ELItorial

Good guy Tyson? Say it ain't so

Amid hurled beverages and boos from a capacity crowd at the Palace on the night of Sat., Oct. 21, boxer Andrew Golota walked out after only two rounds, ending his bout against former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson. In the immediate aftermath, Golota was criticized by everyone from the press to his own trainer for not continuing to fight. After all, the crowd had paid some $2,500 apiece to witness the action first-hand, not to mention the $49.99 Pay-Per-View premium the good folks at home had laid down to see if Tyson would take a chunk of opponent's face home with him again this time around. And it turns out Golota had a mere concussion and herniated disk in his neck, but hey, everything above his neck was still intact. I guess Iron Mike didn't have the munchies.

In a sport where pummeling your opponent to near-death is considered the norm, the response to Golota's decision not to answer the bell for round three is hardly surprising. Tyson walks away with his $10 million jackpot, promoters walk away with whatever's left after paying off the world's richest thug, and Golota feels lucky that he gets to walk away at all.

Perhaps it is because I know nothing about boxing (yes, apparently there are limitations on the legalized beat-down) but isn't something wrong here? Wrestling (and I ain't talking WWF here) at least seems to have some athletic premise, with two competitors trying to outthink and outmaneuver each other. Tyson's strategy, as described by ESPN's expert analysts, consisted of "charging out of his corner and throwing left hooks, trying to land as many as possible." The suits who paid $2,500 to see this could probably have gotten just as much for free wandering by the Popeye's parking lot at the wrong time.

So what I wanna know is who the hell watches this garbage? Tyson, who if nothing else is never a boring interview subject, told the press several years back, "I could sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating." The sad thing is he's probably right. In fact, not only would the joint fill up quicker than a "Streisand says goodbye, take 10" concert, but millions of fans at home would no doubt invite over their pals, order some wings, throw back a few brewskies and watch the moron jerk off.

And therein lies the problem: Tyson and his cohorts exist as an elaborate circus, not a sport. The only strategy involved is staying true to his role, and no one plays the villain quite like Iron Mike. Only in America does he get to tell Lennox Lewis,"I want to eat your children" and rise in esteem of his fans. When professional basketball players or football players have run-ins with the law, their sports at least feign indignity. Tyson's promoters regale in their beloved's indiscretions. Theoretically, the Association of Boxing Commissioners exists to rule on high, in the way most other sports have officers overseeing player conduct. But here is a man who is a convicted rapist and has reportedly assaulted not one, but three separate promoters, not to mention his little run-in with the right side of Evander Holyfield's head—and yet he goes right about his business, and gets paid quite handsomely to do it.

As a result, the real issue for most fans after Saturday's fight was whether they would be getting a refund because of the event's short duration. In fact, Shelly Finkel, Tyson's "personal advisor," informed the media that the champ himself would not be available for post-fight interviews because he was disappointed. "I think he was a little unfulfilled because he wanted to knock him out," she told reporters. But he did want to send the message (through Finkel of course) that he couldn't be held responsible for his opponent's early withdrawal.

The "sport" has gotten out of hand. Pitting two overgrown men against each other in a battle-royale of sorts is not only dangerous, it's downright dumb. The Association of Boxing Commissioners has allowed the sport to degenerate to the point that most interest seems to be of the neck-craning-at-a-car-wreck variety. There appears to be little regulation of who can fight whom, so Tyson ends up knocking out relative light-weights in about 30 seconds flat, or he takes on an equal and gnaws at his face. But there also seems to be little enforcement of the rules actually in place. Apparently one of the few things that is banned is head-butting, a practice Tyson routinely uses and in fact clearly employed in both of the rounds of Saturday's fight, no doubt helping along Golota's concussion. The Commission needs to decide if it has any interest in preserving boxing as an athletic competition, in which case it needs to crack down on characters like Tyson's actions both inside and outside the ring. The sport's out-of-control rep may be entertaining to some, but there really isn't anything funny about it at all.

Photo courtesy Newsmakers.

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