Fiery side of Tyson surfaces

The many faces of Mike Tyson surfaced at the final press conference before Friday's fight with Andrew Golota.

It was a different man one witnessed on Wednesday when he talked of how good it felt to be using the Brewster-Wheeler Recreation Center, where Joe Louis trained. He was cool, calm and lamb-like.

However on Thursday, the lion in him surfaced after an American journalist asked him how he felt about disciplining himself to stay within the rules of the sport. Tyson snapped: "I have never done anything he (Golota) hasn't done in the ring," he said. Then, after pausing for a moment, he continued: "Ask him, white boy. You know I am insecure about that. Don't @#$# with me about it.

"I feel you are a racist. I am insecure about that. Why can't he say something decent? You have to bring out the negativity in me."

The smiles had gone for the day, it seemed. In the Brewster gym 24 hours earlier, he had responded to a suggestion that his outbursts were partly designed to sell tickets by admitting with a grin: "Yeah, but I mean some of them, too . . . "

Now the haunted, persecuted Tyson was back. Both fighters were asked about fear before a fight.

"I don't know anything about him [Golota]," Tyson said. "If he's afraid, that's his problem. I don't fear nobody or nothing, nobody with a knife or a gun, the Mafia, anything."

Golota, who lost in 95 seconds to Lennox Lewis in 1997, seemed normal. "I am always afraid before I fight," he said. "This is boxing. But I don't care about him. I step into the ring and that's it."

Tyson's bad mood was not to change later on return to the Brewster Center where again he accused white American journalists of manipulating and persecuting him.

"People lose respect for me because white #$#@*#@ like you control their minds and control their thinking," he said. "You guys don't love me. You look at every mistake with a magnifying glass and broadcast it to the world and make me a laughing stock in front of the people I love . . .

"You think it's a joke that I'm angry at you guys? It's not going to be a joke when I get angry and confront one of you."

One hopes that doesn't happen on Friday night.