Tyson’s Mutual Agitation Society

My emotions are a roller coaster.

I was disappointed when Mike Tyson was denied a license to fight for the heavyweight championship in Las Vegas.

Not that the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s rejection of Tyson was a surprise. Sports gurus had predicted that decision after Tyson appeared to purposely initiate a brawl to open what was to be a televised press conference promoting his originally scheduled April 6 fight with champion Lennox Lewis.

Instead, I was let down because I like boxing and was looking forward to a bout that held the prospect of one fighter again biting another, as Tyson did Evander Holyfield in 1997, and as Lewis accused him of doing to his leg at that aborted press conference.

A clean punch to the mandible, lifting the head from the neck, is plenty good, let me tell you. Yet teeth applied to flesh in the ring is something special. It could be the biggest chew since “Silence of the Lambs,” to say nothing of “Jaws,” and a spectacle I wouldn’t want to miss.

I’m not kidding.

Forget Sunday’s manufactured hoopla in New Orleans. This would be a Super Bowl.

So my mood is rosy again because, as everyone is now reporting following this paper’s scoop, Tyson may get to bite Lewis in Los Angeles at Staples Center, or perhaps even at the Great Western Forum, if not somewhere else on the planet where it’s understood that boxing is meant to be a circus. You don’t hire a pair of thick necks, dress them in fright wigs and flappy shoes and expect “The Nutcracker.”

If Tyson asks, will the California State Athletic Commission say yes? My fingers are crossed. And if Tyson does get to fight Lewis, wherever, and squanders this opportunity to bite him up close and personal, will I again be disappointed? Yes. And teed off at him, too.

The common wisdom is that we’re a kinder, gentler, more tender society since Sept. 11, but many of us still like our sports gore.

Wipe that scowl from your face. As if you didn’t feel the same way.

Ours is a forgiving culture that welcomes bad actors from politics and sports back into the fold of respectability like redeemed sinners. Whoever you are or whatever your venom, you’ll thrive financially if your infamy earns a profit for someone else.

Take a deep whiff, however, for hypocrisy is in the air.

It begins with TV newscasters being so revolted by the mayhem and Tyson’s aggression at the press conference that they ran footage of it again and again and again. They know an exploding Vesuvius makes great TV.

Many of them are the same two-faced sportscasters who sanctimoniously indict hockey brawlers, then celebrate this ice violence by granting it prominence on their highlight reels. They’re the same frauds who ridiculed and smirked at former pro basketballer Dennis Rodman’s tattoos and tantrums while featuring them conspicuously, the same crowd that tsk-tsk-ed at John McEnroe’s blowups on the tennis court while loving every one of them.

And, yes, the same dissemblers who, while publicly wringing their hands about Tyson’s outbursts and mental health, secretly pray to Holy Nielsen that when he does inevitably get in touch with his dark side, they’ll have cameras there to videotape the savagery.

If you think there isn’t more to Tyson than one-dimensional terror, then you didn’t see Barbara Koppel’s remarkable 1993 documentary on NBC, “Fallen Champ, the Untold Story of Mike Tyson.” Despite a lack of formal education, he seems intelligent and complex.

But also deeply troubled, dysfunctional and even destructive, based on his criminal record, to say nothing of recent sexual-assault allegations made against him. Sportscasters know the tinderbox they get with Tyson, however, and they relish it. Neither he, nor any of the others, could have bad-acted their way into sportscasts without a free pass from these faux moralists.

As for the press conference in the MGM Grand that Tyson began by appearing to angrily charge Lewis without provocation, puh-leeeeeeze!

It was obviously going to be one of those inane, tailored-for-TV burlesques that are now obligatory for high-profile matchups. You know, a staged media event where fighters go nose to nose and glare at each other solely to create interest in their fight, with many in the press dutifully abetting them by lapping it up. Which is what they do best.

I can hear the Fox Sports headline now: “Mike Tyson made a public appearance today. And wait ‘til you see what happened!”

So naturally the room was packed with media for pitchmen Tyson and Lewis. And we’re to believe that these reporters who arrived there expecting to cover scripted growls, which was fine with them, were stunned--yes, horrified--when the anger on Tyson’s part turned out to be real?

Phony rage they love, phony rage they can handle. But not the real stuff? Actual news breaking out at a show for the media? Why, what was the world coming to?

What’s it coming to, also, if this violent sport loses its most violent man because too many are scared to admit they’re drawn to his volatility? Enough already.

Give Mike Tyson a break and let him fight in the ring so we all can enjoy him for what he can bring to the sport while he’s still flossing. His boxing skills may have eroded, but his teeth remain strong.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard. rosenberg@latimes.com.