Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | 8:48 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
Newspaper editors should make a pact: No more overplaying Mike Tyson stories, especially those that proclaim Tyson is going to do this or that.
The man is just too unreliable. And so are many of the stories about him, particularly the ones that lay out a road map for his future plans.
Tyson whimsically makes plans as he goes and breaks them just as easily.
One day he's talking of fighting in a bullring in Mexico City and it's a banner headline.
The next he's accepting a K1 fight in Japan and it's sprawled across the top of the front page.
Or he's fighting "six or seven" times in the next two years at various venues leading to a few "$20 million" fights in Atlantic City, as he suggested he would do last week, and it's passed along to an unsuspecting public as gospel.
Whatever is the most recent pitch Tyson has received, he'll routinely say that's what he's going to do next. His cognitive powers are so limited that even his short-term memory is shot, leading to a situation where he no longer even shrugs his shoulders at the verbal commitments he has made and broken.
Tyson is due today to formally accept a July 30 fight in Louisville against a man who is little more than a sparring partner. Yet even after he signs on the dotted line to face England's Danny Williams, there's little assurance that Tyson will actually step into the ring as scheduled.
I've kept a running list (since 1988) of the fights Tyson has pulled out of after tickets were on sale, and it's up to 12. Injuries and disinterest are the leading causes of his withdrawals, which, combined with his lack of self-control, have led casino owners in Las Vegas to view him with a skeptical eye.
Las Vegas wants Tyson back, no mistake about it. But no one here is rushing to do business with him (or even suggest he would be licensed) until he demonstrates a mental fitness that can only come by sticking to his promises -- and fighting regularly in the hinterlands.
The trouble is, Tyson habitually says he's looking to schedule a fight while he just as routinely finds ways to avoid one. It's all part of an internal clash, a mix of emotions that makes him borderline -- if not blatantly -- psychotic.
"My life has been a total waste," he told the New York Times in an interview earlier this month in Phoenix, where he was training for a fight against American journeyman Kevin McBride until Williams was proclaimed the substitute foil.
He so baffled the writer with contradictory messages that by the end of the piece the reporter says "making choices has not come easy for Tyson ... he now talks about not having an idea what kind of person he is."
Yet he has had plenty of time to figure it out, not having fought in 17 months and having fought only once in the year before that.
It's getting to the point where Tyson is famous simply for being famous, as his boxing achievements are inconsiderable of late. And beyond actually getting into a ring, he'll get little out of his fight against Williams.
Williams is 30 and has a pleasing record of 31-3 with 26 knockouts, but he has also faced a low level of competition and struck out in his more important bouts. He lost a decision to the shopworn Julius Francis, who Tyson knocked out in two rounds in 2000, and he was down three times before losing by sixth-round technical knockout to the decent but less than dastardly Sinan Samil Sam last year.
Williams is a big guy at 6-foot-3 and 260 pounds with a soft chin.
Tyson, who turns 38 Wednesday, destroyed fighters such as Williams years ago and is apt to destroy Williams if the fight comes off as planned.
Tyson, training under Freddie Roach at the Central Boxing Club, has cut his weight from 260 to 235 and is living in a Phoenix hotel room down the street from a home he purchased where he lives with a woman and their 2-year-old son.
While his collective purses approach some $400 million, Tyson filed for bankruptcy last year and just last week reached a $14 million settlement with promoter Don King. Tyson and King were suing each other but King relented, agreeing to give Tyson $8 million up front in a deal that still requires court approval due to Tyson having filed for Chapter 11 protection.
I like Tyson and always have. So do boxing fans. He has an assortment of entertaining sides: savage, gullible, lurid, soft, that make him one of the most complex and interesting athletes of any generation.
But he tries the patience of those who run the business. New Jersey may have given him a license yet its governor says Tyson will not be allowed to fight at any state-supported venue, such as the Atlantic City Convention Center; and those in Las Vegas are equally leery of working with him until he has shown something beyond the false hopes and shill games he so readily becomes a part of.
Tyson vs. Williams is scheduled for Louisville for a reason: If it doesn't go well, the damages will be minimal.
It's the kind of a fight that will draw some interest, yet it's one that should stay on the back page until Tyson actually walks into the ring.
The big shots in Las Vegas aren't even sure he can do it.
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