Tyson goes over the edge

(From front page)

Late in the round, as Holyfield wrapped Tyson in yet another clinch, Tyson leaned forward and took a big chunk out of his right ear. The pain caused Holyfield to leap straight into the air like a frightened cat, after which he turned and headed back to his corner as Lane called "time." Tyson chased after, shoving Holyfield from behind. Lane, taking note of the profusely bleeding ear, ordered the champion examined by the ringside physician, Dr Flip Homansky, and, after Holyfield was deemed fit to continue, deducted two points from Tyson - one for the bite and one for the shove.

Twenty seconds before the round ended, Tyson spat out his gumshield and bit Holyfield again, this time on the other ear, producing the same result. Holyfield leaped straight into the air again, and this time charged after Tyson, producing the most spirited exchange of punches the brief evening would see. Only when the round had ended and he saw the second bite on the overhead television screen did Lane fully realise what had transpired, but as soon as he noted the toothmarks on Holyfield's left ear, he ordered the disqualification.

"You could see the teeth marks on his ear," said Lane. "When Tyson did it the first time, the doctor said (Holyfield) could continue. I called it a foul and deducted two points, and I told Mike `one more time and that's it!' I told him not to do it again, and when he did it a second time I had to disqualify him. One bite was bad enough, but two bites in one fight?

"When he bit me the first time I couldn't believe it," said Holyfield before leaving for surgery. "He caught me with a good shot and then bit my ear and spit it out. Look at the bite! I'm missing part of my ear!"

"He butted me in the first round and in the second round again," complained a defiant Tyson. "He kept going down and coming up on me. This is my career. I have to retaliate. I complained and nothing was done."

Tyson partisans - and they grow fewer in number with each passing day - complained that Holyfield should have been penalised before Tyson resorted to the illegal tactics.

"There should have been some type of point taken away to acknowledge the head butts," said promoter Don King.

"It turned into a street fight long before that," said Tyson's comanager John Horne.

The perfect irony of this is that two nights earlier, King and Horne had stood before the Nevada Commission and complained about its nomination of Mitch Halpern to referee Saturday's fight. Although their protest was disallowed, the storm of controversy produced by Team Tyson was sufficient that Halpern withdrew from the $10,000 post on the eve of the championship fight, opening the door for Lane, a tough, no nonsense former prosecutor from Reno who now sits as a Nevada circuit judge when he is not separating heavyweights.

Suffice it to say that Halpern would have been extremely reluctant to disqualify anyone in a fight of this magnitude.

Meanwhile, the amateur analysts have had a field day attempting to analyse Tyson's motives, but in our view Holyfield hit the nail right on the head with his own interpretation:

"It goes to show you have no courage when you try to foul to get out of a fight," said the champion. "Fear causes people to do the easy thing - or the quickest thing."

In their first fight, Holyfield exposed Tyson. This time Tyson exposed himself. In either case, the schoolyard bully showed himself to be what many suspected he was all along: a cowardly lowlife.