https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaGU9kxA4Qo
If you’re an American boxing fan old enough to have followed the sport for around 30 years or so, then you probably remember the excitement generated whenever young Mike Tyson stepped inside the squared circle. An aura of invincibility surrounded him as he left a path of total destruction en route to becoming the youngest heavyweight champion ever.
https://youtu.be/ULDQc_T1m0g
SHOWTIME Sports® is commemorating 30 years of SHOWTIME CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING with a year-long celebration that will highlight the biggest, most memorable and exciting SHOWTIME fights spanning four decades.
Michael Gerard Tyson was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 30th of June 1966. His upbringing came on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville, the latter in particular a dangerous landscape littered with abandoned tenements. His single parent mother had children but no husband and little money. Tyson remembers her as a person incapable of much affection. At 12-years-old Tyson is carrying a gun, mixed up with drugs and violence, and running with the wrong crowd although – as he remembers – there was no other life available to people like him. Or so it seemed.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the biggest upset in boxing history, and quite possibly the entire history of sports. Twenty-three year old “Iron” Mike came into the fight with an incredible record of 37-0, with all but four bouts ending by way of knockout – most in the early rounds. Along the way, Tyson had picked up the WBA, WBC and IBF heavyweight titles, making him the undisputed heavyweight champ and one of (if not the most) feared boxers in the history of the sport. His opponent James “Buster” Douglas came into the fight at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan with a 29-4-1 record, and had been knocked out three times in prior bouts.
A number of years ago, when speaking with the superb KO Magazine, heavyweight icon Mike Tyson spoke about when he may have been at his blistering peak. Many times, Tyson had heard “experts” say he was at his very best when blasting out the previously unbeaten Michael Spinks, in a mere 91-seconds, in 1988. However, when asked by KO when he was at his very best, “Iron” Mike responded by saying he was “pretty good the night I beat Alex Stewart.”
By the time of the fight that took place on this very day in 1990, Tyson had lost his cloak of invincibility at the hands of one James Douglas. But was Tyson, as fast, as compact and as ruthlessly determined to prove the loss in Tokyo was a mere fluke, indeed at his very best the night he blitzed through power-hitter Stewart?
When many consider a fighter like Mike Tyson against the early heavyweight greats they either dismiss the ability of the old-timers and consider them “too small” or go the other way and canonize them above modern fighters. The critic will weigh the likes of Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey in their day versus Tyson under modern rules. The first misconception that the old timers couldn’t fight is simply not true and while size does matter it can be trumped by ability. The latter point of comparing fighters under different rules is just not a level playing field. Let us consider then that we had a time machine and propelled Mike Tyson back in time to fight these men during their heyday. There are two important considerations besides the ability of the fighters themselves and those are: 1) the rules of the period and how the referees handled the fights and b) the gear that the fighters used.
VERONA, NY (June 4, 2014) — Turning Stone hosted “Kings of the Ring: A Conversation with Mike Tyson and Larry Holmes” today to promoted this week’s ESPN Friday Night Fights (see fact sheet below), promoted by Iron Mike Productions, at the resort casino in upstate New York.
Longtime sports columnist for the Syracuse Post-Standard and Syracuse.com, Bud Poliguin, served as the moderator, asking the two Hall of Famers and world heavyweight champions a series of questions, before the floor was opened for the many fans in attendance to ask Tyson and Holmes questions.
U.K fight fans who were looking forward to meeting heavyweight legend Mike Tyson this week in London will be disappointed by the news that Tyson has been banned from entering the UK due to a change in UK immigration law.
According to a news story in today’s Independent newspaper, Tyson has had to scrap his planned book signing at Waterstones book store and will instead appear in Paris, France to fulfill his UK media obligations.
Tyson was to have appeared in London this week to meet with the press and then with the public for the book signing. But now plans to promote his book “Undisputed Truth” have had to be changed.
“There was a change in the UK immigration law in December of 2012 of which we were unaware,” a spokesman for HarperCollins told The Independent. “For this reason Mike has had to change location to Paris to salvage his press obligations for the UK.”
Boxing is an inherently psychological undertaking. It is an activity that exposes the contestants to far more than the simple prospect of defeat: the potential combination of public humiliation and genuine physical harm percolate in a fighter’s mind to a degree that few who have not lived the experience can reasonably quantify. Far from being a mere test of physical skills then, boxing is perhaps one of the purest tests of human will power. Some of the biggest contests in boxing history have therefore been won or lost through cunning, bravery and fortitude as much as they have speed, strength and stamina.
There are, and probably always will be, rumours among boxing folk that say Mike Tyson wanted no part of George Foreman. The two heavyweight greats fought their peak years in different eras, yet due to Foreman’s astonishing 1987 comeback, there was serious talk as early as 1988 that the two lethal punchers would one day meet in the ring. The fight would have been a huge money-spinner but it never happened. Why? Was Tyson, far more mentally fragile than fans, at the time of his reign of terror (and even beyond), could ever have guessed, scared of “animal” Foreman? Or was the fight lost for some other reason? Without getting into that – and what does it really matter why the fight never happened – I make my case for what WOULD have happened had the two legends collided, as talk of the fight peaked, in late 1990.