Throughout his 58 years of existence, Mike Tyson has dealt blows left and right, and he has also taken a few slaps. But where he has been struck down by KO has been in the ring of life, which is the hardest of all.
Current due to the fight (or rather circus?) a few days ago at the Dallas Cowboys stadium against YouTuber Jake Paul, 31 years younger, the most interesting thing was not the 17 blows that the former world champion of the heavyweight connected his rival (or parody partner), but the things he said to a journalist who asked him if he didn’t mind making a fool of himself: “I don’t care a shit about my legacy. I’ll be dead soon, so it doesn’t matter. “We are dust and we will return to dust.”
He doesn’t need the money, but at 58 years old he has returned to the ring to make the most absolute fool of himself.
This is the same Tyson whose nom de guerre is “the baddest man in the world,” who coined the phrase that “everyone has a perfect strategy until they get punched in the mouth” and proclaimed that he liked “hearing people scream.” to women, to see them suffer.” Sentenced to six years in prison in Indiana for the rape of model Desiree Washington in his hotel room, he spent three in a cell before regaining his freedom, taking advantage of the time to read Alexander Dumas and Lev Tolstoy, and tattoo his tattoos. names of Mao and Arthur Ashe.
He has only lost to six fighters, the last of them Paul, but his defeats have been notable, as in his twilight against the Irishman Kevin McBride, and in full swing in Tokyo against James buster Douglas, in what is considered one of the biggest surprises in the entire history of sports.
But as I said, it is life that has given him glory but has left him KO. She grew up in a public housing apartment in a Brooklyn ghetto, with her father missing and her mother making a living as a sex worker and sleeping with creepy guys, one of whom she threw a pot of boiling water at (Tyson and his brother spent a good time popping the blisters that had formed on his skin). It is not an excuse for his outrages, but it is the environment in which he grew up, and it contributed to the fact that at the age of 13 he had already been arrested forty times for various crimes.
From teenage prodigy to the great farce of Arlington (Texas)
Tyson’s first professional fight was in March 1985 in Albany, New York (first-round KO victory over Hector Mercedes). The last one, almost forty years later, was the unanimous points defeat, in eight rounds of just two minutes, at the hands of Jake Paul, youtuber, influencer, promoter, millionaire and ardent follower of Donald Trump. One hundred and twenty million people followed the show through Netflix and 72,500 viewers paid 20 million to see it live at the Cowboys stadium, the highest box office recorded outside of Las Vegas. Tyson’s purse was 20 million, and Paul’s was 40.
He found an escape in boxing, when trainer Cus d’Amato saw in him a potential champion and took him to the Catskill Mountains to get him in shape and teach him strategy, becoming the father figure he longed for. It was an instant sensation in the late eighties. He won his first 19 fights by KO, unified the thrones of the Association and the World Boxing Council, and at twenty years old he was the youngest champion in history. Then came the rape, the defeats (he was disqualified for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear and spitting a piece of cartilage into the ring), the physical neglect, the alcohol, the cocaine, the tragic death of his four-year-old daughter, the depression and health problems (stomach ulcers, sciatica…). He faced his demons, and the demons won. It became a nightmarish version of the American dream. The one that no longer exists, and that is why Trump is president.
Iron Man (another of his nicknames) earned 250 million dollars, lost all or almost all of it, bought a 19-room house in Connecticut to “have a wife in each room,” has been married three times, has eight children, He is a grandfather and owner of some legal marijuana farms that give him a lot of money, which he does not lack. Despite this, he has jumped back into the ring, to make a fool of himself. Or to remember old times, to talk about him again, to remember that golden youth. As the song says, the blows that life deals…
#blows #life #deals
