A TALL ORDER : 7-Footer White Could Give Tyson an Uphill Battle

So far as we know, Mike White is the only fighter to travel to Sao Paulo for a bout and stay on to play for a Brazilian basketball team. For two years. Then again, White is the first boxer brought to our attention who was more or less called to the ring right out of a big&tall; clothing store. Until his first fight, he had never considered trunks that were not intended for alteration.

It’s a funny game, which may be our point here. And Mike White, at present the world’s only 7-foot boxer, has done nothing to discourage the premise.

Whether he can actually fight remains to be seen. Since returning from South America last year, he has picked up his admittedly indifferent boxing career and won two bouts, making his record 16-6-1, and made nobody forget Joe Louis in the process. He has a third bout scheduled July 27 at the Irvine Marriott Hotel, where he fights Dee Collier for the State heavyweight title. The career, he concedes, is in the rebuilding stage and he is as yet a couple of bouts away from Mike Tyson.

However, there’s no denying he brings a variety of experience, not to mention mass (he’s 270 pounds, down from 310) to his trade. He’s not only an impressive unit in the ring, but an unusual story outside. In other words, until he’s squashed flat, boxing’s going to love this guy.

It started with one of those Tuff Man contests, macho carnivals, equal parts adrenaline and alcohol, that were big in the early 1980s. At the time, White, now 28, had no reason to believe he could win anything besides a Big Man contest. He had never laced on a pair of gloves, much less thrown a punch. Furthermore, even though he claims to have played a high level of basketball, he was then enjoying an athletic afterlife--all table, no training. He was up to 310 pounds.

That’s good only if you’re, say, manager of a specialty clothing store, which White was. He had quit college his junior year to work his way up to store manager in a Columbus big man’s shop. He was having a wonderful career, getting promotions and bonuses, really growing into the job. Well, why not. As a growing, seam-busting, boy he had always taken a keen interest in tailoring and, at Eastern Kentucky University, even managed the alteration shop. Backgrounds in both apparel and management, not to mention a predisposition to immensity, seemed to make him a natural, a big&tall; superstar.

But then the Tuff Man contest. He was visiting some friends in Flint, Mich., when he first heard of it. What he mostly heard was that the first place prize was $50,000. Men have done stranger things for far less money.

“Oh, it was a circus, all right,” he admits. “I mean, we’d all be in the dressing room together, bikers and cops and football players, all trying to scare each other to death.” However, with $50,000 on the line, nobody exactly died from fright; anyway, tuff man contests tended to draw men with emotional profiles that pass closer to psychopathic than pacific. “Nobody laid down on me,” White said.

Nevertheless, this rank amateur won the grand prize in the Pontiac Silverdome, copping the $50,000 pot after a two-day whirlwind of six fights. As a management student, he knew he was on to something. Any game you could make $25,000 a day was to be further explored.

However, his daily wage dropped dramatically the minute he turned pro. He boxed mostly in Michigan and with uncertain results. He dropped Buster Douglas, a recent heavyweight challenger, but lost to names such as Clarence Hill and Stan Butler. Of those days he sings the heavyweight’s lament: “I didn’t train too hard.” How about at all. “Well, for Buster Douglas I trained two days.”

White was also subject to a lot of skepticism. Tuff Men winners do not ordinarily go on to win heavyweight championships, no more than demolition derby winners go on to win Formula I titles. And his size was held against him.

“I heard a lot of stuff about Primo Carnera,” he says, invoking boxing’s most legendary stiff. That was unfair, of course. Carnera gives away more than six inches to White. In any event, he was already drowning in a pool of “negativity” when he was sent to fight South American champion Adilson Rodriguez in 1984.

You can’t say he didn’t get anything out of that bout, even though it was another loss, his fifth. He got another career and a wife, which compares favorably with a $50,000 purse.

About the basketball career: “OK, they’re doing some pre-fight publicity and a TV crew is filming me jogging through a park. I see some kids playing basketball and I just break away, take the ball and dunk it.”

The tape did more for his basketball career than for his boxing. The director of the Corinthians, a local team, called him up and offered him one of the two positions each team is allotted for non-Brazilians. Well, why not. He stayed two years, seeing a lot of action as he put it, even playing in an all-star game. This was better than seeing Clarence Hill’s hand raised, that was for sure.

And the women! “You know how these shows like ‘Eye on L.A.’ go to the beaches and show you the beautiful women down there? Well, you’re not seeing the good stuff. They can’t show that on TV.” Saw lots of action.

Yes, well, never mind, Mike. You’re a married man, courtesy of the Corinthians. Vaina is her name and he met her through one of the team’s stars, who had hoped to date her. “We were never friends again,” White says of his teammate, shaking his head.

Life was fine. He had a three-room apartment for $70, a wife and a fun job performing before the public. “And then I said, what am I doing here. Some people do what they like and some do what they can. I can box. I started thinking, if I get halfway serious, I could be something. I’m making chump change here and I’m not getting any younger. There’s money out there.”

So he’s returned to the United States and boxing, and now trains diligently out of the Westminster gym, hoping his sky hook makes people see stars, not points. He still joins pickup games at Laguna Beach and Venice but is more reliably found in the ring, wearing a special vest that holds 45 pounds of sand, presumably a big&tall; item.

Clearly he intends to be something more than a ring novelty. Actually, he intends to be rich, fulfilling the promise of that Tuff Man contest long ago. We’ll see. What happens next determines whether he’s the genuine article, a stretch Tyson, or just another of boxing’s tall stories.