Tyson Fails to Crush Bonecrusher, Is Held to a Win by Decision

A little of the luster came off Iron Mike Saturday night.

Oh, he beat James (Bonecrusher) Smith decisively, as everyone expected, but not in the manner everyone expected.

This time, there was no lightning-like knockout, no smashing punches, no whirlwind combinations to evoke comparisons of champions past.

Instead, the 20-year-old Tyson added the World Boxing Assn. heavyweight championship to the World Boxing Council title he already owned with a lopsided, sloppy, forgettable, unanimous decision over Smith, who, had the fight lasted another 10 seconds, might have pulled off the upset of the ‘80s.

Smith, who spent most of the fight grabbing the charging Tyson and holding on to him, rocked Tyson with a right hand to the tip of the chin with five seconds left in the fight. Smith landed two more thumping blows on Tyson’s head, the last one at the final bell.

Afterward, Tyson lashed out at his opponent for trying to survive instead of trying to fight.

“He wasn’t fighting, he wasn’t trying to win,” Tyson said. “I was trying to win. But now I have to suffer from all the critics because he wasn’t out there tonight to put himself on the line.”

Most of the 13,851 who sat in the Las Vegas Hilton parking lot would agree with that assessment. From the outset, Smith’s plan seemed to be to smother Tyson’s charges by grabbing Tyson on his lead punch and holding on, all of which meant a long, tiring evening for the 150-pound referee, Mills Lane.

Lane took two points away from the 6-foot 4-inch, 233-pound Smith for holding and indicated later it could have been many more.

“I could’ve taken a point away (from Smith) after every round, but you hate to do it in a fight like this,” Lane said.

Smith, who had an 11-inch reach advantage over his 5-11, 219-pound opponent, sustained a bad cut over his left eye in the second round when Tyson, it seemed to some ringsiders, rubbed his glove in Smith’s face during a clinch.

“That might have aggravated the cut, but I think it came just before that, from a punch,” Lane said.

On the judges’ cards, Tyson had margins of 120-106, 119-107 and 119-107.

Tyson, whose purse was $1.5 million to Smith’s $1 million, seemed glad it was over. He must have had fights like this one on his way to reform school in the late 1970s.

“He was trying to break my concentration, by grabbing me,” Tyson said. “But I think he got more frustrated than I did. Overall, it was an easy fight for me. I won every round.”

Smith, 33, acknowledged that the victor was the better man.

“Mike is very hard to hit, particularly with your best punch,” he said. “I finally caught him with some good shots in the last round that buckled his knees, but by then the fight was over.

“I tried to land my best shots early in the fight, but he was just too quick for me. I did the best I could--he was better than I thought.”

According to a computerized breakdown of the punches, Smith landed only 51 of the 233 he threw, while Tyson connected on 191 of 317.

Tyson, now 29-0 with 26 knockouts, engaged Smith in a stare-down after the bell that ended the first round, then punched him in the face with a left jab--five seconds after the bell. He also rubbed the heel of his glove in Smith’s face at the end of the sixth round.

By the end of the sixth, the crowd was booing, either at Smith’s grab-and-hold strategy or at Tyson’s inability to put Smith away.

Actually, the best action the crowd saw was the dramatic finish to the Tyrell Biggs-David Bey heavyweight match on the card. Biggs literally pulled off a million-dollar, come-from-behind TKO, since he figures to be Tyson’s next opponent.

Biggs, bleeding heavily from a bad eye cut for three rounds and on the verge of having the bout stopped, roared back from what seemed like certain defeat and took out Bey in the sixth with a hailstorm of punches.

Bey, a 7-1 underdog, opened up a one-inch cut over the outside of Biggs’ left eye in the fourth round. In short order, Biggs’ face and upper body were awash in blood. Later, referee Richard Steele said he nearly stopped it.

“It was a bad cut, I was very, very close to stopping it,” Steele said.

The 6-foot 5-inch Biggs, the 1984 Olympic super-heavyweight champion who is now 14-0, caught the bobbing Bey with a short right midway through the sixth, bombed him with eight more hooks and straight rights, and Bey went down for an eight-count. He got up, helplessly absorbed a few more blows, and Steele stopped it.

In the other world championship fight on the card, Azumah Nelson of Ghana retained his WBC featherweight title by knocking out Mexican champion Mauro Gutierrez 33 seconds into the sixth round.