Commission Inclined to Reject Tyson

The two top members of the Nevada Athletic Commission said Thursday in Las Vegas that they will vote to reject Mike Tyson’s request to return to the ring unless he can explain his alleged assault of two men after a traffic accident in Maryland last month.

Claims by Tyson’s lawyers that he is innocent of the charges simply aren’t good enough if Tyson wants his license back, commission Chairman Dr. Elias Ghanem and Vice Chairman James Nave said.

“I would vote no if I have to vote today,” Ghanem said.

Nave agreed, saying the position of Tyson’s lawyers that he couldn’t discuss the matter because of pending charges gave him little option in his vote.

“It’s not going to work for me,” Nave said. “How can we license him without knowing about it?”

The Maryland issue had seemed to fade into the background at last Saturday’s hearing, which ended when the commission ordered Tyson to take a battery of psychological tests in Boston before returning Oct. 3 for a vote on whether to give him the license stripped after he bit Evander Holyfield’s ears in a title bout in June 1997.

After the hearing, Ghanem said that if the psychological reports came back OK, “then we have the responsibility to maybe, probably, license him to fight again.”

Tyson’s advisor, Shelly Finkel, said he and Tyson’s lawyers had thought that the psychological testing was the only issue still to be resolved.

“It’s pretty obvious to me that it’s different than when we left [the commission hearing],” Finkel said. “It’s different than what we were told.”

During the hearing, Tyson’s attorney, Dale Kinsella, told commissioners that the former heavyweight champion would answer no questions about the Maryland incident because charges were still pending in that state.

Tyson is charged by two men with attacking them after a minor traffic accident in the Washington suburb of Gaithersburg, Md. A preliminary hearing on the charges had been set for Oct. 2, a day before the commission hearing, but that was postponed and the case will head toward trial at a later date instead.

“I can’t vote to move this thing forward without knowing more about Maryland,” Nave said. “They can get a report from Massachusetts saying he’s OK, but we still have to know about Maryland.”

Jurisprudence

Edward DeBartolo Jr., owner of the San Francisco 49ers, testified before a federal grand jury investigating riverboat gambling licenses and his dealings with former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards. The testimony comes amid speculation that DeBartolo will make a deal with federal prosecutors as they seek an indictment of Edwards on racketeering charges involving riverboat casinos.

Edwards and DeBartolo were among those who last year received “target letters” indicating they could be indicted by the grand jury. DeBartolo later stepped down as a managing owner of the 49ers, turning that role over to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York.

Former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier was acquitted in his drunk-driving trial in Philadelphia. Defense attorneys, including Frazier’s daughter Jacqulyn Frazier-Lyde, contended that the 54-year-old’s behavior after being pulled over April 7 stemmed from his weariness from a long drive and medications for various ailments.

Former Indy race car driver David “Salt” Walther is being sought by authorities in Lebanon, Ohio, after he failed to appear for his sentencing on a charge that he tried to smuggle a pain-killing drug into jail.

Walther, 50, was indicted in June. He pleaded guilty to the felony Aug. 21. Authorities said a corrections officer at the Warren County jail caught Walther in May trying to bring three Tylenol III tablets into his jail cell. He had the pain-killer inside a glove, officers said.

Tennis

Top-seeded Arantxa Sanchez Vicario of Spain defeated Elena Likhovtseva of Russia, 6-0, 6-4, to advance to the quarterfinals of the Toyota Princess Cup at Tokyo.

Sanchez Vicario’s next opponent will be another Russian, fifth-seeded Anna Kournikova, who beat Taiwan’s Wang Shi-ting, 6-0, 6-4.

In other matches, Olga Barabanschikova of Belarus upset fourth-seeded Dominique Van Roost of Belgium, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, and seventh-seeded Anke Huber of Germany beat Li Fang of Taiwan, 7-5, 6-3.

Miscellany

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway said it had not reached an agreement to bring a Formula One to the track, contradicting a report in Thursday’s Indianapolis Star that the Grand Prix circuit will return to the United States in September 2000.

“There hasn’t been anything new on our efforts to bring Formula One here for weeks,” said Fred Nation, a spokesman for the speedway. “The story that we’ve reached an agreement is simply not true.”

Fox Sports Net will not run advertisements for the muscle-building supplement androstenedione. ESPN, which first ran the commercial Tuesday for the supplement used by Mark McGwire, pulled the ads one day later in response to criticism from the NCAA and a national high school federation.

Kettle Won, among the most promising of this year’s 2-year-old horses, will be out action indefinitely because of a fever and will miss a chance to compete in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Veteran guard Spud Webb became the first major name to sign with the Continental Basketball Assn. during the NBA lockout, coming to terms with the Idaho Stampede.

Tex Winter, a Chicago Bull assistant coach whose 51 years as an NCAA Division I collegiate and professional coach top all active coaches, was named to receive the John Bunn Award, considered the most prestigious award from the Basketball Hall of Fame, apart from induction.

Musa Shannon, who came into the game as a substitute midway through the second half, scored in the 87th minute to give the Tampa Bay Mutiny a 4-3 Major League Soccer victory over the Columbus Crew before 14,552 at Columbus, Ohio.

Pete Kokon, a sportswriter who covered San Fernando Valley high schools for more than 60 years, was found dead in his Sherman Oaks apartment Thursday morning. He was 85.

He wrote his first sports story for the old Van Nuys News in 1937 and wrote a daily column, “What’s Cookin’ with Kokon” for the defunct Valley Times starting in 1946. Just this week, his column appeared in the weekly San Fernando Sun. Funeral arrangements are pending.