“I NORMALLY don’t do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them,” Mike Tyson said. “So you shouldn’t talk anymore.”
To her credit, Josie Karp from CNN tried to ask another question. Mike Tyson turned his back on her. Not one of the 15 or so other men in the room – now witnesses to sexual harassment – raised a word of protest. Only Karp, one of three women in the room, had guts enough to stand up to Mike Tyson.
So, as children and bullies do, Tyson took this as encouragement, even assent.
He made excuses for all his losses. He blamed the media for his prison stretch and for his tarnished reputation. He proclaimed himself unfit to live in a world full of hypocrites. He compared himself to Jesus. He fantasized about killing people.
And then came this gem: “I wish that you guys had children so I could kick them in the [expletive] head or stomp on their testicles so you could feel my pain because that’s the pain I have waking up every day.”
Of course, the one subject Mike Tyson refused to address was Lennox Lewis.
Afterward, Tyson’s “handlers” tried to smooth things over with Karp by offering her a one-on-one. She was reluctant. She feared being humiliated and embarrassed again.
As a professional reporter, Karp accepted.
“Where you from?,” Tyson asked her, under the guise of small talk.
“Boston,” Karp replied.
“That means you hate niggers,” Mike Tyson said.
That launched him into another diatribe, against the media and white people. Tyson was well aware Karp was a member of both those groups.
“But I still want you to s– my d–,” Tyson told her.
Tyson’s handlers stood close by, smiling as usual.
And why not? For Team Tyson, this has been a week of great press.
All week long a group of boxing writers chosen as carefully as one of Tyson’s opponents – the Peter McNeeleys of the sporting press – did for him what Josie Karp refused, in return for an expense-account trip to Maui to chronicle the kinder, gentler Mike.
I am proud to report that I wasn’t invited along on the junket, despite having the bad judgment to have written no less than a half-dozen columns supporting Tyson’s right to fight.
It is just as well.
The same way Mike Tyson does not want to talk about Lennox Lewis, his handlers don’t want anyone talking to him who refuses to play along with their twisted little game.
They want men just like them, the kind who will smile and nod along when Tyson curses them, calls them homosexuals, drunks and pedophiles, threatens to hurt their children, who look the other way when he insults a woman.
They got those kind of men to Maui and they got the stories they wanted, safely sanitized and with enough “Mike is Changed” spin to give hope that people disinclined to pay $55 to watch him fight Lewis on June 8 would be won over.
On Friday, I spoke by phone with Ronnie Shields, Tyson’s new trainer and a guy I have always respected.
“I didn’t know this man from Adam when I first got here,” Shields said. “But from what I’ve seen, it’s ridiculous how people say this and that about him. I can’t believe this is the same person I’ve heard about. He’s so nice, so gentle. He just wants people to respect him. Really, he’s been a pleasure.”
Shields was in the room when Tyson verbally abused Karp. He never even mentioned it in our conversation.
So, too, was Shelly Finkel, Tyson’s manager who has said with a straight face that he would leave his daughter alone with Tyson.
And I’m sure he would, if the money was right. Finkel never said an admonishing word to Tyson.
Same goes for Scott Miranda, Tyson’s publicist, who briefed print reporters for an hour last Tuesday on what not to ask the ex-champion, so as not to upset him.
Miranda wasn’t about to upset Tyson, either.
Nor was Max Kellerman, ESPN’s “boxing expert,” who did for Tyson what Josie Karp would not do when he observed that beating Lewis, a 36-year-old who has been twice knocked out by sparring partners, would elevate Tyson to the level of “Ali, Joe Louis and Jack Johnson.”
You can hear that one for yourself tonight on ESPN’s Sunday Conversation.
Only Muhammad Sideeq, the jailhouse imam who became Tyson’s “spiritual adviser” when Tyson was released from jail in 1995, had the decency to apologize to Karp for Tyson’s behavior.
He told her, “Thank you for conducting yourself like a professional.”
That probably means she will no longer be invited to these little get-togethers, either.
Yesterday, I called Dan Klores, the high-powered New York publicist who is Miranda’s boss, to ask how he could justify continuing to try to spin Tyson’s image.
I read him Tyson’s quote about stomping kids’ testicles.
“I’m going to e-mail [Showtime president] Matt Blanc and Miranda and tell them we’re resigning immediately,” Klores said. “Why do I need this?”
The question is, why does anybody need Mike Tyson anymore?