Boxing: Tyson's tacky circus finds capital welcome

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New York would not touch it. Nor would Georgia or Texas, nor even Las Vegas.

But what the tackiest city in the universe shunned, the capital of the free world enthusiastically embraced this week. If Washington DC has its way, Mike Tyson will be fighting Lennox Lewis on 8 June, just nine blocks from the White House.

In the event, Tuesday night's public hearing of the District's previously obscure Boxing and Wrestling Commission turned into a love fest for Iron Mike, the likes of which he cannot have experienced in a decade.

The Washington Post's editorial columns have been clucking about the damage to the city's image, and women's organisations demonstrated outside the meeting, with placards proclaiming "Rapists Should Not Be Role Models." But inside the the packed hall some 60 people spoke – every one of them in favour of granting him a licence. After a couple of hours, the three-man Commission voted swiftly and unanimously to do so.

The fight all along has had the backing of Anthony Williams, Washington's Mayor. But, as protests mounted, the Commission ordered Tyson to undergo four hours of medical and psychological tests, and questioned him about his private life. On Tuesday it pronounced him fit of body and mind to box, and the boxer was duly thankful.

"I applaud the decision," Tyson said in a statement. "I will give fight fans in the District the fight they deserve – the chance to see me knock out Lennox Lewis in June."

The Washington which has opened its arms to the most controversial boxer on the planet was not the preening set-piece city of George Bush, the Congress and high-powered lawyers and lobbyists. It was the other Washington, 60 per cent black and smarting as always from semi-disenfranchised status, the city long led by its former Mayor Marion Barry, America's political equivalent of Mike Tyson.

Barry ran Washington through much of the 1980s and 90s with a mixture of populism, cronyism and graft. He served a prison sentence for cocaine offences and survived sex scandals and corruption allegations. Now he, too, is making a comeback, running for election to the DC Council he once ran. By backing Tyson, Mayor Williams was protecting his own flank from a Marion Barry revival.

But for all the local cheerleading, and the assertion by Tyson's handler Shelley Finkel that Washington was now "closer than it's ever been" to staging the fight, Tyson-Lewis in DC is far from a done deal.

Tennessee has also granted him a licence, and the proposed venue of Memphis has the added attraction of Mississippi river gambling. And Detroit's Tommy Hearns, the former middle weight champion who promoted Tyson's chaotic October 2000 match with Andrew Golota, wants to bring him back to the Motor City – whose boxing tradition is second to none.

The capital's previous experience of heavyweight title bouts has been dismal. The last, in May 1993, featured local boy-turned-champion Riddick Bowe. But his fight with the 33-1 underdog Jesse Ferguson bombed financially, attracting a paying gate of just 5,500, and bringing the District a $105,000 (£74,000) loss. That fight, however, took place in the cavernous JFK football stadium.

Tyson-Lewis would be held in the spanking new 21,000 seat MCI Center arena in the city's revived downtown. Giddy predictions are that the fight might gross $150m, and bring a $10m windfall to the city's tourist industry, which has been struggling since 11 September.

Others even claim that if Washington shows it can handle a sports event of this magnitude, it will have a real chance of being selected to host the 2012 Olympics. And while thousands of laws have emanated from the federal capital, none has yet prohibited the right to daydream.