Licence to fight a no go

LAS VEGAS -- Mike Tyson was trying his heavyweight best to be contrite and humble. He said he was sorry, and that next time he would learn to control his anger.\nWhen it came time for Nevada boxing regulators to speak their piece, though, Tyson was already out the door.\nThe former heavyweight champion didn't stick around Tuesday to hear the Nevada Athletic Commission reject his bid for a boxing license to fight Lennox Lewis on April 6.\nHe was already out in the parking lot, calling Lewis out.\n"I think Lennox is a coward," Tyson said. "I'm going to fight him any time I see him in the streets."\nLewis might have felt he was in a street fight with Tyson last week in New York during the news conference announcing the fight.\n"The fact is that Mike Tyson bit through my trousers and took a significant piece of flesh out of my thigh," Lewis said Tuesday night in his first public comments about the melee.\nThe commission's 4-1 decision knocked Tyson out of a Nevada fight with Lewis that would have perhaps helped salvage a boxing reputation as tattered as his personal life.\nTyson can still apply for a license elsewhere, and his advisers figure to scramble to keep one of the richest fights in history intact. But even Tyson seemed to realize that he may have sabotaged his chances of ever meeting Lewis in the ring.\n"I didn't think I was going to get licensed, but (adviser) Shelly Finkel was forcing me to come anyway," Tyson said as he headed for a limousine after the hearing.\nLewis said he has not made a decision about the possibility of fighting Tyson outside Nevada.\n"I am still consulting with my attorneys as to the legal consequences should I declare that I will not go forward with the bout," Lewis said. "I am sorry that the situation has not yet been resolved."\nTyson left the hearing minutes before the vote, seemingly tired of being lectured to by commissioners who appeared just as tired of his antics both inside and outside the ring.\nA fight that would have made Tyson more than $20 million and meant millions more to a fragile Las Vegas tourism economy was either dead or headed elsewhere after the commission rejected Tyson's explanations for a number of problems he has had in the last few years.