Commission Didn’t Pull Any Punches

Here in the city of broken noses and shattered dreams, the losers straggle from casino to casino, patting empty pockets, digging fingers into pay-phone coin returns, in search of two bits. Roadside chapels switch off their neon. The desert’s sun broils Las Vegas Boulevard like a rasher of bacon, leaving a haze over the Sahara (“Jackie Mason, last nite to-nite”) and lesser hotels like the Normandie (“Elvis Slept Here”), not too far from Joe’s EZ Bail Bonds.

A few blocks farther up the Strip, six sleekly groomed men settle into high-backed, plum leather chairs, in an auditorium paneled in teak. They have formed a tribunal. In actuality, they are five Nevada State Athletic Commission members and their counsel, whose task on this Wednesday morning is to mete out justice to a loser of the first degree, Mike Tyson, ex-champion, ex-convict, contrite carnivore.

Tyson isn’t here. “I don’t know why,” says Muhammad Siddeeq, who identifies himself as Tyson’s spiritual advisor, in town from Indianapolis to see if Tyson is forgiven or forsaken. “I’m naive. I would have said, ‘Yes, Michael, come. Speak your heart. Show your repentance.’ But, like I say, that’s me.”

Instead, whatever remorse Tyson feels is expressed by proxy, by a lawyer who reminds everybody how sorry Mike is, what a gentleman Mike is, what a credit to his profession Mike has been, and how willing Mike is to throw himself on the mercy of those who control his fate. It is an impassioned speech, but an utterly useless one, because within the hour, “Iron Mike” Tyson will receive--as he once did in a criminal court--exactly the mercy that he deserves. None.

Hurting people has been his business and his pleasure. Today, thankfully, it will cease being his business.

Mike Tyson is having his license to maim revoked. His hands no longer will be registered in Nevada as lethal weapons, although this has never stopped him before. As an athlete and as a man, he has engaged in acts of raw savagery, ones that polite society and now even his brutal profession refuse to tolerate. Nevada’s commission is to be commended for tossing Tyson out of the ring, out on his ear.

His attorney, Oscar Goodman, argues vehemently, “Baseball players have spat in the faces of umpires. Basketball players have kicked innocent people by the side of the floor. Football players hit with such viciousness. . . . Mike Tyson, for 13 years, has lived an exemplary life. . .”--pause--” . . . in the ring.”

But in rebuttal, Gordon Fink, from the state’s attorney’s office, scoffs and says, “Comparisons to baseball, basketball and football are meaningless. Meaningless! The entire object of boxing is violence. You [the commission members] are not here today to license baseball, basketball or football players. You are here solely to determine whether this man has brought discredit to boxing, which he clearly has.”

Tyson doesn’t bother to defend himself.

The lawyers do it for him, first asking that the case against Tyson be dismissed, then explaining that, as lawyers, they were only doing what came naturally, not necessarily what their client preferred. “Mike Tyson wanted to make this short and sweet,” Goodman says. “Contrition, apology, is the only way to go. Mike Tyson is very, very sorry for what he did.”

His apology is duly noted. So is his absence. Promptly at a quarter past nine, in these, the city council’s august chambers, Dr. Elias Ghanem calls the session to order, conducts a few minutes of old business--approval for an amateur boxing show at the county fairgrounds, that sort of thing--before moving on to a matter that Ghanem describes as “perhaps the most awkward and trying time in the history of boxing in this state,” a mouthful, this being Nevada.

It is a key word here, mouthful, for today is the day Tyson must pay for an act of barbarism bordering on cannibalism. Having sunk his teeth into Evander Holyfield’s ear, twice, in their June 28 heavyweight fight at the MGM Grand, spitting part of the champion’s ear onto the canvas, Tyson’s future as a fighter hangs by a thread.

Two attorneys act on Tyson’s behalf, but the commission will draw “no negative inference from his non-attendance,” Ghanem assures them.

None is necessary. Unanimously, by voice vote, the five men proceed to throw the book at the boxer. They take 10%--$3 million--of Tyson’s purse from the Holyfield fight, by far the largest fine against an individual in the history of American sport. They also take his license to make a living. “Economic capital punishment,” one of Tyson’s defenders rails, when the public is invited to step forward and address the commission.

The judgment is applauded by Anne Golonka, president of the National Organization for Women chapter here, who condemns the “murder and mayhem” that, she says, have accompanied boxing’s role in the Las Vegas community, plus boxing’s willingness to reinstate a convicted rapist.

“I would like to thank the commission for its courageous decision,” adds Gloria Allred, the attorney and women’s rights champion. “This time, you gave Mike Tyson an earful.”

The losers leave this town beaten and broke. Las Vegas has seen the last of Mike Tyson, or so it would seem. He is a one-eyed Jack, the other side of his face well hidden, so one can never tell what he truly feels, or when he might turn up.

A sympathetic fan of Tyson’s demands to be heard. He stands before the commission, upset with the decision, charging, “The American public has wanted his head on a plate, and you’ve handed it to them!”

Well, yes. It is not exactly an eye for an eye, but it’ll do, it’ll do.