It’s Time For A Marquee Fight Tyson’s Comeback Trail Seems Destined To Follow The Low Road

He’s the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion again, but Mike Tyson is a marquee fighter without a marquee fight.

According to the promoter Don King’s agenda, Tyson is tentatively scheduled in the next six months to dethrone Bruce Seldon as the World Boxing Association champion and Frans Botha as the International Boxing Federation champion, thereby unifying the heavyweight title for the first time since 1992, when Riddick Bowe tossed his WBC belt into a London trash can.

But, quick now, who is Bruce Seldon? Who is Frans Botha? And does anybody out there really think either has a chance after Tyson destroyed Frank Bruno in three rounds here Saturday night?

Even though Riddick Bowe, George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Michael Moorer and Lennox Lewis don’t hold a title now, they are boxing’s best heavyweight marquee names. And until Tyson defends his title against any one of those four heavyweights, preferably Bowe, he won’t have a marquee fight to stimulate the public.

“We will fight all the champions,” King was saying Sunday, “then all the contenders and pretenders.”

Of those four marquee names, Foreman would create the biggest bonanza: an old pappy guy who looks at Mike Tyson and sees Joe Frazier, whom he dethroned in 1973 in a quick knockout in Kingston, Jamaica. Then again, Foreman is now 47 years old. He can’t wait around much longer for a Tyson bout.

Foreman’s promoter, Bob Arum, discussed a Tyson bout with King three months ago; nothing developed. “Arum mentioned it as part of another discussion,” King confirmed, “but we never talked money.”

Foreman was whispered to have phoned Tyson himself late last year, but Tyson denied having had a conversation with Foreman.

“George Foreman shouldn’t be a preacher; he lies too much,” Tyson said when asked about the phone call. “He lies.”

As for Bowe, Moorer and Lewis, each is involved in litigation, the name of the game in boxing now. Bowe and Home Box Office are arguing over their contract. Moorer is suing the International Boxing Federation; so is Axel Schulz, the German fighter. Lewis is suing the WBC over his right to be the No.1 challenger.

Friday, a Passaic (N.J.) County judge, Amos Saunders, ruled that Lewis had been wrongly denied a rematch with Bruno and blocked the WBC from sanctioning any more title bouts. Tyson now has that group’s green title belt, but Sunday, King wouldn’t announce a Tyson-Seldon bout, planned here for July 13.

“I need a fair jewishprudence system,” the promoter said innocently, in another of his familiar malaprops. “I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.”

King is awaiting retrial in federal court in Manhattan for insurance fraud; the original trial ended in a hung jury. King’s attorneys also are preparing to defend him in a breach-of-contract suit brought by Tyson’s former trainer, Kevin Rooney, in federal court in Albany, N.Y.

Tyson, meanwhile, is basking in his green belt with the gold WBC emblem, but he couldn’t explain what he did in demolishing Bruno.

Asked how he graded his performance, Tyson said: “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I just fight, man.” Asked if he could see fear in Bruno’s eyes, he said: “I don’t see anything. I don’t stop punching until it’s over.”

Bruno, who never started punching, started bleeding from a cut near his left eye late in the first round.

About all Bruno did was drape his 247 pounds on Tyson; for that, the referee, Mills Lane, ordered a point taken away from the Brit in the second round. And 50 seconds into the third, all Bruno could do was hold onto was the ropes when Lane mercifully waved his arms. Tyson was champion again.

Since his release from prison less than a year ago, Tyson has fought only 16 minutes 51 seconds in earning $65 million (or $64,292.78 per second) in three fights - the 89-second scam with Peter McNeeley and his third-round knockout of Buster Mathis Jr.

Tyson was sharper against Bruno, but the 34-year-old Englishman wasn’t much more than a statue. Seldon and Botha won’t be much better. Seldon’s jaw has been compared to the crystal chandeliers in his hometown Atlantic City, N.J., casinos. Botha, out of South Africa, is known as the “White Buffalo,” and is just as slow.

But sooner or later, Riddick Bowe or Michael Moorer or Lennox Lewis or maybe even George Foreman or Evander Holyfield will come out of the other corner when the bell rings, and Mike Tyson, a marquee fighter, will finally have a marquee fight.