Is Mike Tyson Punched Out?

Fancy trunks? Forget it.

An imaginatively embroidered robe? Forget it.

Tassels on the shoes? Poetry at the press conferences? Histrionics in the ring?

Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.

To a boxing world enamored of the flashy, entertaining Muhammad Ali and courted by all the cheap imitators who followed, Mike Tyson, who will challenge Frank Bruno tonight for the World Boxing Council heavyweight crown at the MGM Grand, was a dash of cold reality when he hit the boxing world in 1985.

Tyson boiled boxing down to basics, yanking the sport back to the days when men fought on barges.

All he needed were simple, black trunks, a white towel to wear around his shoulders as he walked to the ring, an opponent and, please, get out of the way.

With a short, but powerfully built frame, sledgehammers for arms and a bulging neck that seemed to secure his head against the shock of blows the way steel beams secure buildings against the shock of earthquakes, Tyson knew the fame, fortune and titles were his as long as he kept fighting.

Winning was a given. His goal was to destroy.

He seemed impatient with the playing of the national anthem, the extensive introductions by the public address announcer and the prefight instructions by the referee.

Once the bell rang, the pent-up frustration, the result of growing up in a New York ghetto, the arrogance of his foes and the long prefight routine, exploded. Tyson would storm across the ring and unleash his vicious uppercuts and staggering left hooks.

Others have been bigger and stronger. But few seemed as bent on destruction.

“I’m vicious and ferocious,” Tyson said. “I live off that.”

This is a man who said he “punches with evil intentions,” who said he wanted to hit a man so hard that the opponent’s nose would be shoved up to his brain.

He came close.

The young Tyson racked up knockouts at a frightening rate with startling ferocity. He once hit Trevor Berbick so hard that Berbick went down, got up and went down twice more from the jarring effects of that single blow.

Tyson:

--Knocked out his first two opponents in the first round. Continuing the trend, he scored first-round knockouts against three of his first four opponents, nine of his first 12 and 12 of his first 16.

--Knocked out his first 19 opponents.

--Knocked out 10 opponents in less than two minutes 20 seconds.

--Knocked out 37 of his 44 opponents overall.

There have been many knockout artists over the years.

Archie Moore is the all-time leader with 145 knockouts in 234 bouts in a career that stretched from 1936 to 1963. Joe Louis is the leader in title fights with 22 knockouts in 27 bouts from 1937 to 1950.

A fighter named Lamar Clark, who fought only from 1958 to 1960, knocked out a record 44 in a row and once knocked out six men in one night, including five in the first round, but there is no one who can attest to the boxing credentials of those six victims.

Young Otto, who fought from 1903 to ‘23, holds the record for one-round knockouts, 42.

There have been some legendary punches. In a 1909 heavyweight title fight, Jack Johnson knocked out Stanley Ketchel in the 12th round. When he left the ring, Johnson found two of Ketchel’s teeth stuck in his glove.

And, of course, there was the famous punch thrown by Luis “Angel” Firpo that literally sent Jack Dempsey through the ropes in a 1923 fight. But Dempsey came back to win that one.

In the area of knockout percentage, Tyson is third on the list of great champions behind only Rocky Marciano and George Foreman. Marciano edges Foreman in that category, .877 to .871. Tyson is at 84%. Louis scored knockouts in 76% of his fights, Sonny Liston in 72%, Moore in 62% and Ali in 61%. Julio Cesar Chavez, who will fight Oscar De La Hoya on June 7, has scored knockouts in 80% of his 99 fights.

Bruno is at 86%, but the quality of his knockout victims does not compare to the others’.

The man Tyson finds himself most compared to now is Mike Tyson. The younger Tyson, the Tyson who had not yet had four years of forced inactivity because of a rape conviction that resulted in a prison term.

Tonight’s fight will be Tyson’s third since his release. His first was no yardstick. Tyson demolished journeyman Peter McNeeley in August in 89 seconds, but many heavyweights could have done the same. Tyson returned to the ring in December and knocked Buster Mathis Jr. out in the third round. Tyson missed many punches that night and looked rusty.

But some say that beneath the rust is deterioration and that the years of maturation and imprisonment have quieted the killer instinct.

Teddy Atlas, who trained Tyson in his amateur days, thinks Tyson is taking on Bruno too soon.

“I’m not saying Tyson could be the fighter he was, but he could be better than he is,” Atlas said. “He has not fought enough to get the kinks out. He’s become undisciplined, looking for the easy way out.

“This fight has the potential of being dangerous because he can’t judge distance anymore.”

Atlas is critical of those around Tyson, specifically trainer Jay Bright.

“It’s like having an Armani suit and wearing plastic thongs,” Atlas told the New York Daily News. “Having a multimillion-dollar fighter and surrounding him with a menagerie of frauds.”

Bruno (40-4, 38 knockouts) won the title from Oliver McCall in London in September, making Bruno the first British fighter to hold a major world title in this century.

Bruno weighed in Thursday night at 247 pounds, Tyson at 220.

Bruno, knocked out by Tyson in the fifth round in a 1989 fight, insists things will be different tonight.

“This is my time,” Bruno said. “Tyson’s had his time.”

But has Tyson’s time past?

At 29, he is still five years younger than an opponent he has already beaten rather easily.

There will be a true test for Tyson somewhere down the comeback road. But this doesn’t figure to be it.

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It will be a day of title fights at the MGM Grand. At 1:30 p.m., champion Bernard Hopkins (28-2-1, 21 knockouts) and challenger Joe Lipsey (25-0, 20 knockouts) battle for the International Boxing Federation middleweight title in a fight to be seen on ABC.

The MGM Grand Garden will then be cleared out and prepared for the pay-per-view show, which starts at 6. On that card will be Michael Carbajal (38-2, 24 knockouts) and Melchor Cob-Castro (45-4-4, 19 knockouts) fighting for the vacant International Boxing Federation junior flyweight title; WBC middleweight champion Quincy Taylor (26-3, 22 knockouts) defending his title against Keith Holmes (27-1, 17 knockouts), and WBC strawweight champion Ricardo Lopez (40-0, 30 knockouts) challenged by Ala Villamor (29-1-1, 26 knockouts).

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Boxing Notes

Lennox Lewis was wrongly denied his chance at the World Boxing Council heavyweight title, a judge ruled Friday in Paterson, N.J. But he refused to block today’s fight between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno. However, Superior Court Judge Amos Saunders ordered Tyson and Bruno to refrain from fighting after today, and blocked the WBC from sanctioning any more heavyweight title fights until a lawsuit Lewis filed is settled. Lewis, a former WBC champion, contends he was promised a title bid against Bruno in Bruno’s first defense.

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Punching Power

How Tyson ranks among great heavyweight knockout artists: *--*

Fighter Bouts KOs KO% Rocky Marciano 49 43 87.7% George Foreman 78 68 87.1% Mike Tyson 44 37 84% Joe Louis 70 53 76% Sonny Liston 54 39 72% Jack Dempsey 78 49 63% Muhammad Ali 61 37 61% Larry Holmes 68 41 60%

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