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.

Two More Things To Get Rid Of, Of The Smaller Variety

These may be glorious days for the health of the sport, starting with the biggest fight of all time, money-wise, having just transpired this summer between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. What's more, this fall and winter will spotlight incredible fights pitting the best against the best, the highest-profile against the highest-profile, the most evenly-matched against the most evenly-matched. So glorious is the lineup for the rest of the year that when combined with what's already happened in 2007, veteran boxing commentators are calling it the best year for the sport in perhaps a decade.

Some of boxing's self-inflicted wounds have healed themselves in order to make 2007 what it is and will be, foremost among them the civil war between the sport's top two promotional companies, Golden Boy and Top Rank. But now is the time to be ever-more vigilant. Boxing needs to seize the day and rid itself of its other problems -- the endless number of belts, for instance, and all that silly hugging. I've recently raged about excessive holding, and perhaps I'll someday soon address some of those other, larger topics. But for now I'm advocating something like the "broken windows" theory of crime-fighting be applied to boxing. That is, as the founders of the theory wrote: "Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside." The theory -- disputed by many, I must admit -- holds that fixing those windows immediately is key to prevention of crime.

To return to my original metaphor, below are two of boxing's colds and hangnails, none of which can by themselves ruin the sport, but that must be eliminated for optimal health. Or maybe they're just pet peeves that I'm trying to elevate into something meaningful with some overheated rhetoric. Either way, they've got to go. I'll file these kind of things from now on under the label "cures":

Lennox Lewis as a commentator. I will defend his oft-lamented heavyweight title reign unto my death, but in the announcer's booth, he is nearly as grating as the NBA's Bill Walton. His praise of Andre Dirrell following what I saw as the single most detestable boxing performance I've ever viewed -- he nearly sprinted away from punches and landed only a few jabs a round en route to a horrid victory over Curtis Stevens -- is exhibit number one. Lennox actually said he wanted to see Dirrell again, and he has to be the only one. More recently, Lennox was completely flummoxed about how Daniel Ponce DeLeon knocked out Rey Bautista in one round, because Lennox somehow thought DeLeon was not a power puncher. In fact, a power puncher is all DeLeon really is, and he's very good at it. Had Lennox witnessed even a single DeLeon fight other than the highlights he'd seen of a very poor performance in his most recent prior bout, he would never have said any such thing. I don't belabor him too much his inability to pronounce anyone's name, because boxer-turned-commentator predecessors George Foreman and Roy Jones, Jr. were guilty of the same sin. But from the smallest mis-calls such as mispronunciations, to regular-sized mis-calls such as whether anything like what he's describing is happening in the ring, to the truly awful mis-calls like those of Dirrell and DeLeon, everything about Lennox as a ringside commentator works me into a frenzy.

Referee Laurence Cole. There is no worse referee alive who regularly gets high-profile assignments, but perhaps a zombie would do a better job. He is the beneficiary of flagrant nepotism, multiplied by conflicts of interest. And besides that, he sucks. Cole's father is one Dick Cole, who runs the Texas state department that regulates boxing, where his son regularly receives assignments. Dick also insures boxers; Laurence has more than once been accused of prematurely stopping fights when one combatant was losing, with the sub-allegation being that he did so so as to spare his father's company from having to pay out for any extra damage incurred. One of the strangest things I've seen a referee do was during the Juan Manuel Marquez-Jimrex Jaca bout. When Marquez suffered a nasty cut, Cole took him to a neutral corner and, with his hand over his microphone, uttered a bafflingly inappropriate series of messages. Cole informed Marquez that if the fight was stopped, rules-wise, it was in an advanced enough round that it would go to the scorecards. He told Marquez he was ahead on the scorecards and asked if he wanted to continue. In no way should Cole know whether Marquez was ahead on the scorecards; only the judges know that until the final results are announced. And if Cole didn't know, he was guessing, which is even worse, because he could have been wrong, and Marquez could have lost. And at any rate, Cole shouldn't be in the business of advising fighters -- he's a referee, supposedly impartial. He was fined and suspended in Texas, but only a few weeks later he'd received another nice assignment on TV, this time in Arkansas. Oh, and he blew a call during that fight, if I remember correctly. Type "Laurence Cole" and "controversy" into any search engine, and you'll find dozens of complaints about calls he's made during fights, the kind that have a tendency to influence the outcome. Perhaps aware of his reputation, he did next to nothing to put a halt to the foul-a-thon between Celistino Caballero and Jorge Lacierva that marred the undercard of the rematch between Israel Vasquez and Rafael Marquez. Someone, please, stop Laurence Cole. It wouldn't be premature.











If you see Lennox Lewis in a suit...














...or Laurence Cole refereeing a fight -- it's going to be a clumsy, embarrassing night for boxing.

Knock Off All That Cuddling, Professional Face-Punchers

On the long list of reasons a great many of my friends don't follow boxing is... All. That. Hugging. I don't mean after fights, when it never fails to pleasantly surprise me how two men can spend nearly an hour punching each other in the face, then embrace like old friends. No, the scourge I speak of is what in boxing terms is called a "clinch." It's when one fighter grabs the other and holds him, for reasons that vary from strategic advantage to salvation from a knockout punch for a boxer on the verge of hitting the canvas. Performed excessively, it is illegal, cause for having points docked for judging purposes or even disqualification. And yet, if anything, more -- not fewer -- big-name boxers appear to be relying on excessive holding as a tactic. It must stop.

The heavyweight division has, and always will be, marked by clinching. As this informative HBO article describes, even one of the most aesthetically appealing ring stylists, Muhammad Ali, held. All the time, in fact. It's the only thing about "The Greatest" that irritates me when I catch old Ali fights on ESPN Classic. Some of this is merely a question of size and space. Often, two giant men in a tiny ring will throw their punches and get entangled by accident. They have the option of trying to work their way out of this clinch or holding on until the referee separates them. Usually, alas, they take the latter option.

This heavyweight entanglement is in some ways understandable, but it also is one of the reasons I have never cared much for the heavyweights. Another kind of clinch is even more understandable: the aforementioned hold to avoid being knocked out. No one trying to maintain a grasp of his consciousness should be penalized for holding on for dear life. Sometimes it works and the fighter regains his senses, and the hold suddenly seems almost noble. On woozy legs, stars around his head, a fighter who manages to avoid the KO has done something dramatic. Especially since, quite often, the fighter on the verge of knocking out his man succeeds in wriggling free and putting him to sleep.

No, it is the strategic deployment of the hug that is a plague upon boxing. In the days of Mike Tyson, this strategic hold was more a matter of fright at being crushed by a sledgehammer uppercut. Tyson's victims entered the ring thinking survival, not victory. Fast forward to the 1990s: The most adept modern practitioner of holding is former heavyweight champion John Ruiz, and by my reckoning, he is to blame for the spread of clinching. Ruiz was an up-and-coming heavyweight before he was obliterated by David Tua. For anyone who saw Ruiz' fights with Evander Holyfield, notice in the Tua fight how willing he is to trade heavy blows compared to how he behaved against "The Real Deal." Ruiz realized after Tua that he could not compete in the heavyweight division on the strength of his punch alone, and began his patented "hit and hold" strategy. He would see his opportunity to land a blow, then let his forward momentum carry him into a clinch with his opponent. After the referee broke up the clinch, he would get into position to repeat this hit/hug cycle. If he did this often enough, and his opponent failed to hit him often enough, he would pile up points and win.

Lennox Lewis is the biggest-name fighter since to employ a similar holding-based strategy, but because Lewis had real power, it was never quite as boring as when Ruiz did it -- although it was boring enough to make Lewis an unpopular "baddest man in the world," as the heavyweight champ is sometimes known. For a very, very tall heavyweight, this strategy allows him to stay on the outside, jabbing his opponent at will and mixing in the occasional power punch; when he gets rushed by the smaller man, he grabs him, and that gives the bigger heavyweight a chance to reestablish his favorite distance. His successor as the clear-best heavyweight in the world, Vladimir Klitschko, has now adopted this holding style. That their trainer is the savvy Emmanuel Steward suggests a method to the madness.

But two big-name non-heavyweights now make holding a key to their strategy. Recently, all-time great Bernard Hopkins Ruized his way to victory over fellow future hall-of-famer Winky Wright, not the first time he has Ruized. Ricky Hatton, Great Britain's charismatic little Tazmanian devil, has hit and held his way to several frustrating-to-watch wins. Decades ago, Ali brought a little man's sweet science -- speed mixed with power -- into the heavyweight division and elevated the big man's game in the process. Why taint the little man's game with big man tactics?

This is not mere whining. My friends who dislike boxing are not alone in their disdain for holding. I've actually turned off fights when there was too much grappling. When a true fan of the sport can't stand all that wrestling, doesn't that suggest that this is a big problem? And excessive holding has arguably been the key to victory for several of the fighters I mentioned. Ruiz didn't have the talent to win against the best any other way. Lewis and Klitschko would still be excellent fighters without holding, but their opponents often didn't even get the chance to hit them because of all the copious hugging. Hatton nearly got knocked out by a body punch from borderline talent Juan Urango this year, forcing him to abandon a newly-adopted entertaining boxing style in favor of hit, fall in, hold. And Hopkins, 42, was able to keep Wright off-balance and prevent him from firing off his patented jab by hitting, falling in, then holding him. In these cases, cheating aided the winning, so the impact of clinching cannot be disputed.

The answer to this problem is a simple enough concept. Referees should enforce the rules. When a fighter is holding excessively, as the referee in Hopkins-Wright noted with repeated warnings to Hopkins, he should be docked points. This doesn't happen enough now. The referees need to get reacquainted with the rulebook, as the results suggest, but also as suggested by the HBO piece's quotes from referees. Richard Steele has always been a terrible ref, but his litany of excuses for why holding continues is laughable. Ruiz held and we let him get away with it, so he kept getting away with it, said Steele. Ali held, Steele said, but it was Ali and everyone liked him so he kept getting away with it. And sometimes, Steele said, he would let a hugger get away with it because the huggee was not struggling enough to get out of the hug! This rulebook makes no mention of the criteria proffered by Steele.

Given this, it looks like, barring a powerful public outcry, the best hope for ridding boxing of strategic huggers is individual vigilance. Light heavyweight great Roy Jones, Jr. defeated Ruiz despite a size disadvantage in part because the referee had been lobbied beforehand to be on the lookout for Ruiz' illegal tactics and warned him early and often. That nipped it in the bud. Floyd Mayweather, Jr., Jones successor as the most gifted boxer in the game, would be wise to mimic the Jones team's [;pu when he takes on Hatton later this year. Otherwise, Mayweather might have his perfect record hugged right out of him. And any of my friends I recruit to watch Mayweather-Hatton will say, "See? What's with all that hugging? I told you boxing sucked."