Pitiful card has boxing on the ropes

Monday, Sept. 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

IT'S ENTIRELY possible not a single person who attended the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon "fight" at the MGM Grand Garden will ever pay to see another boxing event. Those 9,494 who were in the arena Saturday night are now gone from the boxing landscape and they've taken their wallets with them.

They were hard people to come by and they'll be even more difficult to replace.

If they do come back to boxing, most likely it won't be to see Tyson, it won't be to support a Don King-promoted card and it won't be at the MGM. That's because those 9,494 -- which was considerably below the arena's capacity to begin with -- won't easily forget an evening in which they were made to feel like suckers.

It was $200 to sit with your back to the arena wall and $1,000 to witness the sham up close. Everyone deserved a refund.

Here's an idea: money-back guarantees for boxing cards. The customer has to be satisfied or he gets a refund.

That's what it might take to restore some credibility to the sport, at least when it comes to these King-promoted "megacards" that are habitually loaded with star performers going through the motions in easily predictable fights.

There is no such thing as a new low in boxing, but Saturday the sport mopped the bottom of the barrel.

It was insulting and demeaning. If you generally enjoy boxing, you left the MGM questioning that commitment. And if your interest level is only marginal, you left there certain you would never give the thieves another buck.

Seldon got his $5 million but he will live the remainder of his life disgraced by a performance so underwhelming the crowd chanted "fix" after he was counted out 1:49 into the first round. He could take his portion of that $5 million and give it to the Little Sisters of the Poor and it wouldn't erase the disservice he did to himself and the sport by his inept showing.

The fight probably wasn't fixed in the truest sense of the word. Yet it looked like it might have been, and that was even before the post-fight press conference in which a promotional video for Tyson vs. Holyfield was unveiled and the publicity bandwagon for that fight made its initial run. Seldon didn't attend the press conference but Holyfield did.

It was all too convenient.

Tyson is an attraction and aside from allowing himself to be manipulated by King, he really isn't to blame for Seldon taking a dive, nor for Frank Bruno playing the stiff last March, nor for Buster Mathis being his creampuff self when they fought last December in Philadelphia, nor for Peter McNeeley and his cornermen taking the easy way out 13 months ago. Yet there's a trend here: it's expensive to see Tyson fight and, so far at least, those who have paid the price have left complaining.

The Holyfield fight probably won't be much better, but at least he has sufficient pride to keep from wobbling to the canvas after a glancing blow or two, as Seldon did.

Some free advice: save your money and forget these big shows. Of late, club fights have been more exciting.