You'll miss him when he's gone. By Steve Compton of boxinginsider.com I waited to write this article until after the major media hype of the Tyson-Lewis fight had blown over. After watching what amounted to HBO giving itself a blowjob tonight over the result of the above-mentioned fight I decided to add my two cents. I cant count the number of times I've asked this question and I repeat it once more: If Mike Tyson was largely a media created myth then what does it say about Lennox Lewis that this fight was to be considered his defining moment. Ill tell you what it says: He's a mediocre champion in a mediocre division who two fights ago was KOd with one punch by a Buster Douglas level opponent (a point even HBO admits) for the second time his career. Lewis is a fighter whose career has now been defined by a one sided beating of an over the hill fighter in his seventeenth year as a professional. In the now immortal words of Larry Merchant _SO WHAT!_ Lets put Lewis' career a little more in perspective: His two biggest, career defining wins have now come over fighters well past their best and well into their thirties: Holyfield and Tyson. Its this writers opinion that he didn't even deserve the decision in his second fight with Holyfield, just as he didn't deserve the decision in his fight with Ray Mercer. It took him two tries to beat Oliver McCall a lunatic drug addict/former Tyson sparring partner and two tries to beat Hasim Rahman a mediocre fighter even for a heavyweight who has never beaten a top ten fighter' with the exception of Lennox Lewis who as stated above fell down for the count after one punch. Its still the same Lewis who has defended his title against such worthy opponents as Frans Botha (who Tyson was criticized for fighting as a tune-up when coming off of two losses and a year and a half layoff. He's still the same fighter who lost every round to Frank Bruno before landing a desperation haymaker on the only British heavyweight chin worse than his own. He's still the same fighter who was awarded a meaningless paper championship not once but twice, the first time while he literally sat on a beach in Jamaica and the second time after he had beaten a fighter who spent his training camp in a drug rehab facility. While we are talking about HBOs glee at obliterating the 'myth' of Mike Tyson lets not forget that HBO put itself on the map in the mid eighties by constructing that myth. Was it really a myth though? The anti-Tyson media seems to think so despite the fact they too were guilty of keeping the ogre in silk sheets. For weeks leading up to the fight the media was in full swing trying to blast holes in the Tyson mystique, for example, the assertion that Tyson has always had trouble with taller fighters. I found this funny considering Tyson has only faced two fighters in his entire career that I can recall being shorter than him: Hector Mercedes (Tyson's pro debut) and Buster Mathis (Tyson's second fight after being released from prison). With the exception of Orlin Norris every other fighter Tyson has faced has been noticeably taller and on several occasions they have been as tall as Lennox Lewis. Tony Tucker had the same dimensions as Lennox Lewis and was trained by Emmanuel Steward. Tyson out jabbed Tucker and dominated the fight losing two rounds at most. He handed a prime Jose Ribalta a one sided beating. He beat Razor Ruddock silly twice putting him in the hospital for two weeks with a broken jaw the second time around. He didn't lose a minute of the two rounds it took smash Andrew Golota. Tyson punished Tyrell Biggs before dispatching him in brutal fashion. Mitch Green and Bonecrusher Smith couldn't win a single round between them against Tyson despite having significant height and reach advantages. He's still the only man to KO Larry Holmes who had a significant height and reach advantage over Tyson. In fact if one inspects the tale of the tape closely you will quickly notice in an age of super heavyweights Tyson is the smallest Heavyweight Champion since Rocky Marciano who retired from the ring FORTY-SEVEN years ago. Rocky was a professional half as long as Tyson, 8 years, literally. Marciano struggled with a forty something light heavyweight in his last fight in his eighth year as a pro. Anyone want to guess how Rocky would have looked against Lennox Lewis in his SEVENTEENTH year as a pro? I didn't think so. That brings me to another point: What did Joe Frazier look like in his seventeenth year as a pro? Actually Joe was retired. Sonny Liston, a fighter Tyson has been compared too was just coming off a ninth round KO loss to Leotis Martin, a Buster Douglas level fighter. Liston would be dead within a year. The great Joe Louis, in his seventeenth year, had just been KOd in eight rounds by Marciano. Jim Jeffries was retired before he saw his 17th year as a pro. Jack Dempsey also retired well before his 17th year as a pro, as did Tunney, Baer, Sharkey, and others. The fact of the matter is that heavyweights, great or not, rarely make it to their seventeenth year as Tyson has and more often than not it's not a pretty picture. Such was the case with Ezzard Charles, Jack Johnson, and Muhammad Ali who incidentally in his seventeenth year as a pro was just coming off of controversial (read: gift) decisions against Jimmy Young and Ken Norton, and on his way to lackluster showings against Earnie Shavers, Alfredo Evangelista and a loss to seven fight veteran Leon Spinks. The point is that Lennox Lewis didn't beat the boogieman, and he certainly didn't beat a circa-1988 Mike Tyson. He beat the ghost of the ghost of Mike Tyson. This brings me to another point that the anti-Tyson media repeated ad nauseous: This was that even in his prime Tyson's most impressive performance came against a light heavyweight, Michael Spinks. Lets clarify this for people and bring this point into proper perspective. Spinks is one of the truly great light heavyweights of all time. In fact, the most recent issue of Ring Magazine 'The Bible of Boxing' lists Spinks as one of the top five light heavyweights of all time (#3 to be exact). Furthermore, what would you ask of a monster like Tyson when he gets in the ring with a light heavyweight? Destroy him? The record says Tyson KO1 Spinks. More importantly Tyson only let Spinks get as far as the first second of the second half of the first round. You asked he delivered. It doesn't get better than that. Take Lewis for example, didn't he fight a light heavyweight for his title, Evander Holyfield? Lewis turned in the non-performance of the year twice in two fights and was damn lucky to get the win the second time around. Didn't Holyfield lose his title to a fat light heavyweight named Michael Moore? Didn't Marciano make his name fighting light heavyweights? Jack Johnson's title winning fight came against a guy who was little over a middleweight by today's standards and he actually defended against the middleweight champion, a circumstance that wouldn't even be allowed today when one considers that Johnson outweighed his opponent by nearly fifty pounds. Jack Dempsey was another heavyweight fighter who lost his title to a light heavyweight. Joe Louis was beaten by and struggled against light heavyweights on numerous occasions. The fact of the matter is that when Tyson went into the ring against Michael Spinks he held a negligible advantage in weight and conceded advantages to Spinks in height, reach, experience in both championship fights and super fights, etc. You asked, Tyson delivered, 91 seconds. So yes, Lewis beat the bully the only bully I can remember who picked on men bigger than him and won, but that doesn't change the fact that this Tyson was the ghost of the man who made such an impression on the world 15 years ago that he entered the ring at only two to one odds despite huge deficiencies in height, reach, weight, and a maelstrom of personal problems. It was a ghost of the man that made such an impression on the world 15 years ago that even at this advanced stage in his career he was able to break records for highest grossing PPV event, highest grossing gate revenue, largest international TV revenue guarantee, highest grossing closed circuit gate of any PPV event. You can believe Lewis wasn't responsible for that; he couldn't even sell the tickets he scooped up for his fans in Britain. I'm going to explain why Lewis cant sell like this and Tyson can so pay close attention because it debunks another anti-Tyson media myth: The media would love for you to believe that half of Tyson's fans are delusional and still think he's the best fighter on the planet, and the other half are just watching to see what he will do next in the way of illegal or insane acts of violence. Wrong on both counts. Tyson's fans know he's faded and well past his prime. Tyson's fans know that for the most part he isn't a dirty fighter just on the verge of snapping. Tyson fans watch Tyson because he does something that Lewis has never done. Despite his lack of height and reach Tyson enters the ring against bigger men and goes for the KO despite who the other guy is. Lewis on the other hand enters the ring against men smaller than him and fights with little or no passion content to win in any way he can, if the KO comes, fine, if he can jab his way to decision, fine, to hell with what the fans want. A perfect example of this is the Tyson-Lewis fight itself: Tyson enters the ring as the underdog and with almost every conceivable disadvantage and yet who was marching forward? Tyson. Who was laying back and fighting with little or no passion? Lewis. All one had to do was look and listen to Lewis' trainer Emmanuel Steward to understand Lewis' lack of popularity: Steward was literally screaming at Lewis that he had a 'dead man' in front of him and yet he wasn't going for the KO. It was eerily similar to the night when Lewis fought Holyfield the second time around and deserved to lose a decision, Steward had to scream at Lewis to remind him that his passionless performance was not reflecting the fact this was the most important fight of his career to date. That's it in a nutshell. People don't tune into Tyson because they want to see grace and style, they tune in because they want to see someone get KOd whether its Tyson separating a man from his senses or Tyson going down fighting, they usually get it. With Lewis you might get a KO (Lewis smashing someone or Lewis getting dropped by one punch from a bum), but you may also get the most boring fight you've ever seen as was the case with Lewis-Tua. This brings me to my final point. Where are all of the people who called Tyson a coward? First they said he fouled Holyfield to get out of the second fight. Then they said he was trying to avoid Lewis. Then they said he wouldn't even make it into the ring against Lewis despite the fight being set and signed. After Rahmans head doubling in size courtesy of a Holyfield head butt and Tyson taking a monster beating from Lewis without quitting, most of those people have disappeared. It's about time. With the exception of the second Holyfield fight Tyson has always taken his losses like a man without a hint of cowardice. He never stopped trying to win the Buster Douglas fight and came damn close with that uppercut that dropped Douglas. He never stopped trying to win the first Holyfield fight. And despite his severely eroded skills he never stopped trudging forward into what many believed were the heaviest punches he ever faced. Based on that lone Holyfield disqualification he was a labeled a coward. It's a fickle media isn't it? I said it after Holyfield/Tyson 2, and I said it after Holyfield/Rahman, Id have bit the dirty SOB as well. The fact is Lewis beat Mike Tyson, a former great but now greatly faded. It doesn't mean Lewis could beat a prime Tyson (I think Tyson circa-1988 beats the best Lennox Lewis possible in two rounds). It doesn't mean Tyson was a myth either. He wasn't, he wasn't any more a myth than the Joe Louis who was KO'd by Marciano or the Ali who was KO'd by Holmes. Tyson was simply far past his best and it showed. For good or bad Tyson gave you seventeen years of pure entertainment. You'll miss him when he's gone. Mark my words. |
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