Born-again intimidator

`Bruno struggled to dispel the self-doubts by crossing himself more times than Mother Teresa does in an average week'

EVEN before the blood had ceased to trickle down his cheek from the inch-long slit Mike Tyson had carved open above his left eye last Saturday night, Frank Bruno was talking of fighting again. It was the understandable reaction of a man who knew that he had failed to do himself justice on the biggest night of his life, but it must fill with apprehension those who genuinely care about his welfare or about the validity of boxing as a sport. There is no justification - professional, sporting, financial or personal - for allowing or encouraging this most likeable of men to submit himself to the possibility of further public humiliation of the type Mike Tyson inflicted on him in the MGM Grand Garden arena.

Before adding in the $6m he was paid for last week's third-round defeat, he was among the highest earners in British sport, so his reluctance to announce his immediate retirement has nothing to do with financial imperatives. Injured pride is a bad and dangerous motivation, yet it can only be that which would drive Bruno back into the ring. Maybe, as he ponders his future in the next few weeks, he should reflect on the words of Larry Holmes, one of his most distinguished predecessors as WBC heavyweight champion, who is still fighting at 46: "Show me the man who says he ain't fighting for money, and I'll show you a fool."

Bruno has made his money, and despite the carefully fostered public image, he is no fool. When the wounds have healed and the cheque has cleared, the urge to redeem himself will grow stronger, gnawing away at his self- esteem. But it is a poison with a simple antidote: all he has to do is watch the video of his long walk from the dressing-room to the ring to face Tyson, and ask whether he seriously wants to put himself again through the mental torment he was experiencing then. He was a man consumed by apprehension, battered by self-doubts which he struggled to dispel by crossing himself more times in those few minutes than Mother Teresa does in an average week.

Let there be no suggestion of cowardice as we lesser men understand the term. Anyone who enters a ring, from six-rounds level to championship class, is a hero. But they are also men, subject to the same fears and concerns as the rest of us, and their success depends on coping with and conquering those dark forces. Most of the time, they come through their inner crisis, but occasionally they fail spectacularly. Bruno must now be added to that unhappy list, but he is in distinguished company.

Kingfish Levinsky once locked himself in the dressing-room toilet and refused to emerge to fight Joe Louis, and Max Baer, a former champion, described how his legs refused to function when he was summoned on the same mission. Mike Spinks, like Bruno a fine and courageous performer, was reduced to a similar state of frozen apprehension before going out to lose to Tyson in 91 seconds, and Floyd Patterson, a two-time heavyweight champion who was at the Las Vegas ringside, has talked vividly of the trance-like state to which nerves reduced him before being knocked out in a round by Sonny Liston. Not even Iron Mike is immune, as witness the famous film clip of the young Tyson reduced to tears, being cuddled and comforted by his then-trainer Teddy Atlas before an amateur fight.

Cus D'Amato, Tyson's original mentor, offered a much-quoted reflection on the subject. "Fear is your best friend, and your worst enemy," he said. "It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across a lawn."

Bruno failed to control it, and the result was a woefully inadequate display. Surely no champion in history has been deducted a penalty point for continual holding barely five minutes into a defence of his title? Whatever tactics had been devised by his trainer, George Francis - whose between-rounds exhortations must have had Sky TV executives longing for a bleep facility - were forgotten in the sheer panic induced by the ferocity and weight of Tyson's attack. We had thought that Bruno's only chance lay in "mugging" the challenger in the early rounds, but instead it was Tyson, reverting easily to his street-bully roots, who did the mugging. Bruce Seldon, who defends the WBA version against him at the MGM on 13 July, can expect no better, and the IBF champion, Frans Botha, the South African who calls himself the "White Buffalo", is in equally imminent danger of becoming an extinct species.

Yet even had Bruno fought with the can't-hurt-me bravado of Jake LaMotta, or the calm heroism of Muhammad Ali, the outcome would have been the same. For all his bold talk on the lead-in to the fight, he simply lacked the equipment to beat a rejuvenated challenger who looked ominously close to the elemental destructive force of his youthful prime, a decade ago. The sloppiness of his two comeback victories over the absurd Peter McNeeley and the modestly gifted Buster Mathis was gone, replaced by a hard and focused approach evident during the long preliminaries. I have written before that this troubled man, whose life is invariably collapsing in chaos, is most at peace in the ring, the one area in which he is in absolute control of his own destiny. The point is worth emphasising because the powerful impression he gave as he waited for the bell was of a man totally at home, in his natural environment. He was a predator, and this his killing field.

There is a self-destructive, even suicidal strand in Tyson's nature, which surfaced again in a strange quote he gave last week: "I hate life, but I love boxing." He seemed, as ever, ill at ease with the often farcical rigmarole which attends a heavyweight championship fight, and the contempt with which he viewed the assorted back- slappers and parasites who have latched on to him was barely concealed. But there was no doubting the joy he felt in victory, or the immense significance which this fight had assumed in his mind. He had more than enough time in those years behind bars to reflect on what he had achieved and then thrown away, and the thought of eventually reclaiming his kingdom kept him going in those bleak days.

He showed unexpected compassion towards his beaten opponent in the immediate aftermath, walking across to his corner and kissing him as he stroked the head off which, only moments earlier, he had been bouncing brain-numbing hooks and uppercuts. But then the warrior in him took over again, and he ducked through the ropes to stand exultantly on the ring apron above me, stabbing his index fingers at the green championship belt which symbolised his lost years and wasted prime. It was a rare show of emotion, a primeval gesture evoking images of a chest-beating gorilla bellowing its superiority. He was a man reborn, but for Bruno, redemption may be more elusive.