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THE TRUTH ON TYSON? NEW BOOK OFFERS INTRIGUING INSIGHTS ON HOW FORMER CHAMP WAS HANDLEDBY MICHAEL KATZ ATLANTIC CITY Forget the sex, though in Mike Tyson's love life there are elements of both comedy and tragedy. Forget the limousine almost toppling from the back-seat action with supermodels, beauty queens and the virginal Robin ("Did I kiss good, Mike?") Givens. Forget even the dispute over a girl that left Wesley Snipes unconscious on the floor of the men's room in a Los Angeles restaurant. That's the stuff for small, inquisitive minds. It'll make you laugh and feel sorry for the insecure man-child. But what makes "The Inner Ring" not just another Tyson tell-all book are the arguments for the subtitle: "The Set-Up of Mike Tyson and The Uncrowning of Don King." Tyson, argues Rudy Gonzalez, son of a convicted Harlem drug dealer but for 51/2 years the fighter's chauffeur, valet and confidant, went to prison because promoter Don King was afraid to lose him to another promoter. Gonzalez writes that Tyson's current co-managers, Rory Holloway and John Horne, worked with King all along to take complete control of the biggest money-maker in sports. Tyson also allegedly was under King's control even during the three years in Plainfield, Ind. Gonzalez tells how King seized upon the greedy Givens and her mother, Ruth Roper, to help separate Tyson from Bill Cayton. Then, when it appeared Donald Trump was too interested in promoting fights, Gonzalez writes of how King pushed Tyson's buttons by asking him, "While you're out with Trump on the boat (the Trump Princess), why don't you ask him why he's (expletive) your wife?" That, wrote Gonzalez, led to a face-slapping of Givens and a furniture-throwing scene in the Bernardsville, N.J., mansion and the immediate breakup of the marriage, even though King's statement may not have been true. The bad guys in this book are Givens and Roper, Holloway and Horne, and above all, King. The rose-colored rear-view mirror look at Tyson is out of whack. Gonzalez told me a couple of years ago that either he or bodyguard Anthony Pitts were in the room more than 600 times when Tyson was having sex with a groupie. We're not talking role model here. And since he was not in the Canterbury Hotel room, Gonzalez can't possibly know whether 12 jurors erred in calling Tyson a rapist. "For many years, a fundamental part of my duties for MT was to make women feel special after having sex with Tyson," Gonzalez wrote with the help of Miami attorney Martin Feigenbaum. "MT got an 'F' in bedside manner, but he wasn't a rapist." I don't know about that, but it was the fact that Gonzalez was not in Indianapolis, when Tyson met Desiree Washington, that led the chauffeur to his "setup" theory. Gonzalez writes that he was seated next to Tyson in first class on the USAir flight from Washington to Indianapolis when he was told he had to get off the plane because there was a problem with the ticket. Don King Promotions had canceled it, Gonzalez writes. Everyone knew Tyson had become a sexaholic. Now he was on his way, unwittingly, to a beauty contest rehearsal. It was like sending an alcoholic into a bar during happy hour to see if he got in trouble. The trial defense of Tyson had always seemed to me like a fighter seeing his opponent starting a left hook and, instead of stepping in with a quick right hand or at least moving to block, dropping his right to make it easier to get hit. I just couldn't figure out why. Gonzalez' book brings up those questions, again. Why, for example, he wants to know, was he told by Horne to "shut up" during a meeting with Vincent Fuller, Tyson's King-picked attorney. Gonzalez said a woman calling herself Desiree Washington called Tyson's Southington, Ohio, mansion the day of the rape the fighter had caught an early-morning plane home. Gonzalez said Washington's testimony about how she came out of the bathroom in Room 606 of the Canterbury Hotel to find Tyson wearing only his underwear had to be a lie. In a he-said, she-said case, with no witnesses and little forensic evidence, credibility was paramount and Gonzalez said the overnight bag he packed had no underwear, which Tyson found uncomfortable. Gonzalez wrote, "Tyson traveled to Indianapolis on July 18 in a Versace summer suit with a 'jock strap' built into the pants. The suit was designed for the wearer not to use underwear." GONZALEZ SAYS he has been shot and set up all because of his knowledge, including, he says, how King was ripping Tyson off. He carries bullet wounds. The other day, King spokesman Mike Marley wondered who was this guy; he didn't remember Gonzalez. He exists. I've known him for years. I also know that regular publishers found the book too hot to print. Gonzalez published it himself at a vanity house
