Mike Tyson: A Different Side

I admire Tyson when he's talking about boxing and the old fighters, he's a real enthusiast and boxing historian.

However, even under D'Amato, he was struggling at times to keep his dark side in check.

From another angle I think it's a real shame the way his life turned out, owing millions and carrying on far too long purely for a few bucks. You would have thought with the fate of Joe Louis that boxers would have looked after their well being and money with far more sense, but they never learned. Nowadays they are better managed to earn a few bob and strategically matched up with other fighters to lengthen careers which is fair enough - just not so good for us fight fans who want to see the big match ups as often as possible.

 

Check out Mikes rendition of the Trevor Berbick dance at 2:36

 

Quote from Sports Illustrated, January 6, 1986, "Ready to Soar to the Very Top", by William Nack.

"And then there's D'Amato and the void left in Tyson's life. "I miss him terribly," Tyson says. "The many years we worked over things, and worked over things. He was my backbone. All the things we worked on, they're starting to come out so well. If he was just here to see them, he'd be so happy.

"When I'd get up in the morning, he'd make me breakfast. Now he's not around anymore. God. I'm going to do well, but when I come down to it, who really cares? I like doing my job, but I'm not happy being victorious. I fight my heart out and give it my best, but when it's over, there's no Cus to tell me how I did, no mother to show my clippings to."

At home in Catskill, Tyson keeps pigeons in a coop in the backyard. He feeds them and sets them free and watches them soar in high, quick circles. "They're my brothers and babies," he says. He eats dinner, watches fight films, goes to bed early and is up at dawn to run the roads. "Cus told me, 'Patterson was the youngest world heavyweight champion ever, 21 years and 11 months when he won the title. You'll be younger.' Cus and me, we started out with a job. I just want to finish it."

As I look at young Mike's marvelous smile amid his little friends, so similar to that sheepish, good-natured look he betrayed just after praising Ali on Arsenio Hall's show, I am reminded how Tyson had to make do without parents, without someone who truly loved him unconditionally.

I don't justify his mistakes, but, in contrast, Ali always points to his parents' love as a stabilizing force in his youth. Simply, he wouldn't have been who he was without them. Tyson was a very intelligent young man, and could see through the falseness of the adults around him.

My own parents are both briefly in town right now, and that simple fact has worked wonders for me inside. There's nothing like a parental figure in an individual's life. To me at least, what Tyson did having had such a rotten childhood is admirable.

 

Cus may have kept Mike busy, but not out of trouble.

Cus did a great job of training Mike to be a successful prize-fighter, but it came at a great expense for Mike Tyson the person.

 

And I clearly said that I don't hold his upringing against him. My point was that I don't think Don King made him a monster. The choices that Tyson made, he made on his own. It wasn't King nor anyone else who told him to **** Desire Washington, or deck Mitch Green in a street fight, or bite Evander Holyfield's ear, or abuse Robin Givens, or tatoo the **** out of his face, or go through all of his earnings leading to bankruptcy, or tell Ruddock that he was " going to make you my *****," or tell Lewis " I'm going to eat your kids. "

Sure, lot's of guys like Foreman and numerous others grew up as thugs, but the difference between some of them and Tyson, is that they chose to grow up and change their thinking. Why would we blame King, who by the way made a kid who was a nobody a millionaire?

As for your statement " that doesn't mean that they should be branded monsters for life," No one branded Tyson as a monster. He branded himself through repeated occurences of violence and disregard for the law.

Bottom line: Tyson's down fall was his own fault.....Period.......

 

A good thread? I wouldn't wipe my arse on it. It just proves that evil people are nice to somebody, sometime. Big deal. Ted Bundy was vice-president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. Now, there was a great bloke, eh. :good

 

Brilliant point. D'Amato with hindsight made a huge mistake for Mike in making Tyson a boxer. Tyson's demons were going to get worse the more money, fame and publicity he gained.

Tyson needed a father not a boxing trainer, perhaps if D'Amato had made Tyson face up to his problems, rather than Cus closing his eyes and pretending they did not happen, maybe Tyson would of turned out to be a fine human being, if not an excellent boxer.

 

He is right.

Tysons knowledge of boxing history is enormous.

On this site he could easily be a top 5 poster.

 

Two things:

1. Tyson would have always been a millionaire. Remember it was King who needed Tyson more than Tyson needed King. That Catskill connection made Tyson a millionaire andt and would have kept Tyson a millionaire.


2. Tyson like many others in the sport had a terrible upbringing but did not have that father figure in his life to keep him stable. After King, there was nobody who loved Mike unconditionally, nobody who cared for Mike Tyson the person. Remember this is a guy who as a newly wed was crying in the shoulders of (forgot the reporters name) saying that he "had nobody in the world to talk to" and this is a newly wed.

His public out bursts would have different if he was more articulate and was able to express himself better. His inability to do so made him angry unpredictable and brash.


Bottom line is that all his problems are of his own doing but there's alot more to it than just that.

 

Some interesting points.

Joe Louis had a similar background to Tyson in many ways. His family were driven off their land by the KKK when he was a child and he ended up growing up on the mean streets of 1930s depresion/segregation era Detroit.

The one thing he did have was a good mother who kept him out of trouble and insiled moral values.

Sony Liston also had a violent and abusive farther.

Kind of makes you think that it comes down to the parents.

 

I wouldn´t call Tyson intelligent, but that doesn´t mean that he has no boxing knowledge, I know he knows much about the past in boxing, I only had to laugh, because I thaught at the **** he has done during the last years, and than can´t be called intelligent. But I don´t wanna sound like a smart ass, and I didn´t diss Mike here ore so, I made similar mistakes like him, so I can criticize him here... :yep

 

I'm well aware of the fact that Tyson lacked in a parent figure from the time he was in pre adolecence to the time he was an adult. In addition he was immature for a kid his age meaning that at 22 years old, he probably had the mentality if someone who was more like 16. He was not entirely alone in the world for most of that time though. Growing up from the time he was 13 to the time he was 19, he had Cus and Kevin Rooney. Both men tried to instill stability in him. Lot's of kids lose thier parents and role models around adolescence. It doesn't give them a license to be a *****.