The Hill Isn’t in Sight Yet for Once and Future King

Well, I see by the public prints where Mike Tyson is all washed up. Lost it, it says here.

Sure looks like it. In his fight against Donovan (Razor) Ruddock, all he did was:

--Break Ruddock’s jaw in two places.

--Put him in the hospital.

--Knock him down twice.

--Win the fight.

I mean, he didn’t:

--Kill him.

--Eat him.

--Put him in an iron lung.

--Make him disappear.

They criticized Razor Ruddock for fighting with one hand--the left. They criticized the Polish army for fighting on horseback, too. But you have to make do with what you have.

Besides, throwing a right hand is not the most advisable strategy when fighting Tyson. The late Woody Hayes used to say of the forward pass in football, “When you throw a pass, three things can happen--and two of them are bad.”

This is true of leading with your right, too. When you throw a right at Tyson, all three things can be bad.

As near as I can figure, Mike Tyson threw in one bad fight in his career. That was against James (Buster) Douglas.

But all great champions have a clinker in their systems. Dempsey had a terrible time with a blown-up light-heavyweight named Tommy Gibbons. Joe Louis got careless against Max Schmeling. Even the great Sugar Ray Robinson had a terrible time against a so-so Englishman named RandyTurpin.

It happens.

Does anyone seriously think Buster Douglas could repeat his triumph? Does anyone think he wants to try? He wouldn’t last any longer than Schmeling did in Louis II.

It’s well to remember Tyson had Douglas down and all but out in the eighth round of their fight, even though Tyson had one eye swollen shut at the time, the other closing and was making his fight by Braille.

The fight mob insists that Mike Tyson is dissipating. That’s serious. Many a career has disappeared because of a bottle or a bimbo. But Mike Tyson is only 25. Dissipation is a lot more serious if you are 35.

I note where the champion, Evander Holyfield, is not eager to rush into a match with Tyson. He shows commendable common sense. A $25-million payday will pay for a lot of jaw wires, but it might behoove you to cast around and see if you could pick up $15 million or $20 millionfighting someone whose left doesn’t have hospital written all over it.

George Foreman has already pocketed $1 million in earnest money from promoter Don King, we are told, as a sort of down payment on a fight with Tyson. Iron Mike will be giving several inches in height and about 40 pounds in weight to Foreman, but he will be getting 20 years in age.

Anyone who thinks Tyson vs. Foreman will be a “fight” thinks Iraq vs. the United States was a “war.” It might be the mother of all mismatches.

They say Tyson is on steroids. Well, we won’t know that until the cancer shows up. At least he isn’t on junk food.

They say Mike Tyson is an out-of-control bad guy, a runaway nasty. This is based, in part, on his behavior at prefight news conferences, which he tends to find boring.

If you have ever been to one, you would see why. Such sessions are made up in equal parts Don King bombast and open sales pitches for pay-per-view TV. Tyson can never make up his mind whether to go to sleep or insult someone. It’s not admirable, but it’s understandable.

On Sunday, his 25th birthday, Mike Tyson, along with the light-heavyweight champion, Thomas Hearns, and a former promoter, Harold Smith, paid a visit to the longtime main-event announcer, the golden-throated Jimmy Lennon.

It was not the gesture of a practicing professional heel. Lennon, in poor health, is a longtime member of the pugilistic fraternity and a visit to him was an act of kindness the old introducer appreciated.

“Mike and Tommy came rolling up in this stretch limousine just to say hello and see how I was,” Lennon reports proudly. “Mike was telling me how he used to listen to me broadcast the wrestling matches when he was a kid of 5 growing up in Brooklyn. Just imagine! It was his birthday!”

It is the kind of quixotic play Tyson is given to between fights.

So which is the real Mike Tyson? The profane, snarling thug with the glittering eyes and the street vocabulary to match--or the smiling, polite protege of Cus D’Amato and Jimmy Jacobs who calls you “Mister” and holds car doors for you and removes his hat in elevators?

That Mike Tyson can be as cuddly as a stuffed teddy bear. The other one can empty cities and set off alarms when he merely enters a building.

It is not a good idea to start a right hand against either one of them. It’s not too good an idea to start a left jab, for that matter.

Tyson over the hill? Not the way to bet. The likelihood of his being champion into the 21st Century is a better bet. You will know he is over the hill when they don’t have the paramedics and an ambulance with the lights on waiting at his opponent’s door anymore.