“It looked like he’s ready to fight right now.”If so, and allowing that Peter McNeeley won’t be carrying much of a threat when he goes to his corner against Tyson at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on 19 August, it indicates considerable improvement.By all accounts, when Tyson sparred for the first time in more than three years he looked awful, justifying the secrecy that has surrounded his preparation for McNeeley “After that session I was depressed,” he admitted “No timing, no real speed Nothing. “It was a bad time,” he said, “but there were some funny moments. Sometimes we were allowed to stay up late and watch karate and kung-fu movies Everybody loved them and would go wild. It was like freedom.”In his formative years as a fighter Tyson would spend hours with fight films owned by one of his mentors, the late Jim Jacobs Now he is more inclined to read about the great champions. Recently, he visited the graves of Joe Gans and Joe Louis.The suspicion that Tyson’s rehabilitation may be cosmetic is dispelled by the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s executive director, Marc Ratner, who watched him spar five rounds on Monday “He looked very impressive,” Ratner said.

When you listen to the blues or jazz you feel other people’s pain.”Tyson was reluctant to reveal much of his prison experiences. I like Fats Waller and Satchmo Armstrong, Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald. Voltaire said that all organised religion is a scam.” He read also about Mao “I like his persistence, his perseverance. He had more balls than anybody in the world.”Bearing tattoos of Mao and Ashe on his arms, Tyson has also developed an interest in jazz “The blues are No 1, but not contemporary blues They have no feeling. I don’t have a Muslim name but all the brothers call me Abdullah.”If Tyson’s reading in prison was not as extensive as some chose to report, he was exposed to a number of serious writers “I read this guy Voltaire.

“That’s the only thing that got me through,” he told Schuyler “People have the wrong perception about Muslims Most Muslims are humble, God-fearing people. No matter how many people I saw, I always felt alone.”He claims that his conversion to Islam was crucial. Then I thought, ‘Who am I going to hurt by retiring? I’m going to hurt myself.’ I was miserable back then. I know about humbleness.”Tyson confirmed that he had thought seriously about turning his back on the sport in which, at just 20, he began a reign of terror, unifying its most coveted and richest title in barely six months of brutal activity “That I would even think that shows how low I was. “Can you imagine me with my pride being told, ‘Get back in your cell, nigger, and count,’ ” he said “I’m basically stable at this stage of my life You can’t grow holding grudges and being bitter. “It was as though Tyson had only been out of the ring for a few months, not four years,” Schuyler said.
The interview, at Don King’s home in Las Vegas, took Tyson from boxing to music, to his new heroes, Mao Tse-tung and Arthur Ashe, and, inevitably, back to his prison cell.

Tyson’s first interview after his release in March from the Indiana Youth Correction Center was granted this week to Ed Schuyler of the Associated Press, who has been casting a cynical eye on fighters for more than 30 years Schuyler saw the old Tyson A huge neck at one with massive shoulders Arms like church buttresses. There are varying reports on how much work Mike Tyson has put in since serving three years for rape, how seriously he is taking a comeback next month in Las Vegas, but according to a vastly experienced observer of boxing the former undisputed world heavyweight champion is again an immense physical presence. It is not yet a case of anything goes, but there is certainly a lot less to get hot under the collar about.. With advances in fabric technology – ‘cool’ wools, for example – there really is no excuse to see a hot, sweaty businessman in heavy flannels, red in the face and mopping his brow.”The stiff-upper-lip approach – stoically turned out in double-cuff shirts, worsted wool suits and heavy brogues – might still be welcomed in some professions But employers are increasingly chilling out. “Often it’s because they are too economical,” says Richard Rawlinson. “Whereas continental men appreciate the need for suits for both seasons, Englishmen wear winter suits all year round. Layering, she adds, also gets round the vexing dilemma of air conditioning whereby you dress in the morning for stifling heat and then freeze in your fridge-like office.For men, a major pitfall is their inability to differentiate between a summer and a winter wardrobe.

“It’s fine to work at your PC in a sleeveless shift dress so long as you always have a jacket handy in case you are called into a meeting,” she says. “Lingerie visible under semi-sheer clothes is also very inappropriate and provocative. The fact that women wear less underwear in summer can be incredibly distracting for male colleagues. London Underground, for example, is just a mass of bottoms and breasts jiggling under flimsy fabrics at this time of year.”Donna Karan, the American designer who pioneered formulaic dressing for working women, prescribes “layering” as the smart solution to the demise of the Eighties power suit and loosening up of dress codes. Bare legs and armpits and naked feet are all high on her list of office no-nos. “Exposed feet and painted toe-nails poking out from open-toe shoes are just too sexy,” she says.