By Steve Rushin and Sonja Steptoe with special reporting by Evan Kanew

Flack he got. Only it wasn't Roberta. Roberta Flack didn't sing for Mike Tyson, because the all-star parade planned for Tyson was canceled. On account of he's a convicted rapist, recently paroled. And the idea of celebrating his release -- well, it drew some flack. So instead of being paraded, the former heavyweight champion of the world was discreetly "saluted" last week in the hazy heat of Harlem, where preacher after preacher honoring the ex-champ proclaimed him "the prodigal son."

Rise and Fall of Mike Tyson SI Writers • DR. Z: McBride used strategy to beat Tyson Photo Galleries • The long, strange journey of Mike Tyson • McBride stops Tyson after six rounds in D.C. Tyson Facts • Fight-by-fight results | Year-by-year chronology SI Flashback • NACK: Tyson aims to be youngest champ ever • HOFFER: Tyson shocked by Douglas in Japan • HOFFER: Tyson hits new low against Holyfield SI Flashbacks 1986: Ready to Soar to the Very Top 1986: Getting a Belt Out of Life 1987: Only One No. 1 1988: The End of the Trail SI EXTRA 1988: Who Owns the King? 1988: "I'm Gonna Hurt This Guy" 1990: KO'd! 1991: Firefight 1991: Where There's Fire? 1992: A Crushing Verdict 1995: Second Chance 1995: Con Job 1996: One Down ... 1996: Zero Tolerance 1996: Real Deal 1997: Feeding Frenzy 1999: Sudden Impact 2000: Quitting Time 2002: All The Rage

You know: the Biblical boy who demands his share of his father's estate, leaves home, squanders the money and returns to the old man, repentant. "Father," says the son in Luke 15, "I have sinned against God and against you; I am no longer fit to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants." But the father fetes the lad instead. "Fetch a robe, the best we have, and put it on him," he tells the help. "Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost and is found."

The above translation is from The Oxford Study Bible, which summarizes the story as, "Joy over repentant sinners." If you forget the fact that, in coming to Harlem, Tyson had not quite returned home (he's from Brooklyn), or that he remains prodigiously prodigal (buying cars like he's Adnan Kashoggi), or that he has yet to admit to or apologize for raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington in an Indianapolis hotel room, you might have figured him for a neo-New Testament hero, an honest-to-goodness repentant sinner.

Until, that is, he appeared at the "press" conference.

Held in a tent in Harlem, the Q-and-A session was dominated by "sycophants and psycho fans," as the New York Daily News put it. So Tyson fielded such softballs as "Mike, I just want to tell you that African-American women love you" and "Mike, do you still give away free turkeys on Thanksgiving?"

When an actual journalist was somehow heard and began to ask Tyson if he was "sorry," promoter Don King seized the dais. "Sorry?!" shrieked King. "Sorry for what?! What are you talking about?! C'mon, man!"

Moments later Tyson was asked if he would denounce violence against women, and again one of his handlers handled the inquiry. "He doesn't have to!" said John Horne, a Tyson confidant. "I won't sit here and let you disrespect him like that!"

There would be no act of contrition. Tyson left to spread charity checks totaling roughly $1 million around Harlem before arriving by limousine in front of the historic Apollo Theater, the centerpiece of what one pro-Tyson speaker called "the most famous black community in the world."

HARLEM SALUTES MIKE TYSON & DON KING read the banner on the makeshift stage set up in the street, where over 500 spectators -- "so desperate for heroes," as one Harlemite put it -- waited for two hours in the 95-degree heat for a few words from Tyson. But first, there were filibustery speeches: some praying for Tyson's redemption, many stating that he was railroaded in the rape trial and a few frighteningly implying that, all things considered, rape is a relatively unserious transgression. "Remember the lady who drove her two children into the river in South Carolina?" asked the Reverend William Crockett. "Mike Tyson didn't do that. Remember Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the building in Oklahoma City? Mike Tyson didn't do that. Remember Jeffrey Dahmer, who ate the people and put them in the refrigerator? Mike Tyson didn't do that."

In short, Mike Tyson is no manslaughterer. Though Don King is. Does it matter? Both men did their time. But do an athlete's actions outside the arena diminish his greatness in it? "Like Picasso," says Camille Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist and author who is decidedly in Tyson's corner. "Because he was mean to his girlfriend, he was not a great artist?" Of course he was.

So, say Mike Tyson remains a great artist inside the ring. Should you root for him?

"Why not root for Mike Tyson?" asks the man who prosecuted him, Indianapolis attorney Greg Garrison. "He paid his debt to society. People have expected me to have a medieval attitude about him, that he ought never to have success again. But that's antithetical to the notion of rehabilitative justice. How many times do you pay for the same sin?"

Socrates might respond this way: How does one rehabilitate a man who won't acknowledge having sinned? "How do you heal somebody who doesn't admit they want it?" asks Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman. "Even your basic 12-step programs say you have to admit what your behavior was."

Moreover, long before the rape conviction, Tyson's behavior was a model of misogyny. He allegedly boasted that the best punch he ever landed was on Robin Givens, his wife at the time. Upon receiving an honorary doctorate from Central (Ohio) State in 1989, Tyson was moved to remark to a gathering of about a thousand, "I don't know what kind of doctor I am, but watching all these beautiful sisters up here, I'm debating whether I should be a gynecologist." Which is to say he was a crass act.

The heavy hopes of others he shed like a fighter sheds clothes at weigh-in. "There are so many negative myths about black male athletes, myths that I have personally committed myself to eradicating," says Reggie Williams, the former Cincinnati city councilman and Bengal linebacker who is now an executive at the Walt Disney World Company. "But all of my actions will never carry the media clout or have the domino effect of one of Mike Tyson's misdeeds."

In a poignant counterpoint to Tyson's circus maximus in Harlem, some 75 demonstrators protesting violence against women -- members of African-Americans Against Violence, a group formed in response to the Tyson parade plans -- assembled outside the Apollo the night before the "salute." They were nevertheless rooting for the fighter. And why wouldn't they be? Said spokesman Donald Suggs, "We want to get him to the point where we can look at him as a hero."

Tyson declined an "invitation" to that rally; instead he reportedly spent the evening in a men's clothing boutique a mile away. Two nights earlier he had bought a $123,000 Mercedes over the telephone, complementing the four $320,000 Bentley Azures he had recently purchased in Las Vegas, where he had also sprung for a big house since being sprung from the big house in March. There is nothing wrong with that, except that Tyson claims an ascetic new lifestyle. "The only thing I do is pray and fight," says Iron Mike.

To be fair, he did convert to Islam in prison and allegedly read the great works of Western literature. And though he failed to obtain his high school equivalency degree while spending three years behind bars, there were larger lessons to absorb at the Indiana Youth Center. "You hope he's learned something," says filmmaker Spike Lee, who visited Tyson five times in the slammer. "I think eventually he'll speak out against abuse to women."

Lee wrote and directed Do the Right Thing. Tyson has yet to do it. And even he can't say that he has changed. "If I have," is all Tyson will say, "I hope it's for the better."

Some sports fans would like to know whether that's true before they decide to root for Tyson. "I don't find it easy to root for people just because they win," says Temple basketball coach John Chaney. "I find it easy to root for people because there's something about their attitude."

"His lack of contrition and his immediate re-signing with Don King and his purchase of a million-dollar house suggest that maybe he hasn't changed," says Congressman Bill Richardson (D., N.Mex.), a fight fan who has sponsored legislation to regulate the sport.

Some of Tyson's backers say he has nothing to apologize for, arguing instead that he was a victim of a judicial system that continually comes down hardest on black men. "I know him well, and I believe he was falsely accused and convicted, and the community believes that as well,'' says Russell Simmons, CEO of Def Jam records. Just as some rap lyrics express young African-Americans' rage and frustration, Simmons says, Tyson represents their hopes. "The gangsta rappers say things in their songs all the time about how they'd much prefer to have an education, but that isn't an alternative. Today young black kids have no opportunities. They used to have affirmative action, now there's little hope. Mike Tyson presents a powerful image of a young black kid who took street smarts, determination and hard work and built his own industry. He represents hope."

"Mike is trying," says Muhammad Siddeeq, Tyson's spiritual adviser and tutor in prison. "Mike is moving in a positive direction. He's been to jail. He's paid a price. He hasn't reached angelic status, but he's moving in the right direction.

"What more can society ask of a man?"

"What are we asking of Mike Tyson?" echoes Williams. "Do you want him never to box again? Do you want him to pay more for his crimes? Do you want to give him a chance to prove the naysayers wrong? Do you want him to just roll up and die? Is there any one thing that will satisfy all these diverse points of view?"

Is society not fractionally responsible for the care and feeding of its heroes? At the time of his trial in 1992 Tyson was the most prominent American figure since Errol Flynn in 1943 to be charged with a crime as serious as rape. Today, that statement can stand on its head: In being charged with a serious crime, one becomes famous in America. Celebrities have always said that fame is a prison. Now it is literally so.

So we have serial-killer trading cards, love letters mailed to the brothers Menendez, a welcome-home party for Joey Buttafuocco, and teens too young to have known him as an athlete applauding fugitive double-homicide suspect O.J. Simpson as he fled police in slow motion. Fame has become an inherent moral good. Celebrity and celebrate spring from the same Latin root.

"We go into neighborhoods as coaches and think we can convince a kid that 'son, if you get educated, you'll go to college, have a good job, a car,'" says Chaney. "That's bull. We don't understand that as he looks out of his eyes and sees Mike Tyson and others like him as heroes, he feels everything is instant. He thinks, I can gain a lifestyle without waiting 10, 15 years. It's easier to go out and commit a crime."

Thirty-three years ago felonious fighter Sonny Liston was an unpopular heavyweight champion. Gangstas were not heroes to youngstas, as they are today. Should a society that glorifies the culture of violence -- indeed, which sees no oxymoron in that phrase -- really have a problem pulling for Tyson, a man whose brutality (in the ring) is his most praiseworthy quality?

You might suggest that this magazine sure hopes not, for Tyson -- "the former champ" -- stars in the videotape currently given "free ... with your paid subscription to Sports Illustrated."

Get into it. Athletes now come Scotchguarded against scandal. "They come back and participate and are accepted as heroes," says Chaney. "I find that to be very dangerous. It goes back to the old saying, 'Bad publicity is better than no publicity.'"

But of course. The day before Tyson's tour of Harlem, the Bronx Bombers signed tax cheat, drug abuser and woman-beater Darryl Strawberry to a three-month, $850,000 contract, a move so myopic that it was immediately denounced by Dr. Brown. Not former American League president Dr. Bobby Brown, mind you (though he might have pointed to Strawberry's near total decline as a ballplayer), but by federal drug czar Dr. Lee Brown, who said the New York Yankees "are sending the worst possible message to the youth of America: that if you use drugs, you can be rewarded with big money in big-time sports." Ask Strawberry's teammate Steve Howe, the man in the Stain-Master cloak, still unsullied in the eyes of at least one baseball owner after seven drug-related suspensions.

By contrast, Tyson merely requires a second chance. And no one would deny him his right to earn a living. What Tyson is not entitled to, says Goodman, is renewed renown. "Why is he treated more as if he were Michael Jordan than Mike Tyson?" she wonders. "Because he can bring in the bucks, that's why."

Bring in the bucks. If they do that in this culture, Iron Mike is eternally Teflon-coated and Strawberry fields forever.

"It's fine to make a buck with Tyson," says HBO Sports boss Seth Abraham, whose network lost to Showtime in the sweepstakes to televise Tyson's fights over the next three years. "That doesn't trouble me. He went to prison and served his time."

You've heard the phrase "Time is money"? Tyson may have earned only 65 cents a day while sweeping the gym in the joint, but his was an interest-bearing sentence. He became a much hotter boxer in the cooler. When Tyson entered prison, his career's parabola was on a noticeable decline. In the 25 months following his stunning loss to Buster Douglas in Tokyo, Tyson launched a comeback in which he had four wins against waning contenders, the last of which was a 12-round decision against Razor Ruddock. In the four years since then he has thrown no punches that we know of. Ergo....

"We think Tyson is the hottest commodity in boxing," says Tom Bruny, director of public relations and advertising for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which will host Tyson's next six fights, pay him $36 million and still need a craps rake to pull in the profits. No wonder the MGM Grand has commissioned a 48-foot portrait of Tyson to put on a rotating cube outside. And you know what? Most fight fans will tell you the image is life-sized.

"He was always a towering giant in the heavyweight ranks," says one boxing buff. "You've seen him in the ring. He's thunder and lightning." (Forgive Tyson if he fails to phone the florist: The speaker is Garrison.)

The point is, few will resist watching when Tyson returns to the ring on Aug. 19 to tenderize a side of beef named Peter McNeeley. "I'm not asking him to change the world, to do more time or send me a few bucks for my personal pain or to sign an autograph or talk to my kids," says Williams. "I want to see Mike Tyson come out of his corner with that look in his eyes and his gloves up near his jaw."

Why not? "Hate the sin, love the sinner," is an admirable chestnut of Judeo-Christian teaching. Surely you can separate Tyson the fighter from Tyson the felon, cheering the former and condemning the latter. "I think Mike Tyson, like all of us, is an imperfect human being," says Congressman Richardson. "We should like the good side and dislike the bad side. You don't have to love him all the time or hate him all the time. The human being in me wants him to show humility and contrition. But would I pay to see him fight? Yes."

On the other hand, "some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall," wrote Shakespeare. So does that make Tyson an indivisible entity: By elevating the fighter, are you endorsing the felon? "Saying you separate Tyson the man from Tyson the boxer is saying, I don't care about his raping Desiree Washington; all I care about is whether he beats Peter McNeeley," says Goodman. "Frankly, people who buy Showtime pay-per-view are supporting him and supporting the notion that you can get away with anything."

The Tyson-McNeeley fight will go for $50 a throw on pay-per-view. The MGM Grand is already a near sellout. And speaking of sellouts, King noted last week that in marketing Tyson he is using "every available means of exploitation."

To see Tyson on that stage in Harlem was to know that King hadn't misspoken. The fright-haired promoter was introducing Tyson to his impatient public when the Reverend Al Sharpton, the New York political opportunist, stepped forward. He was supposed to introduce Tyson. King acquiesced, and Sharpton did the honors, joining the chorus of those likening Tyson to the Prodigal Son. "Bring forth the fatted calf," said Sharpton.

As Tyson stepped to the microphone, that's exactly what he looked like. The fatted calf.

Issue date: July 3, 1995