Working Both Sides of Strip : Boxing: Thanks to stubborn promoters, Las Vegas will have a heavyweight Saturday night like no other, with two major bouts.

Nobody blinked, though there were a few squints and grimaces along the way.

Nobody surrendered, though there were plenty of chances to fold and walk away.

As a result, Saturday promises to provide a rare night of boxing history and histrionics, an overflowing mix of pride, power, corporate cash and personal antipathy.

Don King and Viacom vs. Time Warner . . . the MGM Grand vs. Caesars Palace . . . the public’s fascination with Mike Tyson vs. the draw of another good Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield bout.

Why did this have to happen?

“I guess boxing breeds idiots,” sneered Bob Arum, the one major promoter not involved in either event.

Along the Las Vegas Strip, Caesars Palace and the MGM Grand are about a 15-minute walk apart, but in six days, they will represent separate sides of the boxing universe.

At about 8 p.m., Tyson leads off the evening against Buster Mathis Jr., at the indoor MGM Grand Garden arena, on the Fox Network, the first time in more than a decade that a big heavyweight fight will be on free television.

Whenever the Tyson bout is over, the pay-per-view network TVKO will usher Bowe and Holyfield, after Tyson the sport’s two most marketable figures, into the Caesars Palace outdoor arena for their second rematch.

Because of Fox’s involvement, more people will watch boxing on Saturday night than on any other single night of boxing in history. But that will happen as an accident, and each fight is cutting dramatically into the other’s earning power.

Nobody planned this, but Saturday, the crash happens.

THE TYSON FACTOR

Mike Tyson makes boxing people behave in strange ways. Days after he ended his three-year prison term for a rape conviction, Tyson signed exclusive deals with King, the MGM Grand and Showtime (owned by the conglomerate Viacom) guaranteeing him a package that could be worth more than $100 million.

Now, instead of the usual method of planning on a fight-by-fight basis, looking ahead, at most, three or four months down the road, King, the MGM and Showtime had to look years into Tyson’s future to try to recoup their huge investments.

“Because of the way we’ve negotiated the deals, for the first time what you have is real continuity in the scheduling of boxing,” says John Horne, Tyson’s co-manager.

“It’s almost like you do with the Super Bowl--you don’t know who’s going to be in the Super Bowl, but you know when it is.”

But the advance planning also prevents flexibility, and tempts competitors to think about sabotage. There are only a handful of sure-fire pay-per-view dates, and fewer weekends when the MGM Grand could lock a Tyson mega-event into its busy schedule.

King, who is on trial in New York federal court for wire fraud, already has announced plans for a March 16 Showtime pay-per-view Tyson fight, against an opponent as yet undetermined.

“Don King tried to do something that was ridiculous and reserve dates for the next year to try to block anyone out from scheduling any pay-per-view events,” says Dino Duva, an executive at Main Events, Holyfield’s promoter.

The first Saturday in November--after the World Series, before people begin planning for the holidays, in between dates for several huge conventions and the popular national rodeo in Las Vegas--is the prime date in boxing.

And, despite, or maybe because of, the sour public reaction (and $90 million gross) to the circus ending to Tyson’s 89-second comeback bout over Peter McNeeley on Showtime pay-per-view, it became all-important for Tyson to keep Nov. 4 as his.

When Seth Abraham, the chief of Time Warner Sports, tried to seize Nov. 4 for his fight, believing that the public had a proven appetite for Bowe-Holyfield, it became a game of chicken.

King had to find a way to appease Tyson, and, realizing that the expected Tyson-Mathis blowout probably wasn’t as strong a pay-per-view event as Time Warner’s competitive match, had to find a way out of going head-to-head for the PPV dollar.

“It became a power play,” manager Butch Lewis says after observing the developments. “There were several factions vying for the power: ‘I’m not going to blink,’ that kind of thing. Because if anyone had to blink, it would have been Don, to go head to head pay-per-view with Mike and that opponent. Rupert Murdoch [of Fox] came in and saved him.

“For D.K. to have had to be the one to pull back, it would’ve also had a rippling effect in his relationship with Tyson. Because I was told Mike was saying, ‘Hey, I’m not backing down. He started to take it personally, as an affront to him.”

The answer for King was to get about $10 million from Murdoch (potentially $20 million to $30 million less than the fight could have earned on pay-per-view) for the free TV rights to Tyson-Mathis.

“You know, I made a lot of money in my last fight, I’ve made a lot of money in my whole career,” Tyson says, “so I can afford to be generous and hopefully go out and give some more pleasure.”

THE OLD GUARD

Time Warner had the date first, back in the spring, when it was planning to broadcast the George Foreman-Michael Moorer rematch. According to the loose rules of the pay-per-view business, once one fight starts lining up commitments from the cable distributors for a specific show, other promoters stay away from that date.

But Foreman-Moorer fell through in early summer, and, with Tyson preparing for his Aug. 19 comeback bout (with Nov. 4 set for his second fight, against an unidentified foe), Abraham had to change plans.

The first two Bowe-Holyfield fights (Bowe won the first in November 1993, Holyfield the second in November 1994) both were purchased by more than 900,000 PPV homes, and both grossed in the $30 million range.

With the linear heavyweight champion, Foreman, uninterested in fighting either one, the biggest Time Warner fight possible was to match Bowe and Holyfield one more time.

Caesars, which played host to the second Bowe-Holyfield bout (including “the Fan Man” intrusion), was interested, the cable distributors were interested, and after Aug. 19, with the fervor of the public’s complaints over Tyson-McNeeley rumbling in their ears, Bowe-Holyfield III was set for Nov. 4.

Tickets sold well--up to about 5,000 through early September--and Abraham and the Bowe and Holyfield camps had every reason to believe that they were about to knock Tyson and King down a notch. King filed papers with the Nevada commission to request the Nov. 4 date a few days after promoters for Bowe-Holyfield did, but, according to Ratner, there is no law in Nevada preventing two major bouts in Las Vegas at the same time.

Then, King’s run to Fox changed everything. In his mid-1980s heyday, Tyson was a Time Warner fighter, but King and Tyson had a bitter split with Abraham, and moved over to Showtime, basically creating its boxing program.

“Was the move to Fox on my radar screen? No, it wasn’t, but nothing King does or contemplates surprises me,” Abraham says. “Remember, I did business with Don for 14 years.

“Don moved to Fox because he had no choice, not because he wanted to. He couldn’t promote a fight on pay-per-view when he’s sitting in a courthouse. And No. 2, even Don would know that Bowe-Holyfield III is a bigger attraction than Tyson-Mathis.”

When the Fox deal was announced in mid-September, Abraham and all the other Bowe-Holyfield principals met, but, because its arena is outdoors, Caesars couldn’t move the fight any later in the calendar and didn’t want to surrender its casino customers to the MGM for the weekend by moving it up a day.

“It was either go Nov. 4 or cancel the fight,” Abraham says. “And we have too much invested in boxing, too much invested in the heavyweights to let that happen.”

Time Warner has a guaranteed $9 million invested in Holyfield for this bout, and Bowe’s purse is dictated by the pay-per-view numbers. But, up against a free Tyson TV show, even some involved with Bowe-Holyfield say that 700,000 buys is an optimistic projection.

THE END GAME

So, nobody blinked, and everybody is making less than they should. So what?

If Bowe-Holyfield can grab 500,000 or more PPV homes, if Tyson delivers the kind of Neilsen sweeps numbers Fox wants, if the winners of the two bouts set themselves up for a huge showdown maybe for next November, all of this confusion will end up as a bonanza.

“We are very positive about the foundation that this evening will lay for the next few years as this division continues to sort through all of its competitors and champions,” says Mac Lipscomb, general manager of Showtime’s pay-per-view arm.

And maybe not.

“This was nothing but a desperate move on Seth Abraham’s part to try to program against us because he played his cards wrong and he lost Mike Tyson,” Horne says. “That’s what this is all about. He made this into a competition that he can’t compete in.”