Why Mike Tyson is anxious to fight his next foe on November 4

Jet, Sept 11, 1995 by Robert E. Johnson

MIKE TYSON, 29, WHOSE READY lethal weapons are still loaded because his first ring opponent in four years folded before he could display his fistic firepower, is anxious to take on his next boxing foe on Nov. 4.

The multi-millionaire mauler is infuriated that the scheduled 10-round contest with Peter McNeeley lasted only 89 seconds of the first round before manager and cotrainer Vinny Vecchione stepped into the ring and halted the contest after McNeeley had been floored twice by the untamed fury of Tyson's two fists.

Visibly disappointed over the way the fight ended after he had trained so hard for his first ring contest in four years, Tyson didn't exult. He remained calm, almost stoic, as bedlam broke loose among disappointed fans who had come to cheer for him in the first fight since being released from the Indiana Youth Center. He had served three years after being convicted of raping Desiree Washington, then an 18-year-old contestant in Indianapolis during a Black Beauty pageant. Tyson denied the charges, saying the sexual encounter was consensual.

Not dismayed, although disappointed at the outcome of the long-awaited ring return, Tyson's team promptly booked a second tune-up scheduled for Nov. 4.

Don King, miffed over the media's bashing, said at a post-fight press conference: "Mike Tyson wants everyone to know he feels the edge was taken from him as well as Peter McNeeley. The level of the opponent will be escalated for the second fight and Mike Tyson will fight for the title in his third fight."

Tyson's co-manager John Horne announced that the second tune-up will be against Buster Mathis Jr., a heavyweight contender who is undefeated in 22 fights. His 1994 fight against Riddick Bowe was declared "no contest" after a ring infraction. Mathis won his last fight on Aug. 5 with a TKO over Mike Acklie in Albuquerque, NM. Horne said, "The people have shown they are going to support Mike Tyson."

That's another reason Tyson is so anxious to again lace up his gloves and climb back into the ring.

Recalling the McNeeley fiasco at a press conference, Tyson said he entered the ring prepared for anything. "I was surprised that he came at me with that intensity though," Tyson confided. "I'm just thankful to God we're both healthy and okay...I just give praise to Allah that I'm healthy and participating," he allowed. Tyson added: "I remember Peter headbutting me. He pushed his head into my face. I couldn't get mad. I was in a fight already so it didn't make sense for me to get mad. I just continued to fight."

When asked what was going through his mind when he came into the ring to an enormous ovation, the Brownsville (NY)-born battler shot back: "It taught me one thing. If I believed all the things you guys write about me, I would think everyone hated me. But I see that it's different."

In a later interview, Tyson told this writer how the ghost of Cus D' Amato, the White man who became his trainer and surrogate father after rescuing him at age 12 from a Bronx, NY, jail for bad boys, was present for the McNeeley fight.

"Cus is everlasting and ever present," said Tyson of the trainer of champions who did not live to see him wear the heavyweight crown.

Nicknamed "Iron Mike" because he was lean and mean, the peerless pugilist pulled out the formula given him by D'Amato: "First, you win because you are stronger...The second stage, you win because you are more determined...And then the third level, you win only because you are smarter."

Although the formula was drilled into his mind, he had some doubts and once explained in an interview with JET while he was a three-titleholding champion:

"Cus told me this (how to win with the formula). I never believed it because I never had confidence like until he said, 'These guys know more than you. They have been around longer than you, but you are just too good for them...Determination always overcomes skill, but your skill is so good... you overshadow their determination.'" It was during his championship reign that he had a lot to say about D'Amato, who had also trained heavyweight titleholder Floyd Patterson, the cagey fighter who beat McNeeley's father, Peter Jr., in 1961. Most of all, he remembered his last days with his dying mentor.

"He (Cus) said 'If I ever find out if there is anything that can come from the grave and haunt you, if you ever do something wrong...I'll come and haunt you...'"

"I watched him die...And we talked about everything and I was just 17 years old...He told the doctor, 'That's the next heavyweight champ of the world.' He was dying...I'm the kind of person that is emotional... I mean death of one of your love ones--death is so lonely..."

Mike says he will forever remember and honor the White man who took him off the mean streets of Brownsville and trained him to become a champion. Although the Black warrior was reared by D'Amato, his legal guardian and inspirational trainer, in the affluent Catskill Mountains in New York, Tyson never had to cut the umbilical cord from his poor, poverty-stricken Brownsville birthplace. He grew to become "a conscious Black man."