Bad day for boxing

You can take the man out of the street, but you can't take the street out of the man, is the mildest way to describe Tyson's thuggery in front of a reported worldwide audience of three billion people over the weekend.

But should we be surprised that a belligerent bully, who graduated with flying colors from juvenile delinquent, to wife beater, and then rapist, should finally, when faced with another beating, take the easy way out: foul, get disqualified, and then rant and rave that your opponent was to blame and didn't want to fight. This is the same man who was quoted as having found an "inner peace", who bought off a civil lawsuit by his rape victim and told the world that he was "angry" for having been imprisoned.

President Clinton is reported to have been "horrified" by Tyson's thuggery in the ring, but the American public should remember that the longer they allowed Tyson to be a role model and a hero, the more certain they would be rewarded with the ultimate shame and collapse of their hero bully.

Was he ever going to last -- knocked out by Buster Douglas in 1990, imprisoned for three years, then a whirlwind win over the great nobody McNeely, and a succession of quick KO's against Mathis, Bruno and Seldon, all of whom looked to be petrified to be in the same ring as him. Tyson flatly refused to fight George Foreman, content to be king in a land of dwarfs.

Meeting Holyfield in the first bout was the end of the line for Tyson -- a big, calm, boxer who just kept coming and coming, and, if not for the extra speedy action of the referee Mitch Halpern, Tyson's career would have ended in the first fight.

His handlers displayed the same thuggery -- bullying, intimidating, threatening -- bad day for boxing, bad day for the American public.

BILL GUERIN

Jakarta