Tyson was someone who used this style due to being smaller than almost all of his opponents. He’d immediately take away their advantage of range by walking straight to his opponents and getting in close. Boxers, such as Marvis Frazier, just couldn’t cope.
Round 5: BIG RIGHT HAND lands for Zinad. Bivol guilty of coming forward without much punching. Bivol scores with a nice right. Given the odds against him, Zinad has announced himself in the fight and claimed one round on this card.
“I would have girls pull up to the limousine and throw their underwear at me and say, ‘Give this to your boss. Here’s my number.’ It was non stop with groupies,” Tyson’s bodyguard and chauffeur Rudy Gonzalez said.
As the hours passed, Tyson grew less wary and more at ease about saying what was on his mind. An autodidact, he likes to discuss characters he’s read about, ranging from Alexander the Great to Constantine to Tom Sawyer, and he harbors a special fondness for Machiavelli. He knows the history of boxing inside out, watches films of Muhammad Ali and other boxers (including himself) most every evening, returning again and again to “Raging Bull.” He’s also something of a homegrown philosopher, peppering our conversation with hard-knock truths: “The biggest tough guy wants to be likable,” he observed. But there are also whole areas of his life he keeps firmly cordoned off, especially the raging Kid Dynamite days: “I think I was insane for a great period of my life. I think I was really insane. . . . It was just too quick. I didn’t understand the dynamics then. I just knew how to get on top, I didn’t know what to do once I got there.” He seemed to be edging closer to a deeper revelation, so I asked him if he had any regrets. He answered with rare snappishness: “I’m too young for regrets. I’m not in the grave yet.”
Like many other retired fighters, Tyson has recently caught the boxing bug again and appears to have reignited his passion for the sport at the age of 53. Yes, he may be old enough to get an AARP card, but after looking at his Instagram, box it’s obvious he still has some gas left in the tank.
Zhang, 40, dominated Joyce in April, damaging the 38-year-old’s eye to the point of closure and sealing a sixth-round stoppage. And when the pair returned to London on Saturday, it took Zhang just three rounds to repeat the trick.
Corbin-Miller is quick to point out that “the belief in Mike and vitriol directed at Desiree” wasn’t limited to Black people. Much of the general public took Tyson’s side. “But I believe it was the long, reprehensible history of Black men being falsely accused of rape in order to brutalize, incarcerate and murder them that influenced the majority of Black people to rally around Mike,” she says. “Mike was also one of a much smaller pool of A-list Black celebrities than we have today. To tear Mike Tyson off his heroic pedestal was, for many, a personal affront. Unfortunately, Desiree Washington, a Black woman, didn’t receive nearly as much unconditional public support.”
And Tyson wasn’t finished, with boxing or with outrages. On October 19, 1998, the Nevada State Boxing Commission restored Tyson’s boxing license. In December of 1998, he pled no contest to a road rage incident and spent a short time in jail the following March. That year he also initiated a $100 million lawsuit against Don King after discovering that his $200 million career winnings had dwindled away, and that in fact he owed $13 million in back taxes. In the summer of 2000, after knocking down an opponent, Lou Savarese, he continued to pound the fighter and even lashed out at the referee. Incredibly, in the post-fight press conference, Tyson revived his cannibal image in remarks addressed to heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis , whom Tyson hoped to meet in the ring some day. “I want your heart. I want to eat your children,” Tyson declared, adding, “I will rip out his heart and feed it to him.”
Others, like Paris-based curator Simay Demiral, take a more laid back approach to styling their briefs. She paired her blue Tekla style with an oversized shirt, Boston Birkenstocks, and white socks, and delivered a masterclass in looking chic while feeling comfortable in the process.
Tyson – a member of the boxing Hall of Fame – came out of retirement to face Roy Jones Jr. in an exhibition match, which ended in a controversial split draw, in 2020. Paul beat former NBA player Nate Robinson on the undercard of that fight.
The British sportswriter Pierce Egan coined the term “the sweet science” as an epithet for prizefighting – or more fully “the sweet science of bruising” as a description of England’s bare-knuckle fight scene in the early nineteenth century.
Mike Tyson’s HotBoxin’ podcast stores several such tales that give an insight into Tyson’s life. That said, US mountain climber, Joby Ogwyn, learned it emotionally. He couldn’t help himself from getting teary-eyed when Mike Tyson delivered his perception of life.
