30.06.2004
Mike Tyson at 38
Mike Tyson, again, lives to fight, another day. Fight Britain's nice guy underachieving Danny Williams, as it turns out. Civility has come over the hitherto foul mouthed, ex-champ celebrity misfit Tyson. Phenom to celebrity to champion to curiosity to icon to ex-champ to criminal to convert to comeback kid to outcast to raver to survivor to caricature to has been to gambler, the evolution as devolution of Mike Tyson is thee melo drama of his generation in the world of sports. Let's give him credit, while we are thusly tempted, for acting the part of a gentleman in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday. Not an ear lob was nipped, not a predatory slur was decreed. Those famous gold teeth wrestled only with fractions of smiles and giggles. For all of his bi-polar, self-loathing angst, Mike Tyson has announced his intention to get back into the ring, on a regular basis. Yes, you heard correctly, on a regular basis. July 30 is meant to be just the first of eight fights in the next two years. No, his medication appears to be functioning perfectly these days.
Sure, we have heard most of this story before. Telling ourselves that Mike Tyson does this soft selling retro acting about every five years isn't as off putting as we may have expected. As far as photo ops go, Tyson did well in Kentucky. For what ever we may decide it's ultimately worth, round one to Tyson.
Tyson manager and advisor Shelly Finkel confirmed Tyson's willingness, if not eagerness, to become an athlete once again, an athlete of the squared circle. What a difference a court settlement with Don King can do for an aging fella. Netting that 16 million certainly put to bed most of his creditors. Now Tyson has to get flush with cash; though Finkel says a financial plan is finally in place for the man who has not been able to keep financially afloat, after having netted take home pay some where around 80 million. The thing is Mike may be looking decently fit, behaving civilly for the media these days, to be sure, but it's been over a half decade since he's trained and lived like a world level fighter. Longer actually; that's supposed to be a secret though. We don't even have to x-ray the image he's presenting to us. Mike Tyson wants to fight or at least says he does. Fine! The news goes forth. Tyson-ites dream of 1988, invincible Iron Mike striding forth, having risen from the depravity of his surrealistic existence.
What matters, or what one may wish to ponder is that Mr. Tyson himself, only a few months ago, was telling us that he simply has no real desire to train for fights any longer. Disinformation? Spin coming home to roost? Of course that was yesterday. And of course boxers, the very top level ones, always contradict most every quotable thing they utter. Not to worry. Tyson wants us all to know he's just happy to be among the living, the breathing and the gainfully empowered. It doesn't really matter how many boxing people have called him the poster boy for the decline of contemporary boxing. Being the Anti-Ali will not negatively impact his future earnings, say the boxing industry equivalents of pollsters.
Tyson will always be, in some collectively elemental way, the wonder boy who didn't become the living legend of the heavyweight division. Heir to John L. Sullivan, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, himself. Tyson the fighter, the dominant force of his generation is frozen in time, June 27, 1988. He's leaning over Michael Spinks, light heavyweight legend and Larry Holmes successor, Spinks literally folding under the menace and power of Tyson's electrical all out power hitting aggression. For the post Holmes boxing fans, that image crystallized into iconic immutability. That was Mike Tyson. The subsequent unfolding of his life and boxing career became a terminal descent pattern of mitigation and encroaching mediocrity. He drove his Mercedes into a tree, on purpose? He left Tony Tubbs roughed him up at camp. And everything got worse from there. But that one moment of perfect lasts, it's radiation for the faithful ever charged with meaning.
Lennox Lewis, with his sledge hammering disposal of Tyson June 8, 2002, that Mike Tyson the force of boxing's truest nature was dead and gone. But that was just the body, just the falling of a man in black trunks, who'd been paid a small fortune to play yet another character in the epic of his own misfortune. And the defeat to Lewis, Tyson's limited stamina and over all predictability as a pure puncher doesn't matter either. The fact that Tyson has disdain for himself and most all of those he encounters when ever he has to "do his boxing bit" is beside the point. There is not new and improved Mike Tyson. Their may be a man who's trying to be a better father and companion and friend to those who truly know and love him. Hopefully that's happening in his life these days, these hours.
Today Mike Tyson turns 38. He's turning back the clock in terms of his standing as a money maker, only insofar as he can defy the time he's misspent, the diffidence he's allowed to become his prevailing attitude in being a prize fighter. You can only make a pretense of being a fighter for so long. Even Mike Tyson knows that he's got to go back to work now, if he wants the money being forecasted for him. Though in some of what he says, the sound of a tired Roberto Duran claiming dynastic rights to make money for simply being Roberto Duran, ekes out. Just what kind of paper heavyweight tigers does Tyson imagine are out there for the shredding? He's not ready to eat anyone's metaphorical children at this point in his rebirth proceedings.
Mike Tyson has never the less intimated, if not declared, his interest to punch his way to more millions. Nothing on the landscape in the heavyweight division in 2004, it seems, gives him pause. Those who hold belts or the distinction of being titlists such as John Ruiz or Chris Byrd or Lamon Brewster are there for the taking, at least that's what Shelly Finkel and Don King are whispering to Tyson. Somewhere not too deep in the soul of the ex-champion he must believe they are there for the taking as well. Just what Mike Tyson Iron Mike believes can be reconstituted no one knows. We all have our ideas, our doubts, our estimations. One thing is for sure, Evander Holyfield was no doubt ripping into the heavy bag in the gym at his Atlanta mansion. Tyson-Holyfield III? One could probably bet on that morbid finality making it into the mix, should Tyson really have something left in the tank. Lennox Lewis? Surely he could be made to chase folly for the short end of say, 40 million, for fighting the winner of Mike vs. Evander.
Yes, that's just how brutalized the heavyweight scene may become in 2004-2005. One wonders what kind of HBO narratives await us, should Mr. Tyson prove to be even a shadow of his former self. This could be a year of reckoning for the reliably caustic and critical Larry Merchant - defender of the classical faith of big time boxing - shamed into describing this antic hay of a boxing season for the big men. One reason for all the dread will be that Team Tyson and Evander et el. will have no interest in anyone name Klitschko. Mark Taffet (HBO head honcho) may not know it but Klitschko the elder is not invited to Tyson's latest and perhaps last coming out party.
Quelle: http://secondsout.emojo.com/USA/news.cfm?ccs=229&cs=13735