All Tyson Needs Is To Be Ignored
Let�s all share a moment of silence for a fellow human being. Poor Mike Tyson, facing his second divorce settlement, is challenging his latest partner in her quest to secure $10 million. You didn�t read that wrong. $10 MILLION!
A week after Tyson lost to Lennox Lewis in June, Monica Turner Tyson, a pediatric resident at Georgetown University Medical Center, filed to stop her husband from spending his fight earnings. The actual divorce filing, done in January, was still up in the air and this was her attempt to ensure that there was money available to meet her claim. Mike Tyson�s life is a life that has spiraled increasingly out of control.
He emerged in 1986 at the age of 20 as the youngest heavyweight champion in history. Tyson won the World Boxing Council edition of the world heavyweight title when he knocked out Trevor Berbick, the man who had ended Muhammad Ali�s career five years earlier.
The Tyson of the late �80s was a truly fearsome fighter, openly delighting in his ability to inflict pain. If he could still the personal demons, which haunted him since childhood, a place in the pantheon of the all-time great fighters and unimaginable riches seemed assured. Instead, Tyson�s life disintegrated.
A short and troubled marriage to actress Robin Givens ended in 1989. Who can forget the Barbara Walters� interview in which Givens admitted that Tyson had a temper, but their love was enough to overcome any obstacle. Guess not.
Two years later, he was jailed for rape and, although he subsequently regained his titles in a devalued heavyweight field making him seem at peace with the world, the decline continued.
In 1996, his myth of indestructibility, which had survived the Douglas upset in 1989, was destroyed when he was convincingly out-boxed and out-thought by Evander Holyfield. The rematch, in the following year, was brought to an abrupt and shocking end when Tyson bit a piece out of Holyfield�s ear. Tyson, banned from boxing for a year, possessed more of a freak circus show appeal than a serious fighter.
Tyson, needing as many fights as he could get to ward off heavy debts and the taxman knocking at his door, went to Europe to fight. And controversy went with him.
In 2000 he was fined $180,000 for striking the referee during a bout in Glasgow. His after fight rant was as distasteful as ever warning Lewis that �I want your heart. I want to eat your children.�
So why, after two failed marriages, a rape conviction, a career that is a joke and the devouring of an opponent�s ear, are we still watching this guy, a kid from the ghetto who�s had every opportunity to rise above it all and set an example for those attempting to do the same? Someone who makes more money in one fight than most of us will ever see in a lifetime.
The friends I have who are also boxing fans equate a match of his like a train wreck. You know it�s not right to stare, but you can�t seem to look away.
If and when this social loser gets back in the ring, I say we all look away.
As far away as we can.
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