May 2, 2002 4 min read

WAILEA, Hawaii (AP) – Mike Tyson sure looks fit. Sitting on a couch a few feet from the ocean he bites on a towel and flexes his well defined biceps for a few visitors. His fight with Lennox Lewis is still more than five weeks away, but Tyson is already around 230 pounds, just a pound or two from what he wants to weigh when he gets into the ring.

For the past months he’s run five or six miles each morning along the ocean, drawing curious stares from the few tourists out early enough to see. Later he goes to a golf resort for serious work in a makeshift ring that occupies most of a conference room.

His handlers say he likes to preen in front of a mirror, flexing and looking at a sculpted body that doesn’t appear to have aged much in his 35th year.

“I’m just in great shape,” Tyson said.

In his next breath, though, Tyson acknowledges what most know – it may be the shape of his mind, not his body, that determines whether he can upset Lewis and win the heavyweight championship again on June 8.

“I’ve just got to get in proper preparation psychologically,” Tyson said. “Be hungry and determined.”

If Tyson can’t be hungry and determined for this fight, it’s time to get out of the game that has consumed him since the age of 13. He’ll not only make untold millions to fight Lewis, but can re-establish himself as one of the great heavyweights of his time if he wins.

He knows that. He also knows that many think he’s a wild man in and out of the ring and that Lewis will have the psychological edge when they do meet.

He doesn’t buy it a bit.

“His mind is not going to hit my mind,” Tyson said. “Don’t get philosophical with me, I’m a dropout.”

Tyson came to the islands to accomplish two things before he goes to Memphis to fight Lewis. He had to get into great shape, and he had to stay out of trouble.

So far, it’s worked for a fighter who seems supremely focused for the first time in years.

Even a meandering hour-long session with about a dozen writers at which he alternately cursed them and then said he loved them didn’t seem to shake Tyson’s stride.

“His mind is very ready,” said Stacey McKinley, a longtime assistant trainer. “It’s a big fight for Mike Tyson. Mike wants to go down as the greatest heavyweight of all time and this fight will help him do it.”

Tyson is being trained by a trio of boxing veterans, including new head trainer Ronnie Shields and former middleweight champion Mike McCallum.

McKinley handles the pads, McCallum works on the body punching and Shields tries to inject a few new wrinkles in a fighter who has fought a collection of stiffs since the infamous bite fight with Evander Holyfield.

McKinley says it is all paying off in a rejuvenated Tyson, who weighed a career-high 239 pounds last October when he fought Brian Nielsen.

“Mike said something to me the other day, that he quit fighting 10 years ago. He said he was just going through the motions,” McKinley said. “He said people are going to see some things that they haven’t seen out of him since then.”

To get Tyson ready for fighting Lewis doesn’t mean changing much about what he does in the ring. A few new combinations here and some work on his balance take up much of his time in the gym.

For Tyson to beat Lewis, though, he had to reinvigorate himself mentally as well as physically, something hard to do for a fighter who leads such a turbulent life.

It may be working, though Tyson being Tyson means he could implode at any minute.

“He tells me he can rest here and that he’s at peace here,” McKinley said. “There’s something about the waves on the ocean coming in at night. He can sleep at night.”

That’s easy to say, of course, sitting beachside in paradise with weeks to go before the fight.

McKinley will know in a few weeks if the Tyson who comes out before big fights can still do it from the islands. At that point he’ll start getting irritable, wishing the fight was happening right away.

In his dressing room in Memphis, though Tyson will become calm once again, talking quietly to himself before the biggest fight he has had in years. Only then will he know if it’s enough.

“Mike Tyson wants to go down as the greatest heavyweight of all time and this fight will help him do it,” McKinley said. “I think now he realizes how much he loves the game.”