Don King Still Has Plenty of Fight Left : Boxing: Promoter contends he never tried to reverse decision in Tokyo, rips Steve Wynn and says Douglas is being led astray.

Don King, promoter of deposed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, lashed out Monday at both Tyson’s conqueror, Buster Douglas, and Mirage Hotel owner Steve Wynn.

He also said that Tyson has already gone back into training for a June fight.

King has been sued by Douglas and Wynn, an action that seeks to break the promotional exclusivity clause King has with Douglas for future fights. King countered last week with a suit of his own.

“Buster Douglas is being led astray,” King said from his home near Cleveland.

“Before he can enjoy being heavyweight champion, before he can enjoy the wealth of being the heavyweight champion, the first thing he discovers is, he’s embroiled in a lawsuit.”

King also said that Tyson had already begun doing road work at Catskill, N.Y., when his sister, Denise Anderson, died last week in New York. Tyson was scheduled to attend her funeral in Brooklyn today.

“Mike will fight in June, no matter what, but we don’t know who yet,” King said.

King described himself as “still in shock” over Tyson’s being knocked out by a 42-1 underdog.

“We were all put into shock,” he said. “No one could believe what they were seeing, yet it was happening right in front of our eyes.”

King said he had been unjustly criticized for his actions immediately after the Tokyo fight. He said Monday that all he did during the four hours after the fight was to make certain the chieftains of the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Assn. understood that referee Octavio Meyran had given Douglas a long count when Tyson knocked him down late in the eighth round.

At the time, King went into closed-door meetings with leaders of the governing bodies, suggesting to many present that he was trying to arrange a reversal of the outcome.

“There’s a perception out there, a smoke screen, that I was trying to change the outcome, like I was the perpetrator of some sort of evil scenario, and I wasn’t,” he said.

“I didn’t even file a protest. But people jumped on that misperception, and I guess I have to accept that.”

King attacked Wynn, who has signed Douglas to a $25-million contract for a September fight with Evander Holyfield, providing King’s contract can be broken in court. In order to get the Tyson fight, Douglas signed a contract designating King as his promoter--should he defeat Tyson--for virtually the rest of his career.

“Steve Wynn has a total disregard for the law,” King said. “He told me categorically he would take my (legal) rights from me.

“He said to me: ‘It doesn’t work like that anymore, for guys like you and Arum (Las Vegas promoter Bob Arum). . . . You’re dinosaurs, extinct.’

“What Wynn doesn’t understand is that I developed Buster Douglas, for nine years. I carried Buster Douglas when no one else wanted him. I told Wynn I got the law on my side and he’s out in the street, throwing Molotov cocktails.

“Then he (backtracked) and offered me two or three million dollars, and I told him I’d never work for him.

“We talked the following day for an hour and 20 minutes. Then I went to the doctor to get my blood pressure checked and I got a call at the doctor’s office from one of my people telling me that Wynn has sued me. I’d just left his office! They could have served me in his office!”

As to the charge that he carries boxing’s governing bodies in his wallet, King said it doesn’t square with the events of Tokyo.

“Hey, if I had everything (under control), the fight would’ve been over the moment Buster hit the floor, right?” King said.

“But it didn’t go that way. If I’m runnin’ some kind of mob empire in boxing, then I got a bunch of sissies working for me, right? Look at what happened--no broken arms or legs, right? All I got is everybody suing me.

“I just wish people would judge me on my merits, by what I’ve done. I play by the rules of the American Constitution. I promoted Buster Douglas for years, I developed him, I nurtured him . . . I didn’t even give up on him when he lost a title fight (to Tony Tucker) in 1987.

“Now, after investing all that time and money in Buster Douglas, and now that all of a sudden he’s the heavyweight champion, you want me to make him a free agent?”

King described Tyson as being “still disappointed that he lost, but overall in great spirits,” until he learned of his sister’s death.

King would not say anything about criticism of Tyson’s corner men during the Douglas fight, particularly the between-rounds treatment of Tyson’s swollen eye in the late rounds when it appeared that there was no ice in the champion’s corner.

“I can’t comment on that now,” he said. “I got too many battles immediately in front of me.”