No charges against Tyson in airport scuffle

Mike Tyson and the photographer who provoked the former heavyweight world champion's ire won't face charges over their scuffle.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Mike Tyson and the photographer who provoked the former heavyweight world champion's ire at Los Angeles International airport last month won't face charges over their scuffle, prosecutors said Thursday.

City attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said prosecutors found insufficient evidence to charge Tyson or photographer Tony Echeverria.

Both men were arrested on November 11 after an altercation in which each said the other hit him.

Echeverria said a blow by Tyson - the once feared heavyweight world champ - knocked him to the ground, and he was treated for a cut to the forehead.

Tyson was traveling with his family when he was mobbed by photographers.

His attorney Shawn Champion Holley said at the time that Tyson was protecting his infant daughter after Echeverria collided with her stroller.

She welcomed the decision not to charge the former fighter.

"The city attorney's decision today is a small victory for those who continue to be harassed, annoyed and even stalked by the paparazzi," Chapman Holley said.

Authorities in Arizona said after Tyson's arrest that they were watching the case to see if the former boxer should be sent to jail for violating terms of his probation in a 2007 drug case in which Tyson pleaded guilty to cocaine possession.

The airport incident came after a difficult year for Tyson, who suffered personal tragedy in May when his four-year-old daughter died after accidentally strangling herself with a loose cord on a treadmill.

Tyson exploded on the boxing scene in the mid-1980s, becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history in 1986 at the age of 20.

Considered unbeatable for the rest of the decade, Tyson's career went off the rails when he suffered a shock upset to James "Buster" Douglas in 1990.

In 1992, Tyson was convicted of raping a beauty queen at a pageant in Indianapolis, Indiana. He served three years of a six-year sentence and was released in 1995 -- and has always denied raping the woman.

"Iron Mike" reclaimed the heavyweight throne but lost to Evander Holyfield in 1996 and notoriously bit Holyfield's ears twice in a 1997 rematch, adding banishment to his ridicule.

Tyson was jailed again in 1999 for assaulting two people following a traffic accident. Tyson filed for bankruptcy in 2003 and retired after losses to Britain's Danny Williams in 2004 and American Kevin McBride in 2005.