The biter, not the rapist, draws outrage

By Ellen Goodman

BOSTON - Let me see if I have this right. After all, I've gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson and the brain gets a little addled in these encounters. Fortunately, the only holes in my ears are the ones I put earrings through.

But if I have it right, the outpouring of outrage, the shock on the part of sportswriters and fans, is not because the convicted rapist once assaulted a woman's body in a hotel room but because he assaulted Evander Holyfield's aural organs in a boxing ring.

If I have it right, the post-fight crowd that screamed and made obscene gestures at the 31-year-old ex-con for his inappropriate use of teeth, never threw water bottles at him for misusing his other body parts. They never attacked him for saying, "I like to hurt women when I make love to them. I like to hear them scream. It gives me pleasure."

If I have it right, moreover, the contrite champ of chomps who admitted that he'd "snapped," who apologized to "the people who expected more from Mike Tyson," and promised to seek help, never expressed the most fleeting remorse, the itsy-bitsiest contrition to Desiree Washington.

Until now, the fact that Tyson is a sex offender who couldn't move onto your street without registering with the police, did nothing to undermine his box office attraction. In fact, he was more respected than Oliver McCall, scorned last February because of his refusal to fight.

Now, I admit I have problems with boxing. I don't get it. Never will. Explain to me why it's perfectly OK to beat the brains out of someone but not to bite his ears? Holyfield's lawyer, Jim Thomas, said in high dudgeon, "This is a sport with rules and regulations. It's not street fighting." The idea of boxing as contained violence? Hitting someone without anger? Hurting others by the rules?

How does anyone, especially the Nevada boxing commissioner, get to say, "I'm speechless and stunned"? How does Tyson's probation officer say, "Everyone thought he had a handle on his anger, but maybe we were wrong." A handle on his anger? Was that a left-hook handle or a right?

The gentleman's sport of fisticuffs eludes me and most of those with my chromosomes, not including the two professional women boxers who were a warm-up act for Tyson and Holyfield. But there is something especially bizarre when this man finally becomes a pariah for breaking the rules in the ring rather than breaking the laws outside the ring.

Let us go back to those magical yesteryears. Not all the way back to adolescence when Tyson's pals remembered him mugging old ladies in the elevator. Not all the way to the days when he said that without boxing, he would have been "in jail or dead. One of those."

Just to the 1992 trial when crowds cheered the champ, and when Desiree Washington was regarded by many as either a woman who asked for it or a racial traitor trying to bring another black man down. If Evander Holyfield were a woman, these folks would have said that Mike was just nibbling her ear fondly and she took it wrong.

Fast forward to the day in 1995 when the Indiana prison doors opened and Tyson was treated as if he'd come out of retirement, not out of jail. To the hero's welcome he received in Harlem that was billed as a "Day of Redemption" though he was redeemed without ever admitting wrong.

Remember the children who danced and sang to the "The Mike Tyson Rap": "True, he's not your mom or your pops, but in some households he's got more props"-meaning respect. The rapist was a role model.

Those of us who hoped the unrepentant fighter would be shunned by fans and such moral forces as Showtime or MGM were drowned out by the sound of the cash register ringing. The ex-con was an even bigger draw.

But now - now - the phones are ringing off the hook in Nevada with folks demanding their money back. Now the Nevada State Athletic Commission has temporarily suspended him. Now the man says he will seek help to "tell me why I did what I did." Now people say, wonderingly, "he turned into a wild man."

Well, don't bite my ear off, but they're a touch late here. Assault a woman and you can still be a contender. Gnaw a tidbit off a man's ear and it's a career-suspending injury.

Desiree Washington knew Tyson a long time ago. Funny, but it wasn't until a piece of Evander Holyfield's cartilage ended up between his teeth that the fans heard the message.

The Boston Globe Newspaper Company