Washington ? The morning after the most submissive defeat of his career, in which he quit on his stool although he had suffered no knockdowns, Mike Tyson shouted out once more in rage.

“No! No! No! No!” he cried out, trying to silence supporters who loudly applauded his 20-year boxing career at a postfight news conference Sunday.

Urged on by Rock Newman, an adviser to the promoters who brought Tyson to the MCI Center for a much-anticipated comeback fight that turned into an embarrassment against Kevin McBride on Saturday night, Tyson’s fans chose to cheer his early career.

The reason 15,274 fans – about 2,500 short of capacity – showed up for the bout, Newman said, was because, “Mike Tyson, at his best, was the most exciting heavyweight on the planet.”

But Tyson, who turns 39 on June 30, barely was a shadow of his best against the virtually unknown McBride. And the applause stirred by Newman genuinely irritated him.

“That’s bull, man!” he shouted. “I don’t want anybody to applaud me.”

He went on to say he has “never in my life asked anybody for anything. … I’m a man. … I’ve been abused any way a man can be abused. I’m as hard-core as it gets. Please don’t embarrass me by doing this.”

In truth, Tyson has asked for plenty from those who would pay to see him fight, including $44.95 for Saturday night’s pay-per-view telecast and a $5 million purse for the unsatisfying fight.

Conceding at least that he has “had enough applause in my life,” he reiterated what he said in the ring after the fight:

He will quit boxing rather than disgrace the sport with more poor performances.

His record fell to 50-6 with his third knockout loss in his last four fights. He said he felt like a very old man when the 6-foot-6, 271-pound McBride leaned on him and pressed him to the canvas at the end of the sixth round. He said he was tired and “just didn’t want to get up.”

Referee Joe Cortez, who earlier in the round penalized Tyson two points for deliberately head-butting McBride, opening a cut near his left eye, ruled that Tyson’s slump to the canvas was a push and not a knockdown.

Nevertheless, Tyson’s friend and trainer Jeff Fenech said, “It took him an eternity to get up.” After Tyson finally did and walked dejectedly to his corner, Fenech decided he had had enough.

“I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to be there,” Fenech said. “I never saw him really get hurt by McBride’s punches, but he was exhausted.”

Tyson, who has squandered $300 million and whose prime task of paying off debt is still some $15 million short, talked about his future abstractly.

Suggesting that he might do missionary work, except “I don’t want to get killed,” and that he is “too stigmatized” to become a boxing analyst, he declared, “The only time I’m happy is if I’m contributing.

“If I can’t contribute, I’m emotionally dead.”

Without specifying the $300 million he once could have shared with worthy causes, he said, “I thought I was contributing, but I was contributing to the wrong sort.”