You might get the wrong impression about promising heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson if you were talking with him about his pet pigeons, which he keeps in his Catskill home southwest of here.
He`ll talk lovingly about the birds in his high, squeaky voice and smile frequently, showing two bright gold caps and a big, William Perry-like gap between his front teeth. One almost forgets about the powerful, squat body that metes out extreme punishment: In Tyson`s first 18 pro fights, all victories, he has 12 first-round knockouts.
Tyson, 19, recorded victory No. 18 Sunday. It took him a little longer than usual this time–referee Luis Rivera ruled him a TKO winner at 1 minute 19 seconds of the sixth round when his opponent, Jesse Ferguson, stopped fighting–but his objectives made it clear that no one should be fooled by this man`s kindly behavior outside the ring.
”What I always try to do,” he said Sunday, ”is catch them right on the tip of the nose. That`s because I try to push the bone of the nose right up into the brain.”
Uh, how`s that again, Mike?
”I hear the doctors and I know that the possibility of him getting up after that is not likely.”
Any disappointments about your 18th straight victory, then?
”I wanted to hit him in the nose one more time so that maybe the bone could have gone up into his brain.”
Tyson didn`t achieve that somewhat questionable goal, but he didn`t disappoint the home crowd of about 7,500 at the Houston Field House on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus.
They cheered wildly as Tyson, probably the most heralded heavyweight since George Foreman, battered away at Ferguson (14-2), Tyson`s first top 20 opponent. Tyson dominated the fight, which was not big on action because Ferguson often held Tyson, not allowing the muscular 5-foot-11-inch, 215-pounder to loose his powerful uppercut.
”Guys figure the way to beat Mike Tyson is to hold, that I`ll get tired,” an unmarked Tyson said after the fight. ”But the reason they`re holdin` is they`re sore. I heard him screamin` like a woman when I was hittin` him with those body shots.”
Fighting out of a closed stance, his head low, Tyson pounded away at Ferguson`s body through most of the first four rounds as though he were working on the heavy bag in the gym. Although Tyson won all rounds on the judges` and referee`s scorecards, Ferguson, who knocked down Carl Williams twice in a fight last year, appeared to connect with several good lefts in the fourth round.
But it also was in that fourth round that Tyson said he saw Ferguson drop his left hand and experienced a feeling of deja vu.
”I was smiling after that punch in the fifth round (a right uppercut that resulted in the fight`s only knockdown),” Tyson said, ”because I knew it was going to happen. I`d already seen it. After the first round, I saw that shot in my mind. So when I hit him with that punch, I thought, `I knew it was gonna happen.` ”
Ferguson had no such predestination. He managed to finish the fifth round but held and grabbed like a wrestler in the sixth, forcing Rivera to stop the match.
”I had told him three or four times to stop holding,” Rivera said.
”But he didn`t want to fight. He wasn`t doing his job.”
Ferguson, nose and brain relatively intact afterward, thought otherwise.
”I wasn`t out on my feet. I wasn`t stumbling,” he said. ”I was just dazed a little bit. He just caught me with that one good shot.”
Ferguson insisted that he wasn`t all that impressed with Tyson, that he probably could be beaten by Pinklon Thomas, Mike Weaver or Williams.
But Williams may not get the chance. He walked into a crushing left hook by Weaver in another bout here Sunday and was kayoed by the former World Boxing Association heavyweight champ in the second round.
Williams (17-2) had just stunned Weaver (28-11) with three quick rights. But when Williams dropped his right hand, Weaver came up with his still-powerful left, flooring Williams. Weaver, who said he`d retire if he lost Sunday, then knocked down Williams twice more in the round to end the fight and did a victory flip like baseball`s Ozzie Smith.
The victory puts Weaver back in heavyweight contention, despite his loss to Thomas last year, and he may be matched against Tyson one day soon.
Tyson, meanwhile, was still far from satisfied with his 18th straight triumph. His smile belied his intentions: ”I wanted to put the guy out cold.”
