Columnist Dean Juipe: MGM bets on Tyson comeback

Dean Juipe

Monday, Jan. 11, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The fellow behind the ticket counter was doodling.

Well, not doodling per se, but sketching. And he had quite a picture going if the view from the opposite direction was any indication.

It looked like a dinosaur, or, perhaps, a monster of some sort preparing for battle.

At any rate, he wasn't busy and he seemed happy to answer a question.

"Got any Tyson tickets left?" was the query.

"Oh, yeah," he replied. "Lots."

It was hectic -- as it always is -- in the MGM on Sunday but there was no standing in line at the ticket window. Saturday's Mike Tyson vs. Frans Botha fight is only a few days away but tickets are plentiful and, really, there was little sign of anything other than business as usual.

At the doors of the Grand Garden Arena, where the bout will be held, a security guard sat dutifully. Inside, preparations were being made not for the fight but for three days of something called the Retail Market Show that will occupy the building through Thursday.

In the hotel's sports book, old fliers listing the Tyson-Botha odds did little more than collect dust. The numbers haven't changed, been updated or expanded to include any props since they were first posted in early December.

All this, the MGM might say, is a sign it isn't living or dying on Tyson's boxing career.

Yet despite this outward ambivalence toward Tyson, the MGM has an investment of sorts in the former heavyweight champion. He has cost the property a good deal of money and it would like to recoup a part of it.

In some respects, the MGM took the Tyson-Botha fight against its better judgment. The date is undeniably wrong, stuck as it is between New Year's and the Super Bowl, and the other major casinos in town wanted no part of it.

Obviously, it doesn't appear as if the fight will sell out.

Tyson, for all his notoriety, is coming off two losses and can no longer sell 15,000 tickets on his own. But the MGM took his fight with Botha to keep its foot in the door.

Tyson is tentatively scheduled to fight again at the hotel on April 24. The opponent -- someone like Axel Schulz or Vaughn Bean -- won't be any more marketable than Botha.

A couple of wins and, who knows, maybe Tyson has that third fight with Evander Holyfield. That's the fight the MGM wants and that's why it bid on this one.

Tyson's new promotional team -- which might otherwise be holding this week's event in a TV studio -- knows the MGM deserves the right of first refusal on any Tyson fight. Remember, this is the hotel that all but gave Don King $30 million to deliver Tyson for six bouts following his 1995 release from prison. Beyond that, this is the hotel that contributed to Tyson earning $120 million between 1995 and '97, plus had its casino ravaged by unruly fans following Tyson's second fight with Holyfield, plus had its reputation sullied by a shooting that left a rap star dead outside its doors after the first Tyson-Holyfield fight.

If not eager to renew its relationship with Tyson, the MGM was at least cooperative. Its attitude is like that of a slumping video-poker player, who continues inserting coins on the "due theory" ignoring the concept of throwing "good money after bad."

The MGM is taking that gamble. It's just too early to tell if it will pay off big or backfire.