BOXING/Decision not to renew Mike Tyson's licence: Few spectacles could have been more demeaning to boxers than the three-hour hearing that finally decided that Mike Tyson will not be allowed to box in Nevada. During a hearing that may have been every bit as painful for Tyson as 10 rounds with Lennox Lewis, he heard his mental, physical and emotional state dissected in front of 120 journalists and boxing hands and a wider audience of millions who watched "highlights" on television.

In Tyson's corner were his adviser Shelly Finkel and his attorney Bob Faiss, who came out with a defence that might have impressed a soft-hearted Old Bailey jury but did not make many connections with the commission. Faiss invoked the memories of the bare-knuckle fighter John L Sullivan - "a raucous hardman" - and Jack Dempsey, claiming that Tyson was just another link in the chain of tough guys innocently pursuing their profession.

The brawl with Lewis in New York had been, said Faiss, a "scripted face-off" in which Tyson had been told by Finkel that he was to play a role in "another production of boxing theatre". One of Lewis's bodyguards had started the mayhem, was the claim, and Tyson was "powerless" as the melee spun out of control; and he had certainly not bitten Lewis.

During the scuffle, said Faiss, Tyson had heard a journalist shouting an insult - believed to be the suggestion that he should be in a straitjacket - and had reacted to this "humiliation". Faiss told the unsmiling commissioners that "in Nevada and the old west, insults were answered by bullets". At least his client had not gone that far, although it was accepted that his constant use of the "F word" had been "inappropriate".

Then Tyson's team asked to show a scene from Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, one of last year's least memorable films, in which Tyson explains to a little boy that he is "meditating". He does this, he says in the film, by sitting "in the Buddha position" in order to reach "a special place I go in my head". The poor acoustics in the room, made worse by the constant clicking of camera shutters, meant that it was unclear whether Tyson was saying that he was "medicating" or "meditating".

Not that his medication was ignored. Commissioner Amy Ayoub wanted to know about the special place that Tyson seems to go in his head and what had happened to all the medical and psychological regimes that he had agreed to undergo when he was given back his Nevada licence in 1998. Tyson said he had been on medication until six months ago and that he had been in therapy until May last year. Ayoub wanted to make it clear that, although she sympathised with Tyson and abhorred press suggestions that he was "an animal", he had had more chances than most people.

"You don't know me, ma'am," said Tyson, immaculately turned out in grey suit, white shirt and tie. "You don't know my horror stories. You know nothing about me." Dr Luther Mack, the one black member of the commission, wanted to know who Tyson's true friends were, the people to whom he could turn for candid advice. "I don't have one friend in my entire life," said Tyson.

Like the bad boy hauled in front of the headmaster for one final, final warning, Tyson managed to say of the Lewis fracas: "You will never see that happening again. I give you my word. I'm not Mother Teresa but I'm not Charles Manson either."

But the commission was not won over. Ayoub said that she was convinced that "only if you are not allowed to fight will you get the kind of help you need". Commissioner Flip Homansky told Tyson "we're all losers here" and commissioner John Bailey, a local lawyer, delivered one of those long, unctuous, sad-rather-than-angry magisterial addresses - "deep inside I sense that you are a good person".

Ever the tacticians, Finkel and his team, asked for a recess and returned to say they were withdrawing their application. This would have meant that they could say that they had not lost their plea as they try to find another venue and another licence. The commission did not buy it, refused to let the application be withdrawn and voted 4-1 against Tyson, Mack being his only supporter.