Mack to take up-close look at fight

Dean Juipe

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 9:44 a.m.

When the Nevada State Athletic Commission voted against licensing Mike Tyson, the majority ruled but it was not a unanimous decision.

The lone dissenter on the panel of five was its chairman, Luther Mack.

Three months later Tyson is fighting Lennox Lewis in Memphis, Tenn., and Mack -- paying out of his own pocket -- is taking his wife to see Saturday's fight in person.

"I wanted to go and take a look but it's not something the state would pay me to do," Mack said from his office in Reno, where he is the owner/operator of eight McDonald's franchises. "Unfortunately, the fight's not in Nevada. But I don't have any second thoughts about it."

That said, Mack wishes the bout was in Las Vegas, as was once scheduled to happen, and realizes it could have been if the licensing scenario had followed a different course. Tyson vs. Lewis was originally signed for April 6 at the MGM Grand Garden but was moved after the NSAC denied the former champion a license.

"The trouble (with the licensing hearing) was that it was too soon after what had happened in New York," Mack said, referring to Tyson and his aides initiating a skirmish with Lewis and his handlers at a press conference designed to announce the fight a week prior to Tyson's appointment with the NSAC.

"If the commission had been given time to get settled, there may have been a different outcome," Mack continued. "What Tyson's side should have done was withdraw their application at that time and then come back later to make another run at it.

"I don't think they were prepared as well as they should have been (and) the hearing dissolved into sort of a personal thing. I know as the chairman I'm a facilitator, but I didn't even get a chance to get my views in even though I'm the only commission member who has been on the board for all of Tyson's hearings.

"Before I knew it, the chance to get him licensed was gone."

Mack, who joined the commission in 1988, isn't sure how Memphis will handle the big event and is somewhat angry that Tennessee agreed to take the bout after a number of states followed Nevada's lead and implied that they would not license Tyson.

"I did have some (qualms) about the way they shopped the fight around," he said. "But at least the next biggest (boxing) states, New York, New Jersey and California, supported our lead.

"In Memphis' case, they felt the opportunity to make some money for their city was more important (than abiding to the principle Nevada had established). But it's sure not a premier location for a big fight."

The fight -- for Lewis' International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council titles -- is the first of its kind for the Deep South.

"This is like the Super Bowl and Memphis has no experience with something like it," Mack said. "They've never put on anything like this, so it'll be different.

"If the fight was in Las Vegas, it would have the best staff in the world, bar none. And based on my experience, no one does a fight like Las Vegas. If it had been there, you wouldn't be able to find a seat and people from all over the world would converge on the town.

"It would also have been a heck of a payday for the city. Economically speaking, Las Vegas could have used the money."

The State of Nevada will still reap a dividend from the fight, as 4 percent of the receipts from the closed-circuit proceeds will find their way to Carson City. The fight is available at 18 sites in Southern Nevada open to the public, and at another 15 sites that are holding private parties.

Mack, who said the NSAC members "now have other fish to fry" and haven't discussed their decision pertaining to Tyson since the hearing in March, predicts Tyson will upset the reigning champion.

"I like Lennox Lewis and he's a gentleman and a great athlete," Mack said. "And Tyson makes a poor example of a professional athlete. But, then again, he's a heck of a fighter and he's very strong.

"I think Tyson has the edge.""