Mike Tyson

Well, that's the end folks. Mike Tyson has officially entered the town of Palookaville. And what an ignominious end. And it started out so promising.

The 1980's were an interesting time, particularly for sports. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were ripping up the NBA in ways not seen since, and you felt that even though statistically these guys were not the greatest ever, they certainly could be considered the greatest salesmen the game had ever had. To my mind, I don't think the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 80's has ever been equaled in terms of entertainment value. Wayne Gretzky came into the NHL via the WHA, and put up numbers that were so far ahead of anything anyone had ever seen before that it defied imagination. (Whereas the top scorers throughout the 70's would top out around 100-105 points a season, Gretzky was topping out at 200.) His Edmonton Oilers went on to win four Stanley Cups in six seasons, and though they can't be statistically considered the greatest team ever (that honor has to go to the New York Islanders 1980-83 run, folks), they certainly could be considered the most talented. Consider: Gretzky and Jari Kurri on line one, Mark Messier and Glen Anderson on forward line two, Paul Coffee Kevin Lowe on defense, Grant Fuhr in goal....take half those players away, and you still have a contender. Dwight Gooden was the hottest rookie pitcher I think I'd ever seen, and Darryl Strawberry was a Hall Of Famer with nothing but the years ahead of him to prove it. What an exciting time for professional sports. And then you had Tyson....

The boxing world had been in the care of boring boxers with no personalities. Gone were the days of Ali, Frazier, Norton, and Foreman. In were the days of the bland (though great) Larry Holmes. Gerry Cooney turned out to be a bust. As far as the heavyweight division was concerned, no better word could describe it than...boring. So when Mike Tyson came barrelling in, black boxing trunks, blank scowl on his face, with nothing but his fists to do the talking (he was barred by his manager Cus D'amato from talking to the press), it was electrifying. I became aware of Mike Tyson my freshman year of college, as there was a kid down the hall who put up a black and white photo of Tyson on his dorm room door. That summer in between my freshman and sophmore year, I had a high-school friend, famous for his numerous parties, who hosted a get-together (complete with 15-ft. sub and keg) and got a Tyson fight on Pay-Per-View. It wasn't much of a fight. I believe it might've been Marvis Frazier (clearly not in the same league as his dad fighter-wise) or maybe it was Michael Spinks that Tyson was fighting. It mattered not. It lasted about a round or two, and Tyson just leveled his opposition. It was a truly intimidating yet intoxicating thing to watch. It was at that point that I realized that this guy could be the most dominant heavyweight fighter ever. It was a very plausible conclusion, and everyone I knew that followed boxing peripherally or otherwise felt the same as I did. My friend subsequently hosted a few more of these parties, but after about two or three more, he stopped. It didn't seem worth it to get a keg, a long sub, and pay for a fight that was only going to end within two or three rounds...and often less than that.

Flash forward to my senior year at college. I'd stopped watching Tyson fights because they were a foregone conclusion. I was in a college bar called the Woodshed when I got word that Tyson had been knocked out in a fight in Tokyo versus some no-name called Buster Douglas. "Whaaah!?!" I thought. Couldn't be. But it was. Tyson was no longer invincible. Some tomato can knocked him out. And it's not like Buster Douglas was an up-and-coming fighter. He was a journeyman, a nobody. But it was a portent of things to come. Then Tyson became unravelled. There were lame-ass opponents he could still crush (Bruce Selden and Peter McNeally come to mind), but when Tyson came face to face with real boxers, real professionals, he wilted. Evander Holyfield destroyed him in the first fight, and would've in the second had Tyson not been gripped by a cannibalistic urge. Lenox Lewis absolutely pulverized Tyson. And then, it dawned on me: It wasn't that Tyson was so great to begin with; it was more that he came up at a time when the competition was weak, and he subsequently ducked difficult fights throughout his career. Wallace Matthews once did a comparison of Holyfield opponents versus Tyson opponents. Without a doubt, Holyfield fought much more difficult fights against much better opponents. Tyson was carried. Holyfield wouldn't even entertain the thought of fighting a guy like Peter McNeally. For Tyson, guys like Marvis Frazier, Peter McNeally, and Bruce Selden were meal-tickets. They were mice thrown into a snake tank. Tyson never had to contend with a mongoose, and when he did, the mongooses (Lewis, Holyfield) took him down without much of a fight. It was reminiscent of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer becomes the champion of his karate dojo because he fought 10-year-olds. Of course Tyson was dominant, given those odds.

And so, the only debate regarding Mike Tyson that could be made at this point is whether he was a casualty of poor choices and bad living like Dwight Gooden and/or Darryl Strawberry, or whether he really was the dominant boxer we all thought he was at the beginning. I'm starting to think this guy was a mirage. Last night might've proven it.