feh!
Feh! - OK, so I watched the hearing today, and I am even more convinced that Mike Tyson is getting handed a bum deal. First, the blame for the most recent brawl surely rests on Lewis’s shoulders. Lewis changed his mind about having a stand-down, without telling Tyson. Then Lewis’s bodyguard started things, and Tyson responded only to the bodyguard, while Lewis made things worse by attacking Tyson.
And watching the hearing was like something from a communist inquest. Ayoub was off the charts bizarre; lecturing Tyson about human nature, “be a good human, not a bad animal. sit boy, sit!”. Then she really got wacky by trying to identify with him; “we all have had problems in our lives, and I know it is tough to get through them, but I know you can do it Mike.” The other line was her urging Tyson to “be a professional in the ring; not an animal.” No doubt she prefers the dred-wearing, poetry-quoting, pseudo-intellectual style of Lewis, a virtual renaissance man (if you believe any of his claims about how proficient he is in subjects other than boxing). Of course, maybe Lewis’s “warrior-poet” persona is just the sort of good showmanship that makes fights exciting, just like Tyson’s “uncontrollable animal” persona. It was pretty obvious that Ayoub lives a sheltered life and had nothing to contribute to Tyson’s understanding of the world except her unbridled enthusiasm for making a “project” out of the “poor savage beast”. The main “problem” in Mike’s life is that Las Vegas has such a wacked-out boxing commission with apparently no rules or standards for the people that sit on it.
I think that Tyson should sue the state of Nevada for damage to his career. There is no objectively defensible reason that those commission members can offer for voting against him (they should have been punishing that effete redcoat instead of fabricating charges against the strongest American fighter ever). I simply do not see how the incident created by Lewis can be enough to turn their decision from certain approval to a 4-1 rejection with the horrible punishment of being lectured by a self-righteous Ayoub. And the rest of the so-called reasons were pretty weak, as well. I have always thought these commissions were a dumb idea anyway. Now we have a five-person kangaroo court with no rules robbing a first-class fighter of his career without any sort of due-process. That’s got to be some sort of violation of Tyson’s civil rights.
OK, before I get flamed — I know Tyson is not the most savory character, and maybe he shouldn’t go so far as to attempt dismantling the system of boxing commissions. But I hope that no other states follow the precedent set by Nevada. I think it’s unfair to let Lewis cower behind these flimsy allegations (I mean, the only proven fault of Tyson seems to be the incident of hitting Botha after the bell — and the idea of penalizing someone $25 million dollars for something as common as hitting after the bell — that’s just wrong).