Roach must get Tyson to ‘show up’

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 9:04 a.m.

His sparring sessions are behind locked doors, but Mike Tyson and those around him feel he's peaking as a fight with Cliff Etienne approaches.

Training at the Golden Gloves Gym, Tyson has been going up to eight rounds per day in preparation for his scheduled 10-round fight Feb. 22 in Memphis.

"I'm pushing him and he's pushing back," said lead trainer Freddie Roach. "It's getting a little more tense, but that's only natural."

Roach and Jeff Fenech, a pair of ex-fighters, are choreographing Tyson's comeback from a loss last June to Lennox Lewis.

"I have people in my corner that I like and I'm listening to them," Tyson said. "The guys with me now, I respect. Freddie and Jeff used to fight like I fight."

Fenech joined the camp belatedly but has had an impact.

"I've been to a million Tyson things and walked out saying 'This is terrible,' " he said. "But this isn't like that. Trust me, it'll be different if he fights Lewis again."

Tyson says he's happy for the assistance.

"I guess I made him a believer and he stayed," he said, referring to Fenech. "No man's an island; we need everybody.

"All our neutrons got to be flowing in one direction."

Those neutrons weren't flowing as Tyson prepped for Lewis last June.

"I was cocky," he said. "I got caught up in the hype."

He lost that fight by eighth-round knockout, although it didn't diminish his desire to stay in the game.

"I never thought of giving up boxing," he said.

As for the pressure of a fight, he said it's nothing greater than what a reporter feels as he submits a critical piece.

"Editors make you feel like you're going to lose your job (if it's not a good story)," he said. "That's the equivalent of a fight to me."

Roach said he has no complaints, beyond having nothing to do with his day beyond training Tyson.

"Yeah, I'm bored," he said. "I've just got this one fighter."

Roach, who ordinarily trains several fighters every day at his gym in Los Angeles, is staying in Las Vegas with his mother, Barbara. She knew Tyson from when he was fighting as an amateur back East and she was a boxing judge, and she recently visited Tyson at Golden Gloves.

Roach anticipates that Tyson will get past Etienne and get a second crack at Lewis.

The current betting line has Tyson as a minus 650 favorite and Etienne as a plus 450 underdog (at Mandalay Bay).

"Mike didn't show up (for last year's fight with Lewis)," Roach said. "He gave up for some reason.

"We needed to start with a clean slate. He told me this is the first time he's wanted to fight in a long time, and the work he has put in shows it."

Tyson agrees.

"I'm as tense as I'm going to be right now," he said, when asked if he would feel any extra pressure the night of the fight.

Despite having his primary home here, this is the first time Tyson has trained in Las Vegas for a fight in quiet awhile.

"I got tired of spending all this money on hotel rooms that didn't look as good as my place," he said, rationalizing staying and training here from an economic point of view.