Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991 TAG: 9102240039
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHIL BERGER THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS, NEV. LENGTH: Long
Through all the shifts in the popular perception of him - from the affirmative glow of the Cus-and-the-kid tale to the chaotic twists of a Hollywood marriage and its failure - Tyson has yet to offer the comforting assurance of a known commodity.
The mystery inherent in a champion who has been by turns gentle, sullen, boastful, nasty and forthright exists still as he prepares for his March 18 fight against Donovan (Razor) Ruddock here, slightly more than a year since he lost his heavyweight title to Buster Douglas.
On Tuesday night, Don King, the fight promoter, was sitting at a table in the coffee shop at Caesars Palace speaking of a kinder, gentler Tyson: the 1991 model.
"Mike's become more considerate of other people and more sensitive to others' feelings," said King.
Around him, heads were nodding in agreement. The corroborators were members in good standing of Team Tyson: John Horne, camp coordinator; Rory Holloway, assistant manager; and John Solberg, publicist.
Then, as if choreographed, Tyson appeared, in shorts and a T-shirt, showing off jewelry he had just bought at the Cartier shop in the casino.
The piece was a sinuous silver panther that was studded with what Tyson described as diamonds and emeralds - a $60,000 item, he said.
"Got you one too," he told King. In fact, he had one for Holloway and Horne also. All were larger and more bejeweled than Cartier's off-the-rack panther.
"An example in considerateness," said King. "I didn't know nothin' about it. But it compounds everything I said."
Then King broke into song: "Diiaaa-monds are a girl's best friiieeend." Then he laughed and added, "They're pretty good with guys, too."
It was a moment that offered yet another glimpse into Tyson's unnervingly opulent lifestyle.
Yet it was not exactly a radical departure. For years now, he has been handing $100 bills to street derelicts and other unfortunates and doing even better by his friends.
The largesse from a man who has earned around $70 million in purses was familiar, as were the attempts by those closest to him to portray him as being more, far more, than the primitive he appeared in the ring.
In truth, days Tyson does seem changed, more at ease with himself than he has been before. Over two days of training this week he was quicker to laugh and less susceptible to the mood swings that made being around him a kind of roulette.
"I feel very comfortable with myself," the 24-year-old fighter said. "As time goes by, it just happens. You get more relaxed. You know, I've never said this, but I felt very relieved when I lost the title. It was just very difficult then. Now I can handle things. I'm at peace with myself. Like if there was a big ruckus in my camp, in the past it would affect me. Now my main attitude is I don't give a hoot. I just feel comfortable, I don't feel no pressure on me.
"In my old frame of mind, I made things more than they were. I'd become paranoid when people looked at me. `Why are they looking at me? Are they looking at me because they read what they read in the papers, that I'm crazy?' "
Earlier in his career, Tyson was accorded a hero's treatment by the public while insisting he was uneasy with it, that in his heart he thought he was a more villainous type.
Now, he said: "I remember that, but I'm not that same guy. I'm finding people are not as bad as I thought. There are a lot of good people. Like when I came back to New York from the Douglas fight in Tokyo, there were thousands of people waiting for me. Applauding. I never thought about it then. But I saw a tape the other day."
Although he is seemingly less troubled at being Tyson, it would be a mistake to view him as entirely sanguine. As always there are the contradictory parts.
On the one hand, Tyson will crawl along the floor making baby-talk to his son. On the other hand, he is the same man who has spoken of "killing" Ruddock when they fight next month and has cursed and fumed at King when he lost the chance to fight the winner of last fall's title fight between Douglas and Evander Holyfield.
"I'm still mad about it," said Tyson. "But now I take the attitude what's going to happen is going to happen and I go on with my life."
That life lately has been without the sort of public incidents that once regularly put Tyson in the headlines. Tyson attributed that to the lesson of Tokyo: "Always be ready, always be prepared."
"I don't drink, don't keep the late nights I did," said Tyson. "I like a girl or two. But I'm not out there like I used to be."
When King created Team Tyson late in 1988, skeptics viewed it as a way to reinforce the promoter's grip on the fighter. But Tyson may just owe his ease with being who he is these days to the group that serves him and, more important, makes him comfortable enough to laugh.
The laughter is geared toward the locker-room prank, for instance, the time recently when the entire group created the fiction that Tyson was on the verge of marrying a woman dear to, but resistant of, the fighter's bodyguard, Anthony Pitts.
by CNB