Time Will Tell For Tyson Layoff Sure To Have Impact, But No One Knows How Much

The truth in The Matter of Mike Tyson is that no one knows, from sea to shining sea, just how his comeback after a four-year absence from boxing will go. The only consensus is that it won’t be easy for him.

“It’s very difficult,” said the dean of boxing trainers, 83-year-old Eddie Futch. “I’ve seen a lot of fighters try to come back from long layoffs. I saw Muhammad Ali come back from exile. It wasn’t easy for Ali. It won’t be easy for Tyson.

“People have compared Tyson’s layoff to Ali’s because they were about the same age and they were off about the same amount of time. But one difference is Ali never really left boxing. He trained all the time through those years.

“Wherever he went he’d spar with heavyweights. He always had his gear in the trunk of his Cadillac. He was never completely inactive the way Tyson was in prison, so Tyson is going to have to get his reflexes back.

“At 28, 29, heavyweights are at their peak, as a rule. They go downhill from that point, but by then they have experience to make the most of what they have left. Being kept away for four years, you don’t know what he can substitute for the experience he lost.”

That would not seem to bode well for Tyson, who at 28 will face an opponent for the first time in 50 months when he steps in against Peter McNeeley Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden in the most anticipated return to boxing since the comeback of Sugar Ray Leonard against Marvin Hagler in 1987.

Although physically Tyson looks like an ebony rock that’s as hard as flint on the outside, only time will show what remains on the inside. Will his reflexes return? Will his chin, which was once like the face of Mt. Washington, turn to limestone after not being hit for four years? Will his body fully return to the programmed style he was taught by Cus D’Amato, the architect who built him into a fearsome fighting machine? And what of his mind, which most agree is more important than anything on the physical side of a comeback? Will his mind be able to stand up to the discipline the sport demands?

Who can say for sure? No one. But Teddy Atlas, a one-time acolyte of D’Amato’s and Tyson’s trainer through most of his amateur successes, thinks he has an idea of what is awaiting Tyson.

“Tyson depended on power, speed and technique,” Atlas said. “Timing and reflexes you don’t often get back 100 percent when you’ve been off a long time. The things that rely on timing you don’t get back. His style, Cus’ style, is very formated. It’s very strict. It only works for a certain physical and mental makeup. Tyson was just right for it, but there’s not a lot of room for error.

“His distance has to be right. When you come out of the weave (a low crouch that moves you into punching position), if you’re too far away, your opponent can time you and you’re a sitting duck. You need to make your opponent miss and move close and put him under pressure to restrict what he can do. It’s not nearly as easy to perfect as people think.

“He had already lost a lot of that before he went to jail. By the time he fought Frank Bruno (Feb. 25, 1989, a year before he would be knocked out by Buster Douglas), he was throwing one punch at a time. He had no elusiveness anymore. No head movement. When he came out of the weave in his next fight, with Carl Williams, he wasn’t in control. He had no eye contact all the way through on his opponent. He didn’t bend at the knees. He bent forward from his waist to throw his left hook. He looked awful, but Williams was a very cooperative guy. He was a sucker for a left hook.

”(Tyson’s) excuse for looking bad against Bruno was he’d had a long layoff. It was eight months. Now it’s been four years.”

When Tyson first returned to sparring several months ago, even he acknowledged his timing was off, and his frustration mounted quickly. After the first day, he could not believe what had happened to his skills, although in short order, according to his followers, he was knocking out sparring partners.

“It was like I was on Novocain that first day,” Tyson said. “That first day of sparring was so disastrous. It was discouraging. It was like, ‘Oh, man. I can’t get off.’ It took two or three weeks of repetition to get comfortable. As for getting hit, the first time was pretty cool, but I don’t have a lot of experience in that area.”

One man who has vast experience in the matter of comebacks is former lightweight and junior middleweight champion Vinny Pazienza. He was out for a year after breaking his neck in an auto accident and came back to win a second world title and twice defeat Roberto Duran. He is an expert in the difficulties of The Comeback and knows Tyson well, having been his roommate at the Olympic Training Center when both were nationally ranked amateurs. Knowing what he does about both the task ahead and the man trying to accomplish it, Pazienza believes Tyson’s pitfalls will be mental more than physical.

“You have doubts in your mind,” Pazienza said. “That makes your mental work so much harder. You wonder if you can do it anymore. It’s a shock when your timing is off. The first time you get hit in the face you wonder to yourself, ‘How am I going to take this?’

“I think coming back from a long layoff is more difficult for a finesse fighter than an animal like Tyson, but I knew Tyson pretty well. He wasn’t always the bravest guy. He had a lot of fear in him. If he ever broke his neck the way I did he’d be back on the pigeon farm. People think because he was in jail he’ll come out and be the same Tyson, but it won’t be that way.”

While the public seems to hold some misplaced belief that a guy in prison comes out tougher for the experience, Atlas feels lengthy incarceration has an opposite effect on a fighter, especially one with a fragile ego.

“You think that time in jail is going to help him one bit in the ring?” Atlas said. “No. Ali was always in the gym while he was away and he was never able to execute the style he had before. But he was mentally strong. He was able to come up with a different style and win two more titles.

“Ali adjusted because he had great character and will. Tyson went away for having no character. People forget by the time Mike went to jail he was already slipping. By 1991 he wasn’t the same fighter who destroyed Michael Spinks. He wasn’t disciplined enough anymore in his work ethic to move his head and do everything he was supposed to do. He would throw one punch at a time instead of those combinations because he was looking for the easy way out. He’d already begun to dissipate.

“To avoid those things you need character. Ali was willing to die professionally for his beliefs. He imposed that on himself. Tyson went away for violating somebody else. There are no parallels between the two of them. During his exile, Ali was practicing what he needed to come back every day. Character! Tyson has had no practice in that arena.

“If he ends up in a position where his character has to be tested, I have my doubts because he’s failed himself there before. If you look to his past, there’s no precedent for character, and when you’re trying to come back from a long layoff at some point you need that. Not against McNeeley, but against somebody.

“I don’t know if he’ll be technically back to form or mentally have the endurance he had, either.”