Reflections On Mike Tyson

I've spent several hours this afternoon viewing "Fallen Champ: Mike Tyson," a documentary produced in 1993, two years after Tyson raped a beauty queen named Desiree Washington. It's a remarkable piece of work for a great many reasons. For instance, the numerous off-key defenses of his actions with Ms. Washington are shocking. On one hand, two of his bodyguards say, respectively, "'People say we touch women's asses. Well, people want to be touched," and "We get accused of reaching out and grabbing women. But if I grab you, that means you're close enough for me to reach you, and that says a lot"; on the other hand, there are the ministers, among them Louis Farrakhan, mocking the idea that Ms. Washington might not have wanted to be forced into sex. In the audience, Don King laughs along at this bit of unhilarity. Such scenes illustrate perfectly one of the central premises of the film, the notion that Mike Tyson was a troubled youth who, when positive role models were supplanted by destructive ones, became dangerous to himself and others outside the ring. (Even with good role models, Tyson was fragile. The first half of the documentary contains amazing footage of Mike at 15. In on scene, following a quick knockout of his opponent at the Junior Olympics, he had to be coaxed back into the building for the next fight by trainer Teddy Atlas. Tyson was outside crying for what appears to be no reason.)

This insight into Tyson, about influences and his fragility, is not original, although the film adds tremendous depth and contour to it. What I found most compelling were two insights contradictory to conventional wisdom, one of which I have long subscribed to and the other of which I had never heard uttered.

The first is a challenge to the orthodoxy on Tyson that I was glad to see someone else besides myself espouse. The traditional line of thinking goes that as soon as anyone stood up to him without fear -- Buster Douglas originally, then Evander Holyfield and others -- Tyson was revealed as a sub-par heavyweight who thrived on intimidation. The bully theory is kind of accurate; the look of terror in his opponents' eyes was at times palpable, and can't have been conducive to victory. But that, along with the sheer power he was blessed with, was only part of what made Tyson great. In reality, Tyson was once a skilled boxing technician who gobbled up fight footage like candy and tied his legendary power to ring intelligence, compounding the threat he posed. By the time Tyson faced Douglas, his boxing technique had long faded. Watch early Tyson, even Tyson from the start of his heavyweight reign, and compare him to the fighter who stepped into the ring in Japan. He was a different boxer. Douglas hit him at will. Early Tyson got hit cleanly only on rare occasions, because of his constant, almost manic head movement. Early Tyson was a ferocious body puncher who also set up his biggest punches with a jab. By the Douglas fight, he swung for the home run almost exclusively and neglected the body, ignoring the old boxing maxim that "if you kill the body, the head will die." Although the documentary does not make some of those points explicitly, it features the first experts I've ever heard making the point that it was more than a bad divorce with Robin Givens and a brave Douglas that did Tyson in that night -- it was rust on his skills that accumulated then culminated in one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Tyson, always a small heavyweight at about 5'10", would have had trouble with the tall Douglas anyway, even if he had maintained that excellent technique, and if his unbeaten reign had survived Holyfield in this hypothetical world (I think it would have), then Lennox Lewis (at least, a seasoned Lewis) probably beats Tyson. Too bad we never got to see if I'm right.

The second revealing point the documentary made to me -- more a question it raised than an argument, per se -- is that Cus D'Amato, the trainer and father figure to Tyson credited with turning him from an armed robber into a semi-dignified champion, may not have been the saintly influence he is thought to have been. Certainly, Cus deserves a great deal of credit. But numerous examples in the film suggest D'Amato's willingness to let Tyson get away with indiscretions may have been too generous. When Tyson threatened a teacher with violence, he was not severely punished by D'Amato. Teddy Atlas said of this incident that it established in Tyson's mind that there were no repercussions for treating people with disrespect. When Tyson sexually propositioned a much younger girl, Atlas took matters into his own hands, apparently threatening Tyson at gunpoint, apparently in part because Atlas was close to the girl in some way. Atlas probably went too far. But rather than work out the differences and righting both wrongs, Cus kicked Atlas to the curb and stood by Tyson. D'Amato died in 1985, shaking Tyson right to his core. It no doubt was one key element of him becoming a "Fallen Champ." But it is clearer to me now than it was before that had Cus lived a few more years, it would not have stopped Tyson from doing something that would have landed him in jail eventually. And that makes all those hypotheticals about what "might have been if" so much more distant, to my lament.




















Too bad this version of Mike was never to return.