Thumb Down to Tyson Fight : Boxing: Broken bone fails to heal, so Mathis bout has to be postponed, leaving Bowe-Holyfield alone in spotlight.

Months of positioning, hubris and hype came to a sudden end Tuesday night, when Mike Tyson pulled out of his scheduled heavyweight bout with Buster Mathis Jr. after aggravating a fracture in his right thumb.

At a hastily convened news conference at the MGM Grand, Tyson, flanked by his co-managers and wearing a bandage on his thumb, said he originally suffered the injury three weeks ago during training at camp in Orwell, Ohio, and that he exacerbated it the past two days in Las Vegas sparring sessions.

The decision to scrap the bout, scheduled for Saturday, came at about 4 p.m. Tuesday.

“You know me, it’s a pretty serious setback,” a relatively upbeat Tyson said.

“But it’s not going to kill me, and it’s not like I’m hurting for money or anything.”

Fight organizers said the entire card, scheduled to be broadcast on Fox, would be postponed indefinitely, and that Tyson’s next fight, as contracted, would be against Mathis.

Doctors said Tyson, who was scheduled to earn $10 million to fight Mathis, will not be able to resume action for four to six weeks. His next fight was scheduled for March 16, probably a title fight against World Boxing Council champion Frank Bruno.

MGM officials said Tuesday night that they did not know when they could reschedule Tyson-Mathis, which was half of what was to be the busiest, richest and most complicated night in boxing history.

Organizers of the competing Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield bout, also on Saturday, meanwhile, estimated that their pay-per-view sales would be boosted by the Tyson cancellation and that they now estimate they could do better than the 900,000-950,000 buys that the first two Bowe-Holyfield bouts generated.

Tyson, 29, who has repeatedly emphasized he wants to maintain a busy fight schedule, said he believed he first suffered the injury either by hitting his thumb on an elbow or by bouncing it off the back of his sparring partner’s head. He said he waited to pull out of the bout because he wanted to see if the thumb would heal in time.

Tyson also said he was excited about competing against the Bowe-Holyfield bout at Caesars Palace.

“Basically, I thought I could sneak it through--I was not thinking professionally,” Tyson said. “But the pain was too intense, and it continued hurting.”

Two weeks ago, Tyson visited two orthopedic specialists--Gerald L. Higgins and Gary S. Marrone--in Las Vegas, who found the fracture, but, considering Tyson’s appeals to keep the fight alive, decided to see if it could heal quickly.

“When Mike injured his thumb at first, his main concern was that under any circumstances, he wanted to see if the fight could continue,” Tyson co-manager John Horne said. “But the thumb just was too sore too close to the fight.”

In fact, asked about the injury at the official pre-fight news conference Tuesday afternoon, Tyson said his hand was “a little sore,” but that he felt fine.

Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, said at the time that he planned to have a doctor examine Tyson’s injury Thursday afternoon.

Tuesday night, Ratner said he had no reason to doubt the findings of the two doctors.

Rumors of Tyson’s injury had circulated for weeks, but Tyson went ahead with the public workout, according to Horne, because “at that point, the fight was on.” Tyson halted that workout early, had ice wrapped on it, but told reporters later that it wasn’t a serious problem.

But, after the workout Monday and another session Tuesday with sparring partner Tyrone Evans, Tyson returned to the doctors, and further X-rays revealed a worsening condition.

Mathis, for his part, had earlier scoffed at reports of Tyson’s injury as “a bluff” and “a fake,” designed by the Tyson camp to throw him off stride. Tuesday night, he said he was sure that the injury was, in fact, real.

“He is not bluffing,” Mathis said. “I am very upset. This was a great opportunity for me. [But] there will be a Buster Mathis-Mike Tyson fight. That is what I trained for, both mentally and physically.”

Horne stressed that Tyson will not skip directly to a title fight, and that he will fight Mathis on Fox, whenever the schedules of the MGM, Tyson and Fox can be organized.

“Buster Mathis is under contract to fight Mike Tyson next,” Horne said. “And there’s no way it’ll be anybody other than Buster Mathis at this point.”

In a statement, Fox Sports said it will comment at a later date about the future of the event.

Also postponed is the undercard, which featured a 154-pound unification bout between World Boxing Council champion Terry Norris and International Boxing Federation title-holder Paul Vaden; and a rematch between World Boxing Assn. junior-welterweight champion Frankie Randall and former champion Juan Coggi.

* ‘THE GOOD GUYS WON’: That’s the reaction down the Strip at the site of the Bowe-Holyfield fight. C7.