PRIME TIME : Tyson Says His Body and His Mind Are Finely Tuned for Bruno Fight

LAS VEGAS —  In a way, it’s a shame. After all, in the old days, when Mike Tyson needed a job, Frank Bruno was there.

It was June 1983. An unbeaten 22-year-old British heavyweight, Bruno, came to Catskill, N.Y., in search of American sparring partners. A local amateur, Tyson, 16, was hired on.

Accounts vary, but they sparred something like 25 rounds. No one seems to remember who got the better of the sessions, but it doesn’t matter much now. What matters is that they’ll do it again Saturday, this time for serious money.

Nearly everyone here, including about 2,000 British boxing fans who have been arriving all week, expect Tyson, now 22, unbeaten in 35 pro fights and the heavyweight champion, to be 36-0 sometime around 8 p.m. Saturday night at the 9,200-seat Hilton Center.

After an eight-month layoff, which must have seemed at times like eight years to the young champion, Mike Tyson is ready to fight.

He admitted this week that his weight ballooned to “about 265” after his 91-second victory over Michael Spinks last June 27.

This week, we see the lean, trim Tyson who detonated Spinks, not the bloated pug who reportedly cut a wide swath through New York’s and Mexico City’s hottest discos in the interim. He says he’ll weigh in at 218 pounds.

“At every fight, I swear I’ll never put on weight again between fights, and I go ahead and do it anyway,” he lamented.

“What are you going to do Sunday?” someone asked.

“Go to the buffet, then eat ice cream,” he said. Laughs all around.

But it hasn’t exactly been laugh week for Tyson and the contingent of reporters here. The black Team Tyson jackets Don King and the Tyson entourage wear might as well read, reporters gripe, Team Nasty.

Tyson even called some boxing reporters jerks at a Tuesday news conference, if you can imagine such a characterization.

When asked why guards have been stationed front and back at Johnny Tocco’s Ringside Gym during Tyson’s training sessions, preventing reporters from entering, Tyson replied:

“Because people were not conducting themselves right, like jerks. Something happened. . . . I don’t want to discuss it.”

It has been hardship week for TV guys, too.

Last Friday, Tyson stiffed CNN’s “Larry King Show.” CNN said it had a commitment from the Tyson camp that the champion would appear in a Las Vegas studio and take calls. He didn’t show up, and King instead talked to Don King, who said he didn’t know where Tyson was.

Then Monday, after getting a similar commitment from Tyson’s people, Prime Ticket in Los Angeles spent $10,000 sending a five-man crew and equipment to the Las Vegas Hilton, then hiring a Las Vegas union crew to do a one-hour call-in show on the station’s “It’s Your Call” program.

But again, Tyson’s backup, Don King, was the guest. When asked on the air by host Bud Furillo where Tyson was, King said: “The champion is either resting or riding around Las Vegas. He had several important appointments.”

Said a Prime Ticket spokesman: “Someone called us at 2:30 and said there was a ‘grave emergency,’ and that Mike couldn’t make it.”

After that, John Giovenco, president of the Hilton Nevada Corp., called King on the carpet, suggesting that Tyson be made available to the media. The Las Vegas Hilton, not King, is promoting the fight.

On Tuesday, Tyson was presented in the hotel’s showroom and he fielded questions for nearly an hour.

Highlights:

--On his new management team--King, Rory Holloway and John Horne (Bill Cayton is contractually Tyson’s manager but Tyson and Cayton are suing each other):

“If they do their job, and I do my job, then the result is a foregone conclusion. Who did (former manager) Angelo Dundee ever fight? Did Kevin Rooney ever hit anyone for me?”

--On his future:

“I want to be busy, I want to fight every two months.”

--On his physical condition, and his right hand, which he broke in a New York street scuffle with heavyweight Mitch Green last August:

“I’m in tremendous shape. Everything is cool these days. I hurt the hand the first day of training, but it’s OK now.”

--On fears that his widely reported personal problems might have irreparably damaged him in the endorsement market:

“I made some dumb mistakes, I screwed up . . . but I don’t want any sympathy. I’m sure you’ve (the reporter who asked the question) screwed up a lot more than I have, but we just don’t know about it. I had problems before anyone ever heard of me.

“I remember (recently) when my car broke down, and a truck driver who recognized me stopped and said, ‘Now I won’t feel so bad (when it happens to me) because I know it can happen to you.’

“I like doing that stuff (commercials), but I’m not caught up in it. I can’t make decisions . . . and have to think ‘Will this hurt my commercials?’ ”

--On his fitness after the long layoff:

“What about Bruno? He was off longer than me.”

--On Bruno:

“He’s in a lot of trouble. He’s a good fighter. He didn’t get to be No. 1 layin’ on his back. He’s had only two defeats. He’s a formidable fighter, and I know he’s going to fight hard. I’m always threatened. I’ve seen the best fighters in the world lose. If I had a dollar for every time a great fighter lost, I’d never have to fight again.

“When guys fought Ali, they became better fighters. They would rise to the occasion.”

--On his 1983 sparring sessions with Bruno:

“We sparred 20 rounds or so. I was 14 or 15. They were good workouts.”

--On the atmosphere at the Michael Spinks fight, when reports of trouble in his marriage first surfaced:

“It was chaos. People in my own camp were telling lies about me and getting it in the press. Things were distorted. Now, things are a lot more clear. I’m comfortable now, and Don King has a lot to do with it. I have no more problems. And even if I did, it’s too close to the fight. I’d be a fool to let them bother me now.”

--On Las Vegas:

“I like the atmosphere here on fight nights . . . but when there’s nothing happening here, it’s the most boring town in the world.”

He has found some excitement here. Tyson has lately been a spectator at Nevada Las Vegas basketball games. Naturally, he’s at courtside, in what UNLV boosters call “Gucci Row.”

And after training sessions, he has been seen at a health club, playing basketball.

Tyson seems at times to be groping for leadership and direction. He is at other times assertive and direct, such as at the news conference.

But he’s oddly inept in professional and personal relationships, particularly with people who have shared much of his life. The late Cus D’Amato apparently taught him how to fight, but not much else.

Tyson never told Rooney to his face, for example, that he was fired.

On Saturday night, when his former fighter is fighting on worldwide television, Rooney will be working the corners of two amateur boxers at a regional Golden Gloves tournament at Schenectady, N.Y. Afterward, he hopes to watch Tyson-Bruno at a hotel.

One of Tyson’s remarks indicated that Rooney might have been on a one-fight suspension--until Rooney’s lawsuit was filed.

“Now he’ll never get back,” Tyson said. “Never.”

In any event, we read more of lawsuits, wife-beating, the divorce, crashed cars, alleged alcohol abuse, disco misbehavior, stiffed television crews, abused photographers and furniture-throwing than we do about the young champion’s boxing prowess.

It’s too bad because what we have here, with the possible exceptions of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, is the greatest talent in boxing to appear in the last quarter-century.

And yet his career as a fighter is one that is still in the developmental stage. He’s only 22. Yet, he is only 14 wins away from Rocky Marciano’s record 49-0 mark, and there are no serious challengers on the horizon.

As Rooney said in an interview a year ago: “These opponents Mike is facing are only bringing out 50% or 60% of what he can do. He’s got talent no one has seen yet. Once in a while, I see him do something in the gym he’s never had to do in a fight.”

Rooney said by phone Thursday: “You won’t see Mike at his best until he fights a really great fighter. Then everyone will see just how good he really is.”

Since no one has described Bruno as great, we should apparently expect little creativity or innovation from the champion Saturday.

Tyson’s weaponry was formidable enough before he began employing a vicious right uppercut about half a dozen fights ago. His punches across the horizontal plane were terrifying enough, but when he started hitching up the left shoulder and bringing the right hand straight up, it was almost felonious.

“We started working on the uppercut, with both hands, about two years ago,” Rooney said, “But before the Spinks fight, we worked on it really hard. The punch that finished Spinks was a right uppercut, on the chin, and it was a left uppercut that started it rolling.

“There’re a lot of little subtle things Mike can do that he hasn’t had to use yet, like little counter moves, little side moves.”

And how about the little side moves to the bank?

Tyson should earn a gross of about $8 million from this engagement, $4 million of it from HBO. This is fight No. 3 in HBO’s seven-fight, $26-million contract with Tyson. He should make $3 million from the live gate and $2 million from foreign TV rights. His expenses will be about $1 million.

And there are whispers that Japanese promoters are willing to hand over $10 million for Tyson to fight George Foreman in Tokyo. And the Italians are ready anytime to pay him $10 million to fight Francesco Damiani in Milan.

So who needs commercials?