Tyson to be grilled

Dean Juipe

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

Without tipping her hand on precisely how she'll vote, Amy Ayoub made it clear that she's in no hurry to welcome Mike Tyson back to Nevada.

Ayoub, one of five members of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, appeared along with NSAC executive director Marc Ratner on the Las Vegas ONE program "Face To Face" Thursday night and admitted she was skeptical about Tyson's state of mind. The relevance is that Tyson is slated to appear at a commission hearing Tuesday in which a majority vote of the commission will determine whether he'll be licensed and whether a proposed April 6 fight with heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis at the MGM Grand Garden can proceed as scheduled.

"I think that's the key point, his repeated behavior," Ayoub said of Tyson, who disrupted a press conference in New York this week by confronting Lewis and verbally challenging a member of the audience. "The potential to incite is a problem."

Tyson, 35, is a convicted felon who has not been licensed in Nevada since 1999. In the intervening years he has twice withstood police investigations into sexual assault allegations, although a third investigation has led to Metro Police recommending that the Clark County district attorney's office press charges after a woman complained she was raped at Tyson's Las Vegas home in September. Tyson has also travelled to Cuba without federal permission, and he refused to take a drug test after a fight in Michigan in 2000.

"I think we're going to ask a lot of questions," Ayoub said of the upcoming hearing. "We have a lot of questions about his behavior and his thought process.

"I have strong feelings about uncontrolled violent behavior (and) I've seen scary behavior. I'm also very concerned about Mike Tyson as a human being. Is he on medication or is he supposed to be on medication?

"If he needs any kind of help, he should be getting it."

Earlier, in a separately taped segment, commission member Dr. Tony Alamo said "we don't take this lightly" in reference to Tyson's antics this past Tuesday in New York. "We've got to remember, though, that emotions are running high."

That failed to pacify Ayoub.

"It doesn't matter," she said, when asked if she thought Tyson's confrontation with Lewis was staged at least to some extent. "It was appalling."

Ratner agreed.

"I think in one or both of their minds it was real, and once they got close it was real," he said. "It was something that did not need to be done. This fight sells itself (and) the one thing I said over and over again to them was 'Don't have an incident.'

"The one thing I begged for them to not let happen, happened."

He says there needs to be improved policing at boxing press conferences in light of the fact that three recent press conferences -- each for fights in Nevada although the press conferences were held elsewhere -- included violent confrontations between the fighters. Prior to Tyson going after Lewis in New York, Fernando Vargas and Oscar De La Hoya (who fight May 4 at Mandalay Bay) mixed it up in Los Angeles, and prior to that Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales (who fight March 2 at the MGM) exchanged blows at another L.A. press conference.

"There's a spirit of lawlessness at these press conferences," Ratner said. "We're not going to have that anymore, even if it means having separate press conferences for the fighters."

That spirit of lawlessness may cost Tyson the $17.5 million he is scheduled to receive for fighting Lewis, and it may cause the bout to be cancelled or at least moved from the state.

"At the end of the day the commission will do what's right for the state," Ratner said. "It's the most respected commission in the world (and) it's the first real test for the commission as it's seated today."

Ayoub, Alamo, Dr. Flip Homansky and John Bailey are all relatively new members of the NSAC. The fifth commission member is chairman Luther Mack.

Ayoub said that despite media reports that the commissioners were receiving phone calls and under pressure from Las Vegas casino operators to license Tyson, she said no such calls have been directed her way.

"No one has called me and said that," she remarked. "I don't think one event is going to make or break this city. We're a regulatory body and (the financial good of the city) is not and should not be our concern."