Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography (16 page)

I had just turned twenty a few weeks earlier, and the plan was for me to become the youngest heavyweight champ by the end of 1986. While Jimmy and Cayton were negotiating for that, they had me fight Jose Ribalta in Atlantic City on August seventeenth.

Ribalta was a game fighter who, unlike Green and Tillis, actually engaged me. And he seemed to have the will not to be knocked out. I knocked him down in the second, and again in the eighth, but he got up. In the tenth, he went down a third time and when he got up, I swarmed him on the ropes and the referee stopped the fight.

Besides gaining a lot of respect from the crowd and the commentators on his determination, Ribalta also managed to ruin my night. After the fight, I had a date with a beautiful young coed from Penn State University who I had met at the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. This young lady accompanied me to my room and she began to touch me but I recoiled in pain.

“Hey! Please don’t touch me. It’s nothing personal but you have to go now. I just need some peace,” I told her. She was very understanding and she drove back to her school, but we made up for it the next time I saw her.

She had been at the fight and had seen all the punishment I had absorbed. I had never been through anything like that before. I felt nauseous from all Ribalta’s body blows, even hours after the fight. Ribalta and Tillis were the only two guys who had ever made me feel like that. I never felt that much general pain again. But I remember all the reading I had done chronicling how other great fighters had felt like their heads were halfway off after some of their fights, so I just felt that this was part of my journey.

The negotiations for a title fight were heating up and Jimmy decided that I should fight in Vegas so I could get used to it before I would fight there later in the year to win the title. We stayed at the house of Dr. Bruce Handelman, a friend of Jimmy’s. I started training at Johnny Tocco’s gym, a wonderfully grungy old-school gym with no amenities, not even air-conditioning. Tocco was an awesome guy who had been friends with Sonny Liston. There were pictures of Johnny and all the old-time greats on the walls.

I was in the locker room one day about to spar when it hit me. I told Kevin that I didn’t like it in Vegas and I wanted to go home. I was really just feeling anxious about the fight. If I didn’t win the Ratliff fight, I wouldn’t qualify to fight Trevor Berbick.

Kevin went out and told Steve Lott. So Steve thought to himself,
WWCD?
or,
What would Cus do?
Steve came into the locker room and tried to be positive. “You’re the star of the show. You’re going to knock this guy out in two rounds. You’ll be fantastic. If you don’t like it here, we don’t have to come back here ever again, how’s that?”

Steve always had a charming way of handling situations. Of course, I wasn’t going anywhere, I was just venting. But he didn’t know what Cus would have done. Cus would have looked at me and said, “What? Are you scared of this guy? This guy is a bum. I’m going to fight him for you.”

So on September sixth, I squared off against Alfonzo Ratliff, who was a former cruiserweight champion of the world. I didn’t think he was a step up from Ribalta, but he certainly wasn’t a bum; he was a tough opponent. Apparently, the Vegas oddsmakers didn’t agree because they wouldn’t take bets on the fight itself, only on the over-under of five rounds. You would think I invented over-under in fight betting. Before me it didn’t exist. I took it to a new level of exploitation. The opening bell rang and Ratliff just took off. He made Mitch Green look like one of those power walkers. It was so bad that even the HBO guys were joking. “I wonder if he’s going to use his ten- or twelve-speed bike in the second round,” Larry Merchant said.

He actually tried to fight in the next round, but he didn’t last long. I dropped him with a left hook and then chopped him down with several punches when he got up.

“His bicycle got a flat tire,” Merchant cracked. When Jimmy came into the ring after the fight, he commented on Ratliff’s running. “I felt his breeze,” I said.

Soon it was official. I was to fight Trevor Berbick for his title on November 22, 1986. I had more than two months off between fights and Jimmy and Cayton decided to have me make the talk show circuit to promote the fight and my career. I started out going on David Brenner’s
Nightlife
. David was a great guy and he treated me with the utmost respect. He predicted I would be the next heavyweight champ, but as nice as that was, it meant more to me when his other guest, the great former champion Jake LaMotta, made the same prediction.

“Without a doubt, the next heavyweight champ of the world,” Jake said when he came out and hugged me. “And if he doesn’t do the right thing, I’ll give him a beating. You keep it up, pal; you’re going to be like Joe Louis, Marciano, maybe even better.”

My heart soared when I heard that.

Then Brenner asked Jake a question and his answer was very prescient.

“Let’s say Mike becomes the champ. What advice would you give him?”

“The best advice I could give him is keep yourself busy and make believe you’re in jail for a couple of years,” Jake said. “Stay away from all the garbage out there. There’s a lot of garbage out there.”

“Why does it have to be garbage?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, guys like you and I, we attract garbage,” he said.

I did
The Joan Rivers Show
. I loved her and her husband, Edgar. They both made me feel so good. I felt their energy was real. That was one of the best times of my life. During our interview Joan asked me if I had an Adrian, like in the movie
Rocky
.

“No girlfriend,” I answered.

“When you go into training, do you give up sex?” she asked.

“No.”

“See, ’cause my husband always tells me he’s in training,” Joan cracked.

I did
The Dick Cavett Show
and Dick demonstrated some aikido on me. He asked me to hold him by his wrists.

“The eighty-seven-year-old founder of aikido can get away from the grasp of the world’s strongest man,” he said and he did a slip move and escaped my grip.

“But no mugger’s gonna hold you like this,” I protested.

I was so charming on these shows, just the way Jim and Bill wanted me to be. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a villain. I wanted to model myself on Jim Brown, the football player. When I first started hanging out in bars in the city I’d see older professional football players who played with Jim Brown. They were talking about him like he was mythical.

“Hey, if he came in here and something wasn’t cool – the smell of the place, the music that was playing, the volume of the people’s conversations – if something just wasn’t cool in his mind, he would commence to destroying the place.”

I was listening to this thinking,
Fuck, I wish I was a bad motherfucker and had people talking about me like that. If Jim’s going to destroy you because he doesn’t like the smell of the place, I’ve got to come in and kill a motherfucker in here
.

As the November twenty-second date came closer, I began to train seriously. I trained for a month in Catskill and then we moved to Vegas. Right at the start, Jimmy and Cayton gave me a VHS tape of Berbick’s fight versus Pinklon Thomas, the fight he won to become champion. I watched it and reported back to Jimmy.

“Was that tape in slow motion?”

I was arrogant, but I really felt that my time had come. In my sick head, all the great old-time fighters and the gods of war would be descending to watch me join their company. They’d give me their blessing and I’d join their club. I was still hearing Cus in my head, but not in a morbid sense, just supportive.

This is the moment we’ve been training for since you were fourteen. We went over this over and over again. You can fight this guy with your eyes closed.

I knew Berbick was rough and tough and hard to fight because he was the first man to go fifteen rounds with Larry Holmes in a title defense. Larry had knocked everyone else out. I just wanted to decimate Berbick. Then everybody would take me seriously, because at that time, everybody thought I was fighting tomato cans and fluff; they said this guy’s not a real fighter, he’s just fighting easy fights, so that’s why my main objective was to decimate him. I wanted to take him out in one round – I wanted to hurt him real bad.

Kevin and Matt Baranski were just as confident as me. We were firing on all cylinders. And I was firing on one more. I looked at my underpants a day before the fight and I noticed a discharge. I had the clap. I didn’t know if I had contracted it from a prostitute or a very filthy young lady. We were staying at Dr. Handleman’s house again so he gave me an antibiotic shot.

Later that day, Steve Lott and I went to rent some VHS tapes.

“Mike, what would Cus say about this guy Berbick?” he asked me.

This was Steve’s way of putting me in Cus’s shoes, getting me to think like Cus. What Steve didn’t know was that I didn’t have to think like Cus; I had Cus in my head.

“He’d say that this guy was a tomato can,” I answered. “A bum.”

I was such a prick at the weigh-in. I was glaring at Berbick every time he was within sight. He’d come over to shake my hand but I’d turn my back on his outstretched hand. When I caught him looking at me, I’d bark, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Then I told him that I was going to knock him out in two rounds. He’d pose with the belt and I’d yell out, “Enjoy holding the belt. You won’t have it too much longer. It’s going to be on a real champion’s waist.” I was so disrespectful and offensive. For some reason I just didn’t like Berbick at that time. Plus, I wanted that belt. That green-eyed monster set in.

I was also mad that Berbick’s trainer Angelo Dundee was bragging that Berbick would beat me. Cus was always so jealous of Dundee, who had trained Ali, because he got all the media attention. Cus didn’t think he deserved it.

“Berbick has the style to do a number on Tyson,” he told the press. “Trevor is licking his chops at the thought that for once, he won’t have to chase, that Tyson will be right there in his face. Trevor is a good body puncher and he has twenty-three KOs to his credit. He’s confident and so am I. I think he’ll stop Tyson in a late round.”

I couldn’t sleep the night before the fight. I was on the phone a lot, talking with girls who I liked but never had sex with. I tried to take my mind off the fight by asking them what they were doing but all they wanted to talk about was the fight. Then I got up and started shadowboxing in my room.

The day of the fight I had some pasta at one o’clock. At four, I had a steak. Then some more pasta at five. In the dressing room I had a Snickers bar and some orange juice.

Then Kevin wrapped my hands and put on my gloves. It was time to walk to the ring. It was chilly in the arena so Kevin cut a towel and draped it over my neck. I was wearing the black trunks that I had changed to a few fights ago. I had to pay a $5,000 fine since Berbick was wearing black, but I didn’t care. I wanted that ominous look.

I was the challenger so I had to go out first. They were playing a Toto song for my entrance but all I could hear in my head was that Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight”: “I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord / And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all of my life, oh Lord.”

I went through the ropes and I started pacing around the ring. I looked out at the crowd and I saw Kirk Douglas, Eddie Murphy, and Sly Stallone. A few minutes later, Berbick entered wearing a black robe with a black hood. He was projecting cockiness and confidence, but I could feel that was all a façade, an illusion. I knew that this guy was not going to die for his belt.

Ali was introduced to the crowd and he came over to me.

“Kick his ass for me,” Ali told me.

Five years earlier, Ali had been beaten by Berbick and retired after the fight, so I was more than happy to comply.

“That’s going to be easy,” I assured Muhammad.

Finally it was time to fight. The bell rang and referee Mills Lane motioned us into action. I charged Berbick and began peppering him with hard shots. I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t moving and he wasn’t jabbing; he was standing right there in front of me. I threw a right hand near the beginning of the fight square on his left ear, trying to bust his eardrum. About halfway through the round, I staggered him with a hard right. I swarmed him and by the end of the first, Berbick seemed dazed. He had taken some really, really good shots.

I went back to my corner and sat down. Because of the antibiotic shot, I was dripping like a Good Humor bar in July. But I didn’t care; I was in there to nail Berbick. Besides, one of my heroes, Kid Chocolate, fought with syphilis all the time.

“Move your head, don’t forget to jab,” Kevin said. “You’re headhunting. Go to the body first.”

Ten seconds into the second round, I hit him with a right and Berbick went down. He sprang up immediately and came right back at me. He was trying to fight back but his punches were ineffective. With about a half a minute or so left in the round, I hit him with a right to the body instead of an uppercut and then I shot the uppercut but I missed him. But I threw a left and hit him in the temple. It was a delayed reaction but he went down. I didn’t even feel the punch, but it was very effective. He tried to get up but then he fell back down and I noticed that his ankle was all bent.

No way he’s gonna get up and beat the count,
I thought.

I was right. He tried to get up a second time and he lurched across the canvas and flopped down again. He finally got up but Mills Lane hugged him and waved him off. That was it. I was the youngest heavyweight champion in history.

“It’s over, that’s all, and we have a new era in boxing,” Barry Watkins, the HBO announcer, said.

“Mike Tyson did what Mike Tyson normally does. And that’s fight,” Sugar Ray Leonard added.

“That’s with a capital
F
,” Watkins said.

I was just numb. I couldn’t feel anything. I was conscious of what was going on around me but I was just numb. Kevin hugged me. José Torres came over.

“I can’t believe this, man. I’m the fucking champion of the world at twenty,” I said to him. “This fucking shit is unreal. Champion of the world at twenty. I’m a kid, a fucking kid.”