read this at HBO boxing, pretty good assessment
but I still think you goons expect too much out of gladiators; they're only in the light for our entertainment
<< TYSON FIASCO
January 25, 2002
The Nevada State Athletic Commission has two choices on Jan. 29 and neither of them are good ones.
It can deny Mike Tyson a license and face the wrath of the powerful casino interests in Nevada who have allegedly been making veiled threats about their future support for boxing if the Tyson-Lennox Lewis fight doesn't come off or they can approve his license request and dishonor themselves.
Considering what's involved here, bet on dishonor over disembowelment.
Mike Tyson is going to get out of this confrontation one way or another, regardless of what the NSAC does on Tuesday. He may get so far as hearing the first bell ring (which will mean everyone gets paid which is the real aim of prize fighting), but no one will hear the last bell ring because he'll do something to end this long before Lewis does.
That's because as much as everyone else may want to see this fight happen, Mike Tyson does not share that feeling.
Tyson has been a bully and a runner all his life. He seeks out people he can intimidate and rolls over them. But on the few nights that does not work - as it did not against Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Don King and Robin Givens - the lion turns into a lamb.
He acquiesces to their stronger wills. He complies. Ultimately he surrenders or he runs away. Sometimes he does both.
In Holyfield's case, that required being what the fight game calls a game quitter, which means you take your beating like a man but make no effort to win any more after a certain point in the fight. Same was true against Douglas despite the landing of a lucky punch in the ninth round that nearly saved Tyson.
In the second Holyfield fight he wasn't even up to that, finding an out that he knew would be acceptable to the people he likes to spend time with and would confuse most of the rest of the world which doesn't understand much about human nature or the psychology of confrontation.
That second night with Holyfield, Tyson was going to do anything necessary to get out of facing what he could not face - which was not so much Holyfield himself but his own fear of what was coming. So he bit his way back to the safety of his locker room.
On Tuesday, Tyson tried the intimidation game on Lewis when he stalked across the room at a press conference and confronted him after both sides had agreed that would not take place. When Lewis didn't back up, Tyson stood for a moment in stunned confusion before realizing he had best end this as soon as possible. So he took a swipe at a bodyguard in a business suit who had stepped between them.
Are you really naive enough to believe a three-time heavyweight champion of the world could throw a left hook at a man in a business suit whose hands were by his waist and not hit him if he was punching with bad intentions?
What Tyson was doing was hoping to create just what he created - a confused melee in which a mass of bodies would come between him and Lewis just as they did between him and Holyfield after the second time he bit him. In that fight, it was only after 50 people stood between him and the heavyweight champion that Tyson began to bark. The same pattern existed Tuesday with a different champion.
Although much of the real world cannot accept or believe Tyson is a scared boy inside that lumbering mass of flesh, it has always been that way. He has been fractured since his amateur days, including the night he dissolved into a sea of tears of self-doubt before the AAU Nationals in Colorado Springs and walked out of the arena in his boxing gear because he was afraid to fight a guy he would end up knocking out in 30 seconds.
Bullies have always reacted this way when someone finally stands up to them. To his credit, that is what Lewis did. He did not attack Tyson when the ex-champion walked toward him but neither did he back up. He waited patiently for him to arrive and when he did he doubled up his fists and prepared for action. When Tyson saw that, he swung at a bodyguard. He never took a poke at Lewis and never said a foul word to him.
The words were reserved for the assembled media long after Lewis left and Tyson knew he was on safe ground again. But if the NSAC approves his license application with a close vote, as insiders insist it will, Tyson will seek other ways to avoid what he cannot face.
Whether he acts up at the hearing or acts out later or gets himself in trouble again or claims an injury (which he's done by unofficial count eight times in his career) or simply waits for Fight Night to turn into Fright Night, he will do something because he is afraid.
Not afraid of Lewis. Not even afraid of losing, although the consequences of that terrify him. Afraid, really, of admitting he's afraid. afraid to confront the most elemental of human emotions - fear of the unknown.
He is afraid of the consequences of what comes if Lewis does to him again what he did on Tuesday - which was stand up to him and punch him in the head. He is afraid not simply of taking a beating because he has already survived that. He is afraid of facing his own fears, as all great fighters must.
Years ago a gnarled little troll of a man named Cus D'Amato used to train Tyson. He told him many things. One thing he often said to Tyson and the rest of his fighters was, ``The guy who spends all his time trying to intimidate you becomes intimidated when it don't work.''
Maybe Tyson heard those words as he got to Lewis and saw the champion towering over him, willing to face whatever Tyson was bringing to him. His reaction was predictable. He found a way to get out of facing that and he will find some way to get out of facing what he has to face on April 6 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
The NSAC may not help him with that but he knows there are other escape routes he can follow. The only thing he has to decide is which one it will be.
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