If the Babyboomers can lay claim to one superiority for sure in their epoch it is in the area of Boxing. they had Muhammed Ali as their champion; the Generation X-ers had Mike Tyson. Where as Ali was sidelined amid the peak years of his career by his conscientious objector stance: "No Vietnamese ever hurt me!", Mike Tyson was sidelined by a proison term over raping a young beauty contestant. Whereas Ali will go down in history for his glorious comebacks culminating in the Rumble-In-The-Jungle bout with George Foreman and (that wonderful documenatry 'When We Were kings'); Tyson's many comebacks were simply circus acts where he would repeatedly get knocked out, culminating in chewing off the ear of Evander Hollyfield.
And so it is today we report that the era of Mike Tyson has finally come to an end with a thud.
An Irish heavyweight of little repute was bullying him around. He wasn't the baddest man on the planet anymore, not the baddest man in Washington, not even the baddest man in the ring. He was an aging heavyweight who looked older by the minute Saturday night, finally coming to grips with the fact that this was the way it was going to end. It was all Tyson could do to look at referee Joe Cortez, pull himself to his feet and trudge wearily to his corner.
Tyson sat on his stool and told Cortez he had enough. Enough for this fight, enough for a tortured career that began with greatness only to spiral out of control and finally end in desperation and sadness. He said he would fight no more. The sport that allowed him to earn more than $300 million had passed him by, and now it was time for Tyson to admit as much.
"This is it," Tyson said. "It's finished."
I'm not a big boxing fan. I can't stand to watch the sport most days to be honest. But even for a total outsider like me, I have witnessed a few boxers and boxing matches, with the resulting accretion of data forming some opinions on this sport.
Muhammed Ali was the first boxer to truly trasncend and break out of the confines of his sport so that his name was known around the world, even by children. I knew his name and his career and the famous bout with George Foreman in Kinshasa as a kid. And while I had no aspirations to being a boxer whatsoever, if I had to be a boxer I would have liked to have been like Ali: "dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Even in this latter part of his life where he suffers from Parkinsons' Disease, he remains the visage of a noble man.
And in the wake of Ali arrived Iron Mike in the mid-1980s. The rise of Iron Mike was a shock of the new. It wasn't black pride, it was black rage. This guy came across like half-man half punching machine. Famous trainer Cus D'Amato had trained Tyson from boyhood as his final 'gift' to boxing. Tyson, while his image was a ruthless powerslugger, was actually a finesse fighter with unparalleled speed and accuracy. So while he was knocking out his opponents at a furious pace in his early career, people got the image that this boxer was a heavy-hitter. Then, amid his peak, he was convicted for rape. After he came out, he was never the same boxer again. The speed and accuracy was diminsihed and so he tried to make up for it with harder hits; but it didn't really work out as he declined steadily.
But such is sport. It happened to John McEnroe, to Graig Nettles, to Laurie Daley, to Plugger Lockett, Steve Waugh, to Matthew Burke and all the rest of the guys I used to enjoy watching; it happens. I'm slightly perverse in that I find the Lion in Winter, the decline phase of champions very interesting to watch. I find that as they go down, we truly see what they are made of; the victories they forge with diminishing skill and speed seem to tell me somethinig more than the victories they stamp out on the way to the top. Heck, even this year's aging Yankees with their sub-.500 record is rivetting in a very strange way.
So it is that I feel a lot of undescribable affection for the times of Mike Tyson if not for the athlete himself. It's surprising he was going this long; it's 20 years! He leaves boxing with 50 wins in 56 bouts, 3 of the losses coming in his last 6 bouts, losing to people he would have totally obliterated had he encountered them in his youthful peak. Broke and bankrupt, he returns to his home in Phoenix Arizona.
He talked about doing missionary work in Africa to help heal his life, but Tyson has said a lot of wild things before. What he doesn't want is anyone to feel sorry for him.
"Most of my fans are too sensitive when it comes to me. I'm a cold and a cruel and a hard person. I've been around the worst," he said. "You can't take away what's happened to me. I've been abused any way anyone can be abused. I'm not used to sensitivity any more. Don't cry. I don't know how to handle people crying anymore. I've lost my sensitivity."
Good luck and best wishes in your retirement Mike, and thanks for the many memories.
- Art Neuro
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