“I THINK the people who should lose their licenses are the promoters.”
So says Luther Mack, chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, the five-person board that next Tuesday will decide the boxing future of Mike Tyson.
For people who wish to see justice done – or just want to see Tyson and Lennox Lewis fight in a ring, and without the help of goons – that is encouraging.
“But I’m just one man with one vote. I think [Tyson’s licensing] is in serious jeopardy based on my talks with some of the other commissioners.”
To those same people, that is discouraging.
Yesterday, most of the heavy breathing over the Tyson-Lewis skirmish on the stage of the Hudson Theater on Tuesday appeared to have subsided.
After all, take the name “Tyson” out of the story and all you have left are two big dopes rolling around on the floor.
So what is all the fuss about?
Merely this. The status of the Tyson-Lewis fight now falls into the hands of four people with very little boxing knowledge but a strong sense that Tyson is the bad guy, because it seems as if he always is.
Except this time, he had plenty of help.
And only Luther Mack seems to recognize it.
“This was easily avoidable,” Mack told The Post. “How could these people have been so stupid?”
Easy. Whoever said they were smart to begin with? Greedy, yes. Unscrupulous, yes. Amoral? You bet. But smart? You be the judge.
Tyson, of course, is not blameless.
Whenever he walks toward anyone the way he walked toward Lewis the other day, it is safe to assume he is about to be guilty of something.
But if you are going to punish Tyson for inciting the brawl, you’ve also got to punish those who have incited and enabled Tyson.
Start with Tyson’s manager, Shelly (Shell Game) Finkel.
On Finkel’s watch, Tyson has beat up a promoter; tried to break one opponent’s arm in the ring; clouted another after the bell and belted a referee while trying to inflict further mayhem upon a fighter he had already beaten into submission.
After every one of those, Finkel came up with an excuse, an explanation, a justification.
He also came up with a paycheck. As a manager, Finkel has only managed to allow Tyson to run wild.
Now, he should lose his license.
So, too, should Main Events and its president, Gary Shaw, who ran Tuesday’s fiasco.
All along, Shaw and his associates have told us Tyson-Lewis is a fight that needed no promotion.
Then, they proceeded to give it the clumsiest possible promotion, including staging a needless “face-to-face.”
I thought promoters were supposed to protect their fighters’ interests, not blow their biggest paydays.
Clearly, that only applies to promoters.
After they deal with Shaw & Co., Nevada should grant a promoter’s license to Jay Larkin of Showtime.
Then, it should pull it. And burn it. In a manure pile.
Larkin and Showtime may not have created Tyson the Monster, but they certainly encouraged him to act like one and have profited handsomely.
If Tyson represents a danger to society, then Larkin and Showtime represent Tyson. That finishes them.
Which brings us to the MGM Grand, the “family casino” that is home to Dorothy, Toto and the Cowardly Lion.
In 1995, the MGM endangered its patrons and cost its stockholders millions when it had to close its casino for four hours due to a bullet-riddled riot that followed Tyson-Holyfield II.
Now, with the prospect of a $20 million gate and millions more in the casino, the MGM extends its greedy claws to welcome Tyson home.
But if the commission deems Tyson too dangerous for a boxing ring, it should deem the hotel that harbored him too dangerous for your family. Or mine.
None of them, of course, should have been surprised by what happened Tuesday.
Every one of them had been strongly advised by Marc Ratner of the Nevada commission to separate the fighters at the press conference.
Every one of them, in their arrogance and incompetence, chose to ignore that advice.
Why should only Tyson be the one to pay the consequences?
As Luther Mack said, “When you got two sticks of dynamite, you don’t rub them together.”
Unless you’re too stupid to realize they’ll blow up in your face.