Originally published July 23, 1986.
Mike Tyson is 24-0, with 22 knockouts, 14 toppled in the first round, like so many tin soldiers. No robe, no socks, no nonsense, unless you count the playful kiss he planted on trainer Kevin Rooney's cheek between rounds recently.
"He ain't nothin' to write home to mama about," sneered Joe Frazier the other day.
And if you insist on writing home to mama about Tyson, don't include any garbage about how the short-armed, thick-necked heavyweight reminds you of Frazier, who used to show up wearing silks and satins and buttons and bows.
"They say that, they don't know what they're lookin' at," Frazier muttered.
"Tyson needs room to punch. He's only got one punch, an uppercut. I don't see no right hand. I don't see no left hook.
"I've gotta love what they're doing for the young man. But he's been hittin' people and I don't see nobody beatin' on him. You can be a killer when nobody's beatin' on you. When they start beatin' back, it's a different situation. Like with George Foreman. "
Pride goeth before a fall. Before six or seven falls. Frazier made that match for himself and when the evening was over, Foreman had dribbled him all over that Jamaica canvas like a Jackson Pollock painting and owned Joe's championship.
Frazier's matchmaking skills have not improved through the years. He squandered all chance at "Father of the Year" honors when he shoved his son, Marvis, out there for one brutal round with heavyweight champ Larry Holmes.
And now he has stuck Marvis in against the bullish Tyson, this Saturday, in a phone-booth sized ring in Glens Falls, N.Y. Which explains why he spits at the spitting image prattle.
"I don't blame Joe," said Jimmy Jacobs, who co-manages Tyson. "It's a stupid comparison. It's like comparing Musial to DiMaggio, Williams to Musial, Mattingly to Williams. Every human being is a million miles from every other human being. Joe and Mike have two arms, that's it.
"People don't understand Frazier's basic concept. Joe fought a very aggressive style. He constantly came forward. He'd take three shots on the chin to get in one good left hook.
"Joe fought as if the objective of professional boxing was to get hit in the face. That's the antithesis of the way Mike Tyson fights.
"I have Joe's entire career on film. With the exception of one other fighter, there's never been a champion who took more shots than Joe. And that's the reason his career was so short. He'd win fights because of his great fighting heart. To compare him with Mike Tyson is ludicrous. Mike does not get hit. He hates getting hit. He's never been cut. "
Jacobs is right about fighters being like snowflakes, no two exactly alike. But it is comparisons, Louis-Dempsey, Ali-Louis, that keep the brutal sport alive, filling the long gaps between fights.
Unless, of course, you're talking about Tyson, who has fought 24 times in 16 months, which sounds like a cruel timetable.
"Some of the stories have been vicious," Jacobs said. "Those writers don't understand the sport of boxing. In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king. Well, those writers don't know anything. They watch those Olympic kids fighting every two or three months, and they don't understand that that's being influenced by television.
"If they looked at (Kid) Gavilan, (Carmen) Basilio, (Paddy) De Marco, they fought once a week their first year. Look at any great fighter of the past, and he fought once a week. The criticism is ridiculous. His fights are not one-tenth as hard as gym workouts.
"Cus D'Amato felt that Mike should fight a minimum of twice a month. It's imperative. Whether you're a fighter or a brain surgeon or throwing rocks at a telephone pole and want to be the best rock-thrower, the way nature constructs us, in order to be good, you have to work at it. You can't play the piano every 90 days if you want to be great. "
Even Van Cliburn's fingers need a rest occasionally. Doesn't Tyson's compact body need time to recover?
"Recover from what? " Jacobs sneered. "Two weeks (actually three) after he went 10 rounds with Mitch Green, he fought again. "
Fighting that often keeps Tyson off the street corners, of course. But there are no mean street corners in Catskill, N.Y., where he has lived and trained ever since D'Amato sprung him from the detention center at 14.
"It's his home, they adore him," Jacobs said. "He's like Heathcliffe, come down from the moors. It's hard to explain chemistry, but the chemistry is right. "
D'Amato was something of an alchemist. He turned a troubled youth named Floyd Patterson into a heavyweight champion before he was 22, coddling him through the early stages of his career.
He wanted Tyson, 20, to become the youngest heavyweight champion ever, younger than Patterson, younger than springtime. D'Amato died last November of pneumonia, but the harsh schedule survives.
"When Mike was 15," Jacobs recalled, "Cus said he was going to be the heavyweight champion. That was so out of character for Cus.
"What it was like to talk with Cus, to be in his presence, defies description. Sitting next to Cus at a professional prizefight was comparable to sitting next to Nuryev at a ballet. He'd see one ballet and you'd see a different ballet.
"With Cus, you'd see the fight and he'd see the ballet. He'd tell me way before things happened what was happening. He'd say, 'Black trunks is giving up. ' "
Let the record show that Joe Frazier has been this route before, challenging an unbeaten D'Amato product.
Demolished Buster Mathis years ago after Mathis had trained with a torso- shaped mattress and a code system that assigned numbers to parts of the anatomy.
"The mattress don't hit back," muttered Frazier when he was through knocking the stuffing out of Mathis.
Here we are, 18 years later, and it's Marvis's turn to find out what's inside Mike Tyson.
"When the bell rang," Joe recalled, "I'd go 'til it rang again. It was me or them. Guys who went 10 with Tyson, Quick Tillis, Mitch Green, they weren't there to fight, just to slip, move, run, hide.
"We come from a different background. It's do it to us or we do it to you. "
Jacobs scoffs at Frazier's approach and violates his own distaste for comparisons by saying, "Marvis fights identically to Joe with one exception. He has Joe's go-forward, aggressive style . . . without the punch. "
And Tyson lacks Joe's sartorial splendor, his crushing left hook and his damn-the-torpedoes style, but they do have one dramatic thing in common.
Tyson smiles like a possum eating honey once he destroys the other guy's will. Joe Frazier did that too.
It will be fascinating to see who's smiling Saturday, when night comes to Glens Falls, N.Y.