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
