Three of 1999's biggest PPV events were knocked out of the ring, when Tyson was sentenced to serve least one year in jail on a "road-rage" assault charge.

"This is going to hurt pay-per-view," said big-time boxing promoter, Bob Arum. "Even though Tyson is much diminished as an attraction, he's still an attraction."

All eyes in the pay-per-view business were on last Saturday night's Oscar De La Hoya-Ike Quartey fight to see how many fight fans would pay for a non-Tyson fight. The answer was a split decision - in more ways than one.

Arum, who promoted the fight, predicted it may have generated buys in about 730,000 homes - or about $29 million in gross 075 . 0000.00revenues and the second-most watched De La Hoya PPV fight ever.

Those are great numbers for De La Hoya, who won the fight on a split decision and usually averages more than 700,000 homes per fight. But that would have been a disappointing turnout had it been a Tyson fight.

"Taking those Tyson dates out of pay-per-view this year," Arum said, "is going to have a 075 . 0000.00significant impact on [PPV]."

And there is no fighter on the horizon to take his place in the pocketbooks of TV promoters.

"Oscar will only fight a certain number of times this year on pay-per-view," Arum said. "But it's not going to make up for the slack - Oscar is not going to fight an extra fight on pay-per-view one additional time because there's no Tyson this year."

075 . 0000.00Tyson's last PPV fight against Francois Botha scored about 650,000 to 750,000 buys - far below the fighter's best draw, but still worlds better than most PPV events and the highest grossing PPV fight for 1998.

Tyson's famous 1997 "bite-fight" against Evander Holyfield which sold for about $49.95 per box, broke records when it drew an estimated 1.6 million PPV buys, and grossed roughly $80 million.

"We've always operated from the point of view that pay-per-view events, especially boxing are pretty much out of our control," said Randy Fergen, assistant controller for Cable One, a Phoenix, Az.-based cable operator.

"We don't usually anticipate a high level of activity when it comes to events like boxing that we can't predict.

"Certainly there will be some lost revenue and income due to the cancellation of the Tyson's fights," Fergen said.

Tyson was scheduled to fight again on April 24, against a yet-to-be-determined opponent, and experts feel that fight would have made more money than the last one.

There is still a possibility Tyson may fight this year. Within two months of his sentence, the former champ could be transferred to a Maryland work-release center, and could begin training during the day and return to jail at night. After six-months, he could get out early on good behavior.

-- Don Kaplan - 2/21/99