Briggs Lobbying for Next Shot at Tyson

By STEVE SPRINGER

Oct. 22, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAS VEGAS — With two days remaining before Mike Tyson steps into the ring against Orlin Norris, Shannon Briggs, the man most likely to be Tyson’s next opponent, stepped into the on-deck circle Thursday.

Should the favored Tyson do what is expected of him and demolish Norris on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in their 10-round match, Briggs has been penciled in for a Feb. 26 fight with Tyson at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Although nothing is definite, Briggs arrived at the MGM Grand on Thursday and immediately threw out the first insult, getting into a public shouting match with Steve Fitch, Tyson’s cheerleader-instigator.

It’s a tired act, but it’s all new and exciting to Briggs, whose claim to fame is a highly questionable decision over George Foreman in November 1997. In his last outing, Briggs fought to a draw with Francois Botha, which makes Briggs attractive to Tyson’s ever-cautious handlers.

And then what? Should Tyson beat Norris, and then take on Briggs and beat him as well, Tyson will be the logical opponent for the winner, or loser, of next month’s Evander Holyfield-Lennox Lewis heavyweight unification rematch, according to Jay Larkin, vice president of Showtime network.

“Mike Tyson is the only guy out there for either one of them,” said Larkin, hardly an impartial observer, since Tyson fights on his network. “If I was Mike, I would just sit back, watch and see who wants to fight me.”

Last January, when he knocked out Botha in the fifth round at the MGM Grand, Tyson weighed 223 pounds.

A month later, Tyson was jailed in Maryland for assaulting two men after a minor traffic accident. Behind bars, he ballooned to 280.

On Thursday, five months after his release and after weeks of training, Tyson weighed in for Saturday night’s bout. He was right back where he had started, 223 pounds. Norris, a former cruiserweight champion, weighed in at 218.

Ticket sales for the fight, sluggish at first, have picked up. Close to 8,000 have been sold for the 14,200-seat Grand Garden Arena.