Boxing, the Public Are Not Blameless

We shake our heads, we cluck our tongues, we wag our fingers, we use words like “criminal” and “shameful” and “reprehensible.”

We are talking about Mike Tyson, but we are missing the point.

The point can be found with one glance into the mirror.

A sports champion is charged with rape, and then convicted, and we are simultaneously disgusted and intrigued, appalled and enthralled. We exempt our athletic heroes from the mores and manners that govern the rest of society--and are astonished when one of them forces himself upon a beauty pageant contestant. We surround Mike Tyson with back-slapping “advisers,” meal ticket-takers and sycophants who never tell him no--and are shocked when he ignores an 18-year-old woman telling him the same. We turn up our noses at the circus in and around the courtroom in Indianapolis--and keep our radios and TVs turned on for the latest snippet of gossip and rumor from the trial.

Tyson was indicted Sept. 9.

Our culture and our system of values have been under indictment ever since.

Professional boxing, upstanding business that it is, has tried to plead innocence on Tyson, claiming that it “saved” this potential street thug by providing an acceptable outlet for his socially deviant behavior. Do it your way, Mike, crush someone’s skull in some back alley, and you’ll wind up in jail. Do it our way, do it in the ring, and you’ll make the cover of Sports Illustrated.

And we’ll all make millions doing it.

With Tyson, all professional boxing did was delay the sentencing. That and maybe reroute the crime. Without boxing, Tyson may well have pillaged. Within it, he merely raped. And if boxing didn’t condone Tyson’s actions on the night of July 19, 1991, it surely provided him with all of the opportunity.

Boxing made Tyson a celebrity and celebrity is what brought Tyson to Indianapolis for last summer’s Miss Black America pageant. Grocery clerks don’t get flown in to film promotional videos with national beauty pageant contestants. Former heavyweight champions do--even, for reasons yet to be sufficiently explained, Tyson, a man who could wear his history of sexual assault and battery like a sash.

Over here is Miss Rhode Island, over there is Misdemeanor.

Tyson once was described by an acquaintance as “a serial buttocks fondler.”

Tyson once said the best punch he ever threw was one directed at Robin Givens, then his wife.

Ordinarily, a man of Tyson’s temperament and tendencies wouldn’t be allowed inside the same time zone as a beauty pageant, but the Miss Black America planners said come on down, you’re famous, let’s pose for pictures.

By the end of the weekend, Tyson was posing for other pictures, shot from the front and side, and we should be surprised?

Blinded by the light, we continue to turn a blind eye.

The trial itself brought the lens even closer to our warped sensibilities. Sports and sports stardom obsess us so, we are unable to put a boxer on trial without turning the trial into a sporting event. On the TV news, Tyson had his own logo (“Tyson On Trial,” cast in sharp computer-generated graphics), his own jingle, his own color commentators. Each day in the courtroom was covered like a round in one of Tyson’s fights, with legal analysts informing us that prosecutor Greg Garrison “failed to score a knockout” in his cross-examination of Tyson, but that the ex-champ was “on the ropes” anyway.

Last weekend, “Saturday Night Live” had a skit placing Tyson in the middle of an episode of “L.A. Law.” The bit was intended as parody, but it struck closer to reality. “L.A. Law,” Tyson On Trial--where does one end and the other begin? It’s all courtroom drama, prime-time entertainment for the masses.

And it gripped us. The Winter Olympics began as an afterthought; Tyson was testifying. Upsets swept through the top of the college basketball rankings and were largely ignored; did you notice how believable the accuser was? It took Magic Johnson’s All-Star amazement to reclaim the top of the sports page, but then, both the defense and the prosecution used Sunday to rest their cases.

No one and nothing seemed immune, except, shockingly, the jury box. At the outset, the consensus was that Tyson was untouchable, based on the sobering verdict of the William Kennedy Smith case: He with the best-paid lawyers wins. And, Smith’s attorneys had already mapped out the proper strategy: Rough up the accuser a bit, paint her as a gold-digger and a tease, and you’re home free.

Unfortunately for Tyson, his jury stuck to the facts. Don King, for once, was powerless--a rousing triumph for our judicial system. This was one room King couldn’t orchestrate, one proceeding he couldn’t rig.

Now, Tyson faces anywhere from 18 to 60 years in prison . . . and the nation’s response?

Can he still fight if the verdict’s on appeal?

If he makes early parole, will he still be in shape for a comeback?

And what about the heavyweight division now? Without Tyson, it’s a shambles.

Somehow, I sense, the heavyweight division will survive.

Evander Holyfield will find another challenger.

Don King will find another cash cow.

And boxing will find another Tyson. That is how the system works, allowing for the occasional malfunction. Lose a contender today, build another tomorrow. Keep everybody happy.