Everyone's a Knockout

At the Tyson-McBride Fight, It's Bling That Tops the Card

Forget the fight. What could be more fascinating than the pre-fight scene, beautiful women, all hair and legs, men in $2,400 alligator shoes and custom-made suits, limos waiting outside?

No, this isn't Vegas, but we make an effort. There is nothing like fight night, with all its posturing, set against a backdrop of decadence and decay. Boxing isn't what it used to be, and neither is Mike Tyson, but upstairs near the concession stands, you could forget that for a moment.

A gorgeous woman puts a man's number into her phone.

"I mean, it's cool, everybody tries their hand," Annette Savoy says. Green necklace, green top, green skirt, hazel eyes. She came by herself, but won't stay that way for long. Her phone rings. "Yes, Craig," she says. "I'm just walking around, chilling . . . "

If only chilling were always like this. Up here by the MCI Center concessions stands before the Mike Tyson fight last night, watch the men's eyes swivel. Metallic gold heels and metallic green heels and leopard print heels. A very pregnant woman in a very short black dress. A woman in crystal-encrusted $160 jeans. A woman in a $3,000 BCBG dress, which was a birthday present from her husband, along with their $1,000-plus ringside seats. Down there, by the ring, you see faces you recognize. Again, it's not Vegas, but what passes for celebrity in D.C. Ted Leonsis is in the front, and several people claim they saw MC Lyte and Kanye West and some "Sopranos dude." There are lots of people with the hard look that says, You should recognize me. A well-dressed girl from New Jersey says, "We're friends with Mike," and won't elaborate.

Down here, you can hear the dull thump of glove hitting chest and you can see the sweat fly. "There'll be spit flying on me," Christina Goss, the daughter of one of the promoters, says before the fight. There's an intimacy to the violence, and an anything-goes feeling, perhaps exacerbated last night by the presence of Tyson, with his storied past -- the rape conviction, the biting thing. These days, at nearly 39, father of six, deeply in debt, attempting yet one more comeback, the desperation seems to leak from Tyson's pores.

But up above, we're still happening, we're very lovely and very young. The men have heavy eyes. The shoes shine.

"There are a few of us who still believe that you dress to impress," says Jim Bell, a lawyer who of course has a ringside seat, and is wearing a custom-made six-button gray suit ("No, not gray -- platinum") and cranberry and white alligator shoes. He's here to network, and he's here with his own personal security, he says, and while he stands up by the concession stands taking a break before the big boxers come out, he greets his friends: Marcus Tyler, celebrity hairstylist, who says he's done the rapper Eve's hair, and Tracy Wiggs, who promotes comedians.

The setting may not be sexy, with people walking by with baskets of fried chicken, but this is as much the scene as ringside is.

The week leading up to fight night is filled with anticipation. Tuesday there was a competition at the downtown nightclub Pearl for round-card girls, the women who walk the ring in skimpy outfits between rounds. There were more than 30 women trying out, from "adult entertainers to models to moms," one of the organizers said. A few were almost attractive enough to be Sears catalogue models. Most were not. One contestant had rubbed glitter all over her generously proportioned body. Another wore a hot pink bikini and another a hot green bikini and still another wore a bikini made of sheer white mesh, which proved quite popular with the crowd.

The audience was mostly men, standing as close to the velvet-roped platform as possible, offering positive feedback like "[Expletive!]" and snapping pictures with cameras and camera phones. One guy trained his lens on the backside of each contestant who passed by, at one point zooming in to view a woman three feet away.

Most of the judges sat on creamy leather couches, although one of them, Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington, preferred to stand and boogie as each woman walked past. He had the look of a child who has just discovered chocolate. The emcee urged everyone to buy tickets for the Tyson fight now. "If you're a baller, we still got ringside," he said.