As much as you might want to ignore Mike Tyson you cannot. Nuts tend to attract your attention.
While dignified and undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and his latest challenger, equally dignified and undisputed No. 1 contender David Tua, were exchanging leis and poems at press conferences in New York and Las Vegas last week to hype their Nov. 11 confrontation, Tyson was in Los Angeles acting like a maniac to promote his Oct. 20 showdown with a man Lewis destroyed in one round, Andrew Golota.
Golota was known in boxing circles as The Foul Pole because of a penchant for violating the spirit as well as the letter of the Marquis of Queensbury's laws of boxing until the night he turned to Jello at the sight of Lewis. He didn't have the opportunity to melt in front of Tyson yet because he wasn't around to witness his upcoming opponent's odd tirade at the Beverly Hills Hotel after waiting 2 1/2 hours for him to show up. That's because Golota left that schedule press conference in a huff with Tyson still among the missing, reminding one of Tyson's handlers to "make sure Tyson shows up in the ring."
With Tyson that is never a sure thing, just as what will happen if he does get there is not. All you can count on is that whenever he does show up Tyson will embarass himself and the sport of boxing, which isn't easy to do in either case.
While Lewis was saying he had no intention of giving up his belts to Tua and Tua was handing him a lei made of red peppers, which he said was a declaration of war, Tyson was standing on a table with his shirt ripped off screaming that he was only on the anti-depressant Zoloft so he wouldn't kill the media members who have helped make him a legend, a millionaire and a pariah.
"The medicine has me all messed up," Tyson bellowed. "I don't want to be on it but they want me to. They're concerned about the fact I'm a violent person, almost an animal. Everyone wants me to be an animal in the ring but not outside of it."
Actually, all anyone has ever wanted was for Tyson to be a great fighter in the ring and a normal human being outside of it, two things that have proven to be beyond his capabilities.
Instead he has turned himself into a sad circus act. Tyson remains a dangerous puncher with devastating one-punch power but he's a three round fighter now and a guy who not only loses when an opponent fights back but one who submits to a stronger man's will whenever he faces one. That is why all of his three defeats have not been just losses but total devastations of his mind and body, first by Buster Douglas and then twice by Evander Holyfield. It is also why Lewis would like nothing better than to get him into a boxing ring before someone else beats him to the beating that is sure to come to Tyson the next time the former heavyweight champion finds himself in a real fight.
That may not be the case with Golota, who is physically strong but mentally weak himself, but it could become that if Golota comes to fight and doesn't have to have his fingers pryed off the locker room door jam when he's called to go meet Tyson at Joe Louis Arena.
As interested as the public may be in a Tyson-Golota foulfest, it is really Lewis they want to see him matched with however if the logistics of exclusive television contracts can be worked out on both sides.
Lewis has been game for this for some time now, but Tyson keeps talking one game and fighting quite another when ever the prospect of actually facing the heavyweight champion is raised.
You may recall Tyson's tirade after defeating washed up Lou Savarese in 38 seconds a few months back. That was the night he said he wanted to eat Lewis' children. That was a typically Tysonian threat, an idle one, because Lewis has no children.
When he's been asked about fighting Lewis for real however Tyson has repeatedly said he's not ready for him. He says this and then stands up shirtless in Los Angeles last week and hollers, ``I don't know anything about being the heavyweight champion or being a good, respectable person. I just want to keep bringing guys on and I'm going to strip them of their health. I bring a lot of pain.
"I'm not fighting to win a title. I'm fighting to see how good I am. If I lose, I lose. I know I could kill Lennox Lewis. I could beat him into oblivion. If he ever tries to intimidate me I'm gonna put a bleeping bullet through his bleeping skull."
If two guys are heavyweight boxers and one tries to intimidate the other one would assume the insulted fighter would want to put a fist in his tormentor's face first, wouldn't you think?
Of course, to do that Mike Tyson would have to A) risk getting hit in the face himself; B) risk another embarassing defeat that would further undermine his almost non-existent self-esteem; and C) actually do his job against a challenge worthy of the name instead of facing another Sluggo doll like the ones his handlers have been putting him in with ever since Holyfield undressed him twice in less than a year.
So what do we make of what went on this week in heavyweight boxing?
Well perhaps Lennox Lewis' well-spoken trainer Emanuel Steward put it best when he said this of the man who will challenge Lewis with his fists and not his lips in two months.
"David Tua is the modern Mike Tyson," Steward said.
What the real Mike Tyson is no one knows any more. Apparently including himself.
SHORT JABS
Promoter Cedric kushner has a potentially explosive fight Oct. 7 when he matches Oleg Maskaev against Kirk johnson and Hasim Rahman vs. Danell Nicholson on HBO's Boxing After Dark series. If Maskaev (20-2) defeats Johnson (29-0-1) and doesn't move into position to challenge Lewis or WBa titleholder Evander holyfield something is wrong with boxing (which would not be a news bulletin).
