BY NATHAN BIERMA

In the ancient days of American sports, boxing was second

only to baseball, and along with horse racing, helped provide the

most important sports events and history of the time.  Names such

Even as football and basketball rose to prominence in the
sports scene mid-century, boxing retained its drama with stars
such as Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Leonard.  Last summer in Atlanta
it was Muhammad Ali who lit the Olympic torch, his maintained
charisma and zest for life in the face of a debilitating disease 
symbolized by the ever-burning flame. 

But to ignore a steady decline in America's interest in
boxing the last few decades is to miss a definitive sports trend.
Boxing has been marred by widespread corruption, prison sentences
of promoters and fighters, various organizations whose number
dilutes much meaning from any one title, and, perhaps most
significantly, lack of bona fide boxing stars to capture
America's attention along with the endless parade of superstars
in basketball, baseball, and football. 

Tyson-Holyfield II was to be a once-in-a-decade event to
combat boxing's many ills.  The first fight, last November,
certainly was, as the supposedly washed-up Evander Holyfield
scored a twelfth round knockout of the seemingly invincible Mike
Tyson for the heavyweight title.  It went down as one of the
great sports events of the year, maybe of the 90's, a monumental
upset for one of boxing's few great men. 

Evander Holyfield seems out of place in the glitzy,
lucrative, and dehumanizing world of professional boxing.  He
says he found faith after a miracle-healing by televangelist
Benny Hinn in 1991, and speaks with intelligence and articulation
uncommon to fighters.  Placards referring to Bible verses are
nothing new to sporting events, but rare indeed are the boxing
shorts Holyfield wore into the ring for his Tyson rematch, which
have inscribed vertically, "Phil 4:13," the Bible verse that says
"I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

If Holyfield stands out as unusual, Mike Tyson fits right
in.  Rising rapidly to stardom last decade with his vicious power
and speed, yanked from fight to fight by zany promoter Don King,
Tyson fell from glory with a rape conviction and prison sentence. 
He steamrolled through his first four fights out of jail before
surprisingly succumbing to Holyfield, a twelve round match of
which, he says, he only remembers three. It was a stunning
defeat and raised questions about the possibility of his waning
skills and desire at this stage of his career and his life. 
Tyson was married this year and seemed to be grabbing a foothold
in a life marked by turbulence.  Whether this explained or
further muddied the events of June 28, 1997, was one of the many
questions left unanswered after one of the all-time bizarre
occurrences in sports.

The first two rounds of the highly-hyped rematch belonged,
again, to Holyfield.  The third round was more difficult to
assess strictly from a fighting standpoint, but nobody was.  It
started with Mike Tyson leaving his corner without his
mouthpiece, which Holyfield noticed and pointed out to the
referee.  Tyson was sent back to retrieve his mouthpiece.  But at
one point during the third round, holding Holyfield, he spit it
out and bit down on Holyfield's right ear, removing a small piece
of it and spitting it out while Holyfield jumped around in agony. 
While Holyfield retreated, Tyson, in an equally cowardly move,
shoved his opponent from behind.  After the action had been
halted and then resumed, Tyson again bit Holyfield, this time on
his left ear.  Referee Mills Lane immediately intervened and
disqualified Tyson

Confusion reigned for hours.  Tyson initially charged
Holyfield's corner and swung at the police rushing in to the ring
to guard it.  Beaten one-on-one with Holyfield, Tyson now showed
some aggression with a shield of humanity separating the
fighters.  Outside the arena rumors of gunfire spread through the
departing crowd, inciting fear of a mass tragedy.  The ordinarily 
garrulous Don King was now strangely subdued, mumbling something
about having to "review the tape" before promptly disappearing,
for once realizing that meaningless babble could not impeach the
stark reality of what had just happened.

Horror and one-liners marked public reaction.  Tyson was
dubbed a madman, animal, and monster, while naysayers offered
eulogies for the sport of boxing, no longer worthy, they said, to
be called a sport.  Some found it ironic, though, that a sport
that routinely features blood and unconsciousness was now being
berated for brutality with this biting.  And then there were the
jokes.  Holyfield, formerly nicknamed The Real Deal, was now
called the Real Meal.  Mike Tyson was nominated for Sportsman of
the Ear.  His bite was a lobe blow.  No, Holyfield had not said
"bite me" to Tyson in the ring.  And on and on.

Why did Tyson do it?  What could he possibly have been
thinking as he sunk his teeth into Holyfield?  Hypotheses are few
and unconvincing.  Tyson's immediate explanation was that the
bite was revenge for a head-butt by Holyfield he said opened up a
gash over his right eye.  "What am I to do?  This is a career.  I
have to retaliate.  Look at me--my kids will be scared of me." 
He disappeared before offering explanation as to how a one-inch
cut is life threatening or how gashes scare children but not
disfigured aural appendages do not. 

Two days later Tyson offered a hollow and predictable apology at the urging of King, the one detail predictable in this crazy story.  But most assumed the
statement was also written by King to save face, so the world was
left scratching its collective head.  Some surmised that the
biting resulted from a warped sense of pride on the part of
Tyson; he saw he was going to get beaten again by Holyfield in
the first two rounds and decided he would lose the fight on his
own terms.  Others saw this as his escape from the boxing world
that has tossed him around and considered him a pawn for the
purpose of millions of dollars.  A few buy into Tyson's supposed
explanation from his statement--that he was caught up in the heat
of the moment and simply snapped. 

Holyfield came out of the incident smelling like a rose. 
His corner restrained him from retaliating against Tyson for the
bite, preventing a second fighter from being disqualified and the
sport from sinking to insalvageable depths.  An fan later found
the amputated portion of Holyfield's ear lying in the ring after
the fight and returned it to the fighter's room.  20 minutes of
surgery and the ear was sewn back on.  The incident served to
further the good and evil clash promoted in the Tyson-Holyfield
matchup, with Tyson the ex-convict and Holyfield the convert to
religion.  After this bout Holyfield had his $35 million and the
adoration and sympathy of millions more fans for his stinging
ear.  He even fit in some globetrotting, traveling to South
Africa to meet with President Nelson Mandela.

Tyson did not enjoy such post-fight activities, though some
thought he should have been more miserable.  His license was
revoked by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which also fined
Tyson the maximum allowable 10 percent, or $3 million, of his
fight earnings.  Meanwhile a bill was working its way through the
state legislature allowing the fine of an entire purse.  It was
too late to hit Tyson, and so, for his ear-biting embarrassment,
he receives $27 million dollars, and waits for a possible renewal
of his license in one year.  He wouldn't have boxed for 8-10
months anyway.  Many doubted that this sent a strong enough
message.

Mike Tyson will box again.  Millions of people will watch
him again, and pay lots of money again.  But the memory of what
transpired on June 28 will not fade away as easily as Tyson's
meager punishment.  Sports, especially boxing, had been violent
before, and ears had been bitten before, but never on such an
immense and glitzy stage, for so much money, with so many people
watching, and for so little apparent reason.  The scar on Evander
Holyfield's ear remains, as does the night of June 28 in the
minds of sports fans everywhere.  They will remember it whenever
they watch a boxing match, whenever Mike Tyson's name comes up in
the coming years, with his attempts for license renewal and his
eventual return.  They will remember it whenever sports takes its
unfortunate ugly turns--the bench clearing brawls, the violent
arguments with the referees, the athletic contact that goes
beyond the incidental to the personal.  And they will remember
that on June 28, 1997, Mike Tyson, for a few ugly moments,
stooped to something below athlete, below human, to intentionally
and brutally harm another human being.  And they will remember
that sports reflects men and women at their worst as well as at
their best.  They will wish Mike Tyson had refrained from
providing such a vivid reminder. 

Hockey: Triumph and Tragedy
Basketball: One for the ages, again
Boxing: Dismemberment and disgrace
Golf: Two tough to take