From Pug to Plug: : The Selling of a Heavyweight Champ

“Hi. I’m Mike Tyson. I’m the heavyweight champion of the world. I just love knocking guys out . (Rapid film sequence: three fighters crash to canvas). But I also like watching old-timers knock guys out, too. (Rapid film sequence: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano knock fighters to canvas). I watch old boxing movies maybe 12 hours a week, and believe me, only my Widget video cassette recorder could stand up under this kind of punishment . . . “ “Hi. I’m Mike Tyson. I’m the heavyweight champion of the world. Do I like hamburgers? Hey, I don’t let anyone stand between me and the greatest hamburger of them all, the Big Mike . “ (Rapid film sequence: three fighters crash to canvas. Fade out: Tyson, takes a big bite of a Big Mike, in front of a Widgetburger restaurant . ) “Hi. I’m Mike Tyson. I’m the heavyweight champion of the world. You know what really makes me thirsty? Hitting guys on the head so hard . “ (Rapid film sequence: three fighters crash to canvas. Fade out: A perspiring Tyson, grinning and showing his gold tooth, drinks deeply from a can of Widget Cola . )

Last January, in a report on sports marketing, the Wall Street Journal said that golfer Arnold Palmer earns nearly $9 million a year, more than any other American athlete.

Right behind him, according to the paper’s survey of product endorsement income among America’s richest athletes, was another golfer, Jack Nicklaus, who earns about $7 million a year. Others on the list: tennis star Boris Becker, $6 million; former race driver Jackie Stewart, $2 million; tennis player Ivan Lendl, $2 million, and basketball player Michael Jordan, $2 million.

Mike Tyson won’t turn 21 till June 30 but is already the heavyweight boxing champion in the eyes of the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Assn. He has earned $3 million for his last two fights. But Jimmy Jacobs, who co-manages Tyson with Bill Cayton, says his boxer has the potential to surpass Nicklaus. And Palmer. And everyone else.

“Mike will, if he continues as he has, make more money than any athlete in the history of this country,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs bases his prediction on Tyson’s potential earnings in the endorsement field, which he says will exceed his boxing income.

He also bases it on two other assumptions:

--That Tyson will continue to win over a period of years.

--That he doesn’t have to fight any more Bonecrusher Smiths.

A crowd of 13,851 paid up to $750 a ticket earlier this month at the Las Vegas Hilton to watch Smith grab and hold Tyson for 12 rounds. Tyson won a lopsided decision, but it was bad theater. Any more like that, and Tyson may wind up having to endorse dog food.

By 1986, when the 5-foot 9-inch, 220-pound Tyson had established himself as possibly one of boxing’s premier heavyweights, Jacobs and Cayton began measuring Tyson’s sock in the endorsement market. Then, after his sensational two-round destruction of WBC champion Trevor Berbick last November, offers began “pouring in,” according to Jacobs.

But between running Tyson’s boxing career and their own business, Big Fights, Inc., which produces boxing films and sells them to TV stations worldwide, they were hard-pressed to find time to study the endorsement market.

Enter Ohlmeyer Communications, Inc.

Jay Rosenstein, 39, is a former Time magazine sportswriter and now a vice president at Ohlmeyer Communications. He never boxed. When asked to describe his greatest moments in sports, he said it was playing in “sewer to sewer” touch football games as a teen-ager on 74th Street in Manhattan.

Today, Rosenstein has a major sports marketing project on his hands. His assignment: to visit the carpeted, paneled offices of corporate America, looking for “about three or four” multimillion-dollar endorsement deals for Tyson.

Jacobs and Cayton refer all endorsement inquiries to Ohlmeyer Communications, a firm founded by Don Ohlmeyer, former NBC and ABC sports executive. His company has 140 employees, offices in New York and Beverly Hills, and did $40-million worth of business last year with such clients as IBM, Mazda, Paine Webber and RJR Nabisco.

The company recently added its first sports client, Mike Tyson.

“It wasn’t a case of our having to out-bid anyone to get Mike as a client,” Rosenstein said. “Jimmy Jacobs is an old friend of John Martin, the president of our company.

“Also, Jimmy was impressed at how much business we did with golf, and the major corporations who’re active in the golf market. He felt Mike would have an advantage with us because of our entree with the big companies that are golf-connected.”

“And Jimmy also liked the idea that Mike would be the only athlete we represent.”

Rosenstein wouldn’t identify which corporations he’s talking with, but did offer a broad hint.

“You could look at the industries which have invested significant sums of money in sports (for spokesmen) in recent years, and you’d be talking about the fast food industry, the auto industry, the soft drink industry and clothing companies.

“And since Mike’s hobby is studying films of old-time fighters like Joe Louis, Kid Chocolate and Jack Dempsey . . . yes, we’re looking at the possibility of some kind of tie-in with a firm that makes video cassette recorders.”

Tyson himself has expressed an interest in being affiliated with companies that have anti-drug, stay-in-school and other youth programs, Rosenstein said.

You won’t see Tyson pushing VCRs, hamburgers, clothes or soft drinks soon, however.

“We want Mike to clean up the (vacant) IBF (International Boxing Federation) title before we commit to long-term agreements with anyone,” Jacobs said. “And our preference would be a small number, say three or four, long-term arrangements with major companies. There’s no hurry. Mike’s making millions in the ring now.”

Small number is the key phrase.

“Mike wants to be an active heavyweight champion and he can’t be bolting training camp to go on extended promotional tours for companies,” said Chip Campbell, another executive at Ohlmeyer. “That’s why we’re looking for special relationships with a small number of companies.

“And we do mean major companies. We’ve already ruled out posters, comic books and rock albums.”

Meanwhile, Tyson’s boxing income figures to leap nearly every trip to the post. He has a “gigantic offer” to fight in Japan next January, Jacobs said.

“The Japanese are fascinated by Mike,” Jacobs said. “He’s been on the cover of a lot of magazines there. There’s a domed stadium under construction in Tokyo, and we’ve been visited by three gentlemen from Japan who want Mike to be the first sports attraction there.”

Campbell said: “Mike is already a folk hero in Japan, and the number of (endorsement) requests coming from there is probably equal to the number here.” At the Tyson-Smith fight, more than 400 media credentials were issued. Fifteen went to Japanese writers and broadcasters.

Tyson already has moistened his feet in the endorsement arena. He will appear soon in a regional TV commercial for a bank in the Washington, D.C., area.

“The reason we did that was because we felt Mike needed to know what it would be like, standing under hot lights all day, repeating the same lines over and over, filming a commercial,” Rosenstein said.

“Remember, he’s only 20. I was there with him, and you know what? He loved it. He’s a very charming guy, and everyone on the film crew enjoyed working with him. In fact, at the end, he stayed to pose for pictures with all of them, who had their pictures taken with him with their cameras.”

Tyson has also appeared on the “Webster” television series and has made guest appearances on late night shows with Johnny Carson and Joan Rivers. Rosenstein is interviewing writers for a possible Tyson biography. Also being considered is a Tyson coffee table photo book. A possible film project is being discussed. Working title: “Cus and the Kid.”

Tyson is a one-time Brooklyn street bully who served time at the Tryon Boys Secure Center, a reform school in Perth, N.Y. Later, he was taken in by the aging Cus D’Amato, a crusty, no-nonsense boxing manager who 30 years previously had guided another New York street kid, Floyd Patterson, to the heavyweight title.

D’Amato, who was Tyson’s legal guardian, died in 1985 at age 77, before Tyson become a champion. Tyson lives in D’Amato’s old house in Catskill, N.Y.

“Part of Mike’s appeal, we think, is not only his compelling life story but also his real-life personality,” Rosenstein said. “It’s exactly the opposite of the menacing figure he seems to be in the ring. That’s one reason why we think he has a chance to rise above boxing as a personality, like Palmer did in golf. We think he could even become one of the most recognized figures in the world, like the Pope.

“Now, one important thing has to happen for all this to occur. He has to keep winning. Obviously, we think he will, or we wouldn’t be investing all this time in him.”

The “menacing figure” Tyson cuts, particularly when he enters the ring with a white towel thrown over his head, black trunks and black shoes with no socks is an effect Tyson consciously constructs, says his assistant manager, Steve Lott.

“Watching Mike in the ring before the introductions is like watching ‘Jaws,’ ” Lott said in a recent TV interview. “The spectators know they’re going to be shocked by something. He plays to the crowd, with no robe, no socks, the (glowering) look. He’s playing to the crowd and he knows it--it’s entertainment.”

Says Boston sports attorney Bob Woolf, whose clients include the NBA’s Larry Bird and former University of Miami football standout Vinny Testaverde: “He is one of the most colorful people to come along in years. You’re talking about the heavyweight champion of the world and that translates itself into seven figures. That is still the most coveted crown in the world.”

Rosenstein says the street wise Tyson may turn out to be board room wise, too.

“Even at 20, he has a certain savvy about him,” he said. “He intuitively senses things, like he has an acquired learning process. You could see it in the interview tent after the Smith fight, when he told the press he expected to take some criticism from the Smith fight, but that he felt the reason it wasn’t much of a fight was because Smith was only trying to go the distance and not win.”

Jacobs was asked if he feared that Tyson, who has knocked out 26 of 29 opponents, would run out of opponents.

“Not at all,” he said. “The name of the game in professional boxing is money-making shows. There are plenty of quality opponents around right now and there will be plenty around next year and the year after. The names change. In 1990, there won’t be one name in the top 10 boxing rankings for heavyweights that is on the list today. And probably most of the names that will be in the top 10 in 1990 you’ve never heard of today.

“In the next year or two, we expect Mike to have attractive bouts with people like Bert Cooper, who should be in the top 10 right now; Evander Holyfield, who should be a full-fledged heavyweight within two years, and Larry Holmes will come out of retirement to fight him. And then there’s Biggs, of course.”

Tyrell Biggs, the 1984 Olympic super-heavyweight gold medalist, saw his stock rise as a contender when he fought David Bey on the undercard of the Tyson-Smith stinker at Las Vegas. Bleeding badly from a cut over his left eye and knowing that referee Richard Steele was close to stopping the bout, Biggs rallied impressively in the sixth round and stopped Bey.

Jacobs foresees a long reign by Tyson over the heavyweights.

“Mike is by far the greatest fighter in the world right now, and he’s only 20,” he said. “He can only get better.”