MIKE TYSON prides himself on being a student of boxing history points. He was asked last week whether or not his second meeting with Evander Holyfield would rank as a great fight. "Wait and see," was his reply. The waiting is over. Tyson will find the fight is never forgotten.

With one act of premeditated cowardice, Iron Mike has ensured his name will live forever. Not as one of the all time greats, but as a man without discipline who didn't have the guts to take a legitimate beating from a superior man.

If the Nevada Commissioners wish to display their integrity, they should consider moving on from their initial reaction of temporary suspension and withholding Tyson's $30 million purse to consider seriously kicking him out of the sport for good.

Tyson has always had destructive power in his fists. Enough to bulldoze his way through the flabby nonentities of the late 1980s. But the self destruct button always promised to provide the ultimate answer.

Sonny Liston, who died alone - either murdered or by his own hand - 27 years ago, is a boxer with whom Tyson identifies. Yet Liston, for all his failings, never descended to such depths of fistic depravity and carnivorous intent.

The myth that Tyson is, or ever was, one of the sport's greatest practitioners has been erased forever. To rank him alongside Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano or, it should be said, Holyfield, would be an insult or grotesque proportions.

Hearing his near hysterical attempts at self justification after biting a lump out of Holyfield's ear and spitting it on to the ring canvas was little short of pathetic. The champion is scarred for life and, according to his attorney and manager, Jim Thomas, an angry man.

"It takes a lot to upset Evander, but he prayed in the dressing room, then just kept on saying, `Goddam, he bit me twice'. Mike Tyson has let himself down, let boxing down, and let Evander down.

"Boxers, despite everything, are like colleagues. They share in the pain and understand what it takes to achieve success. By doing this, he has tried to deprive Evander of the glory he worked so hard for in the biggest fight ever. It was an act of a coward."

Thomas was caught in the middle of the ugly scenes in the ring as the Tyson entourage lashed out after his disqualification: "I was too angry to be scared," he said, "but they were punching and kicking at everything around them trying to get at us. And from where I was, it was pretty obvious Tyson was aiming punches at people."

Asked whether or not Holyfield might press criminal charges on Tyson, Thomas said it was not impossible, though he thought it unlikely.

Throughout the buildup to the fight, there had been signs that Tyson, the arch intimidator, was having difficulty focusing his concentration against the super confident Holyfield. Refusal to make any sort of eye contact at either press conference or weigh in smacked of insecurity. The playground bully had been given his comeuppance and couldn't hack it.

His managers' petulant and unjustified attempt to have the original referee, Mitch Halpern, replaced suggested Tyson - as Holyfield's trainer Don Turner smilingly suggested - was "running scared".

Exactly what pressures crowded in on Halpern to provoke his decision to stand down, to be replaced by Mills Lane, will never be known. But there was a choice irony in the bleating about his officiating from the Tyson camp. Lane was in his 97th world championship fight. He is a judge who knows more than a little of the perverse course justice can take sometimes.

Tyson's preparations, for the most part, had been in secret. But whispers from his sparring partners eloquently if unrepeatably explained that Richie Giachetti was having little joy in reeducating Tyson in the fundamentals of "illusive aggression" preached by his boyhood guardian Cus D'Amato.

Despite his shattering defeat against James Buster Douglas seven years ago, there were those prepared to believe Tyson could reinvent himself as "the baddest man on the planet". Minutes be fore yesterday's fight Douglas was saying he had "a gut feeling" that Tyson would come good when it mattered.

Thai he went bad, and with a vengeance, is selfevident. Even if he is allowed to fight on, his latest misdemeanors will do nothing to improve his marketability.

For once, after a week when he all but lost his voice bellowing about the virtues of his promotion, Don King avoided the post fight press conference.

Seven years ago, King was pilloried for attempting to have that Douglas victory overturned. This time he wisely buttoned his lip, choosing to face up to the implications after a night's rest.

If Tyson is allowed back into boxing, a mooted match up with 48 year old George Foreman has probably been lost, though the good versus evil script might be considered palatable in certain elements off Vegas society. Last week Tyson said: "All my life, I've been abused. I've been humiliated. I've been dehumanised."

He craves the respectability of family life, with his new wife, three daughters, and the prospect of a fourth child in August. "I'm basing my life round my children, they know who I am," he said.

As he left the ring in disgrace yesterday he whined: "Look at me. I have one eye. I'm ready to fight him now. He didn't want to fight. Look at me, my kids will be scared of me.

Too true, Mike, too true.

. The Nevada State Athletic Commission has scheduled an emergency meeting in Las Vegas tomorrow at which they will consider a suspension and fine for Tyson after his disqualification.

The commission has withheld Tyson's $30 million purse pending the meeting, at which it could fine him up to three million dollars.

"They should take his boxing licence away for life," Holyfield co trainer Tommy Brooks said. "It was nothing but desperation. He had Evander alone and couldn't do anything."