Almost 35 years ago, a young folksinger named Arlo Guthrie wrote what became a minor antiwar anthem, an account of his personal travails before his local Draft Board, which had decreed that Guthrie's status as a convicted litterbug rendered him morally unfit to be sent to Vietnam to kill women and children.
Without attempting to trivialise the past transgressions of Mike Tyson, it might be noted that the former heavyweight champion was due to face his own Alice's Restaurant Massacre this morning when scheduled to appear before the New Jersey Athletic Control Board for their decision on whether to grant the disgraced boxer a licence to fight in the state. Less than 14 months after he tried to gnaw Evander Holyfield's ear off, Tyson is looking to go back to work, although the recent heavy betting was that his request wouldn't be granted. "I've been around this game for a long time, and the way things went, I just don't think they're going to give him a licence," said Pennsylvania boxing commissioner Greg Sirb, who is also the president of the Association of Boxing Commissions.
The speculators also suggested that the NJACB would take the easy way out by claiming that it lacks proper jurisdiction to overrule a suspension originally handed down in Nevada. Now, though, this is all moot. The heavy betting must have for once persuaded the normally financially inept Tyson that discretion was the better part of valour and he has withdrawn his licence request. This, of course, does not mean that Iron Mike has seen the error of his ways. He has merely decided to have his errors debated in another state. Tyson will eventually be allowed to fight again, he just has to find a licensing body lacking the moral fibre of the NJ committee. After all, in a sport where savagery is commonly considered a virtue, what is the proper punishment for excessive savagery? Tyson wasn't by a long shot the first boxer to bite an opponent; in fact, Andrew Golota did it just a couple of years ago, even before he was twice disqualified for low blows in fights against Riddick Bowe, and nobody even suggested suspending The Foul Pole.
If, and when, Tyson does return it will be to a heavyweight landscape vastly different from the one he departed last July. The generally acknowledged champions of a division Tyson once ruled without dispute (Holyfield, who holds the World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation belts, and World Boxing Council titleholder Lennox Lewis) are no closer to fighting each other now than they were then, and in fact both face `mandatory' defences next month, each against a top-rated but virtually anonymous challenger.
Holyfield, whose June defence against the WBA's Number One Henry Akinwande was scrapped when Akinwande tested positive for Hepatitis B on the eve of the bout, is scheduled to face something called Vaughn Bean in Atlanta's Georgia Dome on September 19th.
Bean is rated the top heavyweight on the IBF's list of contenders, although as someone pointed out, he may not even be among the world's 10 Best Beans. Eager to box before his hometown crowd, Holyfield and promoter Don King (who just last month was acquitted on federal insurance fraud charges) had hastily arranged the contest on the condition local business interests underwrite the $3 million `site fee' a fight like this would normally command from Las Vegas casinos.
After it developed that not even Georgia businessmen were that stupid, Holyfield bit the bullet and agreed to underwrite the expenses himself, banking on a sell-out in the 40,000seat arena. At a press conference officially announcing Holyfield-Bean in Atlanta this past Tuesday, King tried to boast that seats were "selling briskly", until a man tugging on his coat sleeve reminded The World's Greatest Promoter that the tickets wouldn't go on sale until the following morning.
A week after Holyfield fights Bean, Lewis will defend against the WBC's number one, Zelkjo Mavrovic, an anonymous heavyweight from Croatia. Of Lewis' last four title fights, two ended in disqualification (Akinwande for excessive holding and Oliver McCall for excessive crying) and, in the other, he knocked out a man (Golota) who allegedly suffered a Ronaldo-like seizure in the dressing room. In the last, against `linear' champion Shannon Briggs, he was nearly knocked out himself before reviving to stop the young New Yorker.
Briggs is supposed to return to the ring himself in September, or was, until he was charged with aggravated assault following a late-night brawl outside the House of Blues in New Orleans early on Wednesday morning. And, in the meantime, George Foreman, the man Briggs allegedly `beat' for the linear title, isn't done either. The two-time heavyweight champion, who will turn 50 next January, is scheduled to fight another one-time champion, Larry Holmes, who turns 49 in November, and rest assured that some boxing board, somewhere, will license both of them.
Tyson's decision to withdraw his application won't mean the end of his career, but it is a small shame that he did not give the New Jersey Athletic Board of Control an opportunity to reflect on all of this as a basis for a decision on his suitability for a legitimate place in the heavyweight divisions ever more ludicrous three-ring circus.
