Ebenfalls nach dem Nielsen Fight
Commentary: Is Tyson following Liston's footsteps
By Jason Probst
Mike Tyson did little to solidify his standing in the heavyweight division with a seventh-round TKO of Brian Nielsen Saturday night in Copenhagen, Denmark
Since getting sprung from his second prison term in 1999, Tyson's song remains the same, and the formula is growing stale with every passing chapter -- Tyson, with the same tired entourage of hangers-on and yes men, travels to a new country, invokes a maelstrom of media coverage with the fascinated Europeans who still savor his every move, no matter how innocuous, and fights a no-hoper in a blowout, yet leaves the large questions lingering. It is not known what his entourage members have for occupation on their W-2 forms at tax time, and it's getting to the point that Tyson might soon have the same problem because he seems less and less a fighter and more like the world's longest-running rehab project.
In building his credentials for a heavyweight title shot -- he remains the WBC's mandatory challenger and is guaranteed a shot next year -- Tyson needs to show the fire and fury of his old self. More and more, though, that image seems an elusive one dissipating in the stale recitals he gives.
In short, little is answered because men like Orlin Norris, Julius Francis, Lou Savarese, Andrew Golota and now Nielsen did little more than fold quickly or quit. There are no moments of drama as the prey is eaten up, sans resistance, or simply dispatched on the heels of a weird ending. It's cruel theater that passes for sport, occasionally punctuated with flashing glimpses of Iron Mike's dulled skills.
Nielsen was tough. He struck lengthy, artless poses on the ropes, and Tyson obliged him with hammering body shots. Nielsen seemed to have the sole important quality for an opponent at this juncture in Tyson's comeback -- his meritable quality as a fighter was lack of any. He occasionally slapped a punch, and mugged the classic palooka's repertoire of ya-didn't-hurt me, but judges do not score for clowning, not even in Denmark, and Tyson chugged ahead and kept hitting him.
The fight could've ended in the third round, when Tyson, stumbling across his old form, unleashed a three-punch combination. He missed the last one, a doozy of a right that whisked past Nielsen's chin as he crumbled backward, his mind willing but legs otherwise. The game Dane got up and insisted he was OK, and referee Steve Smoger -- who editorializes and comments during a fight so often that it makes you yearn for the silent authority of a Mills Lane -- sent him back to the grinder for more punishment.
Nielsen kept posing, laying on the ropes, hoping to tire Tyson out, but while the first part of the strategy worked -- surviving the lethal opening assault -- the Dane simply had nothing left from the punishment. It's possible he might not have had much to begin with, because the few blows Nielsen did throw belonged in the novice amateur ranks. Because of this, Tyson's defense, chin, and resilience were never tested.
Questions that were not answered abound, and the key one here, in assessing Tyson's chances against real competition, is stamina. His opening fury was followed by his characteristic blue period, where he pauses and contemplates his next move, like a man standing in front of a buffet table, so riddled by hunger he cannot decide what he wants.
It was in these same periods of clinching and pushing that Evander Holyfield knew to go to work on him, and whoever he fights for the title next year would be well advised to do the same. But it's also equally likely Nielsen registered so low on the Threat-O-Meter that Tyson, needing the rounds and work, simply gave himself a blow when he needed it to smooth out the kinks his game.
So, the kinks got worked out, and Nielsen took six rounds of punishment, finally folding before the seventh and telling Smoger he'd had enough. Smoger responded with "I love you, kid," and walked over to the victor's corner with news of the capitulation.
Except for the one burst in the third round, Tyson's combinations were absent, as they have been for a decade. He had gotten some rounds in -- compared to logging 11 in the past four years -- and "gone deep", that is, fought in that kind of fight trainers and experts use as a reference point to see how a fighter adjusts to the task at hand.
Going deep always has been Tyson's undoing, as his opening blitz and rain of leather were unleashed and whatever happened, happened. It's tough to have a backup plan when you're a 5-foot-11 heavyweight, but other men of his stature -- Frazier and Marciano -- trained hard enough to overcome problems of size and reach. Tyson didn't do it consistently in his prime, and scaling 239 pounds -- 16 more than his previous high -- it seems he's fallen into the common trap of heavyweights who get into lifting iron and similar folly. He certainly didn't seem any quicker, and was lead-footed even against the plodding Dane, whose footwork will never be confused with Muhammad Ali's, or even Ali Macgraw's.
"I need two more fights before challenging for the title," Tyson said afterward. He will certainly be rooting for Lennox Lewis on Nov. 17, for if Lewis is unable to dispatch Hasim Rahman, Tyson will be in the curious position of being the mandatory challenger for a Don King-promoted champion. Furious at King for allegedly bilking him out of millions, Tyson would have to get the shot at Rahman, but it'll be interesting to see how the coiffed promoter dangles the shot to persuade Tyson to drop his $100 million lawsuit against him.
In short, Tyson is faced with serious roadblocks in a tricky game of debtor's prison. He owes various creditors -- promoters, Showtime, and the IRS among them -- millions of dollars, and they're banking on keeping his value intact while the debt is paid off. That helps explain the concession of softies the last three years. Tyson's clock is ticking, meanwhile, and having turned 35 this summer, it figures his time is running out. It's a sad tableau unfolding, and more and more the path of Mike Tyson seems to eerily parallel that of his idol, Sonny Liston.
Liston, like Tyson, was the feared man of his era before folding twice to Muhammad Ali. Tyson lost to Douglas and Holyfield. Liston's collapse came from a "Phantom Punch" from Ali in '65 that was a scandal that devastated boxing and delivered a blow to the sport's credibility. Liston left whatever shreds of credibility he had in then folding in Lewiston, Maine, a year after quitting on his stool in Miami and giving up the title he never got back.
Tyson's ear-biting of Holyfield was virtually the same incident all over again, and the fact he squandered a bona fide chance to regain his crown was not lost on the boxing's power brokers.
Since then, he's been on the move constantly, quibbling with various state commissions about reinstatement, fighting overseas, and pulling out of bouts more often than he shows up. Tyson needs to be medicated to stay on the straight and narrow, which is of course a relative term. But the vexing problem is that his meds reduce his aggression to the point he does not want to train. The balancing act is not pleasant to observe, as closer to each fight, the effects of his deprivation are apparent.
Liston never was accepted in boxing's main circles after the fiasco in Lewiston, and fought in exclusively in Sweden for the next four years, facing a collection of no-hopers far removed from the contenders he'd torn through a decade earlier. It was Tyson-esque, and Tyson identifies with Liston for the same reason he can rattle off Nietzsche in between bits of bipolar fury and canned verbal antics -- he sees a familiar path to his own.
In 1968, tired and frustrated from barnstorming in pithy locales like Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Juarez, Mexico, Liston barged into the office of Nat Fleischer, editor of RING magazine, whose published rankings carried serious credibility. Liston, sensing the deep freeze on him from Lewiston was still in effect, slapped his monstrous hand down on Fleischer's desk and demanded fair play.
"And where do you think you should be?" asked Fleischer.
"Top of the heap," muttered Liston.
The freeze never thawed, despite Liston's protestations, and his end came in 1970. After a shock knockout loss to fringe contender Leotis Martin -- who would've been lucky to survive a stare down in Liston's prime -- Liston beat Chuck Wepner in a fight where some suspected he double-crossed the mob, who purportedly wanted him to take a dive.
Liston died in 1970 in mysterious circumstances that some called a drug overdose, and others called a mob hit. Sonny liked Vegas and moved there in the last years of his life, and they welcomed him with open arms. Liston's past caught up to him, just the same. Tyson lives next to Wayne Newton in Vegas and likes the neighborhood. People treat him well and he seems happy there.
As he nears the end of his career and faces recurring problems with the law, the former champion often refers to Liston's similar plight as a source of commiseration for him. We can only hope that, with his time running out and his roads heading toward dangerous stretches -- which always seem to trigger his worst instincts -- he doesn't abandon hope altogether when he realizes the end has arrived. Whether or not he gets out of the sport before time runs out on him might be the toughest fight of his life. Will it happen in the ring? Time will tell.
