidjian, although it was not known at the time, Tyson had signed with King long before he announced it. King started negotiations with the MGM while Tyson was in prison, and when the MGM asked for documentation that King was representing Tyson, he provided it.

“Is Tyson the most popular? No way,” Abraham said. “George Foreman is the most popular heavyweight. Is Tyson the heavyweight champion? No, George Foreman is the heavyweight champ, by linear descent. Is Tyson the best heavyweight? No way, Riddick Bowe is probably the best.

“Mike Tyson is the most curious, the most enigmatic--he might be the most talked about, I’ll grant you that. But he ain’t the best, he ain’t the champ and he ain’t the most popular.”

That doesn’t matter given the current dearth of superstars in boxing, says trainer Teddy Atlas, who, as an assistant to D’Amato in the 1980s, worked with Tyson.

“This isn’t based on Mike Tyson,” Atlas said. “This is based on the return of Godzilla. If he doesn’t look like Godzilla right away, they will lose everything that went into [the] reasoning of Showtime giving him [millions]. People are expecting to see the return of a monster.”

But will they get one? Tyson’s persona has always been all fury and destruction. He blasted opponents in the ring, he allegedly bragged about hitting his wife, he raged at the media.

Prison didn’t forestall his reign as heavyweight champion, say some of those who knew him best, his championship forestalled his imprisonment.

“Tyson was always a bit of a mirage,” Atlas said. “What you see isn’t what you get. With Tyson, it always came down to the same thing.

“When he went with King, he didn’t have anyone covering his tracks as much. [Former co-managers Jim] Jacobs and [Bill] Cayton, they had to cover him up. Plenty of things would’ve tarnished his image before he ever got to King. They worked full time at covering it. When it got to King, it just continued to grow.”

And Tyson began to decline as a fighter. Though his break in 1988 with trainer Kevin Rooney was emotional and, apparently, permanent, even now many boxing veterans say that Tyson was never the same dominant fighter after leaving Rooney, a D’Amato protege.

Says Rooney: “It’s mind-boggling that Tyson got Showtime and the MGM to throw up this big money, because the people that were responsible for that happening are dead or no longer in the picture, and that’s Cus, No. 1, Jacobs and Cayton, No. 2, Kevin Rooney, No. 3 . . . and they’re all out of the picture.

“Because of us, he became famous worldwide. ‘And once the ball was rolling,’ like Cus would say, ‘it’s like a snowball coming down the hill.’ In today’s world, the market, he can get all this money for doing nothing for four years.”

While he was in jail, an Esquire article portrayed Tyson as a studious inmate who pored over classical literature.

Tyson emerged from jail with tattoos of Mao Tse-tung and Arthur Ashe, and recently quoted Voltaire during an interview.

Tyson, whose finances are now believed to be handled by his co-managers and not King, is estimated to have earned more than $80 million during his pre-prison career. Though there are reports that his lifestyle and expensive defense lawyers ate up his savings, there has never been an indication that he was short of money.

Showtime’s Larkin says Tyson’s famous post-prison spending spree--which apparently included 10 BMWs, several Rolls-Royces and a large Las Vegas home--was not out of the ordinary for a newly released man.

“I can tell you Mike bought a lot of gifts for people he felt stood by him while he was in jail,” Larkin said. “And when he came out, he wanted to show his affection and his gratitude and the way he did it was buying extravagant gifts.”

The reports of his conversion to Islam while in prison encouraged other promoters to try to pry him from King, who has had several run-ins with the law and faces a September trial on federal wire fraud charges.

Even now, sources say they understand that Tyson has kept his distance from King, employing him as a business partner but little else.

How will his conversion affect Tyson the fighter?

At his best and most dangerous, culminating in his 91-second knockout of Michael Spinks in 1988, after which he fired Cayton and eventually Rooney, Tyson was a marauder who jogged straight at his opponent, ducked his head under opponents’ punches, and fired off blistering flurries of vicious combinations.

“His style of fighters usually don’t have long careers,” said trainer Steward. “It’s the style of a youthful fighter, no hesitation, no thinking, just do it, do it, do it. Like Joe Frazier, they have to have short-lived careers. [Muhammad] Ali’s style permitted him to take the time off, to have a long career. He was always a thinking fighter, a cagey fighter. Tyson is not cagey.

“What made him a problem to society was what made him great in the ring, that wild personality.”

Horne says Tyson’s life and career can be divided into three stages: the single-minded, efficient rise to the top; the unsettled, undisciplined times of his title reign, and his current determination to climb back to the top.

“I think once Mike gets into his arena, which is the ring, any time an opponent gets in there with him, you’re going to see the viciousness, the explosiveness of a well-polished fighter,” says co-manager Rory Holloway. “I think what Mike has now is a lot of knowledge and wisdom to go along with his fighting abilities.”

Even if Tyson is not at his mid-’80s form, because of the scattered state of the heavyweight division, he is well within reach of a title in three or four fights.

But the skeptics wonder if Tyson, finding his way back into form, won’t delay his ascent for as long as possible--and avoid someone like the dangerous, ancient Foreman, who would be his most lucrative opponent. The 250-pound, 47-year-old Foreman, though slow, has clobbered smaller heavyweights (Frazier, Michael Moorer), and, observers say, with Tyson already a new millionaire, why should he risk anything against an older man who will retire any day now?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some injury came up and he stretched it,” Atlas said. “To me it would be human nature. If they’re giving him money so freely because of the anticipation of it, then, ‘Geez, let me put it off as long as I can. Because once I get in there, then they’ll pay me solely on what they see. Now, it’s on what they think.’

“He doesn’t have to read Machiavelli to make that decision.”

Under a Spotlight

The night before the Harlem salute, a group called African Americans Against Violence held a candlelight vigil. Tyson did not accept an invitation to attend.

Measured by the scowl on his face and the joylessness he displayed throughout the day, Tyson seemed to have been affected by the criticism that poured in after one organizer declared the homecoming day would be a one of parades and celebration.

“Things got so blown out of proportion,” Showtime’s Larkin said. “Do you know the one guy who was most upset about it was Tyson? Anything he does is done under a spotlight and a microscope. Couldn’t you see he didn’t feel right there?

“You hear that Mike snubbed that protest or vigil or whatever it was the night before. But I read what they were asking him to do. Remember, Mike could’ve gotten out of jail almost a year before he did if he just apologized and admitted to the crime. Rather than do that, he did another year.”

Hours after the news conference, Tyson appeared on a flatbed truck in front of the Apollo Theater before a crowd of close to 1,000 that had been told that he was donating about $1 million to local charities. He arrived 45 minutes after the master of ceremonies said he would, and spoke briefly, if warmly, to the audience that had been calling his name for an hour.

Then he disappeared again, looking like a man whose only concern, really, was a way out.

Looking for somewhere to breathe.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Splintering Sport

In the five-and-a-half chaotic years since Mike Tyson last held the unified heavyweight title, the three major belts have changed hands a combined 10 times.

February, 1990: Buster Douglas shocks Mike Tyson to win unified title.

TYSON TIMELINE

June 28, 1991: In last fight before trial, Tyson beats Razor Ruddock for second time in 100 days.

Feb 10, 1992: Tyson convicted of rape.

March 26, 1992: Tyson sentenced to six years, begins serving prison term.

March 25, 1995: Tyson released after three years.

June 20, 1995: ‘Homecoming salute’ for Tyson in New York City’s Harlem.

July 20, 1995: Tyson moves camp from Orwell, Ohio, to Las Vegas.

Aug. 2, 1995: Tyson’s first open workout.

THE BREAKUP

October, 1990: Evander Holyfield overwhelms Douglas.

November, 1992: Riddick Bowe outlasts Holyfield.