High stakes in Las Vegas: Fear of becoming a washed-up demon will fuel Iron Mike’s ogre instincts in his revenge fight with Holyfield
BOXING:Kevin Mitchell
IN a famous American fight restaurant called Wolfie’s many years ago, Kingfish Levinsky, old and sad, turned to a brother in arms, Muhammad Ali, young and proud, and uttered in front of a bemused clientele: “They ask me why you always win, Cash (as the ex-pug used to call the former Cassius Clay). I tell ’em because you know all about losing. You understand Cassius? You understand how it feels to lose? That helps you keep winning.” Nobody wanted to listen to the old man. Except Ali.
For someone who introduced himself to the world as The Greatest, such truths came more easily than a wider audience might think possible. He’d been beaten up on a regular basis as a teenager in Louisville by a bully he would later “whup” with gloves; he’d lost, bad, as an amateur; he’d had his liberty threatened and his livelihood taken away by his own government. Ali knew about losing all right. Like all the great fighters, though, he was accustomed to coming back from adversity.
What he did not know that day in Wolfie’s, but would subsequently learn in full, was that even he could not keep coming back for ever. In the ring, anyway.
“How’s it feel to lose?” Kingfish insisted. Ali paused, looked at his intent audience. “Naked, King. Naked and cold.”
It is highly unlikely that Mike Tyson has had this dialogue for a long time. Cus D’Amato would tell him, sure enough, that he should use the fear of losing to his advantage – “Fire can warm your cold body or burn your house down,” Cus had said. “You’ve got to know how to use that fire.” But Cus died early; far too early to help Tyson when he needed it most.
When Iron Mike was knocked out by Buster Douglas in Tokyo just over seven years ago, his promoter Don King, not wanting to associate with a loser, tried, unsuccessfully, to fix the result by twisting the very limp arm of Jose Sulaiman, the president of the WBC; when Tyson was belted senseless by Evander Holyfield in Las Vegas last November, King patted him on the back and signed up the winner for the rematch. Tyson that night was the most abject and lonely figure as he slunk away through the stunned but indifferent crowd.
The return fixture is this Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It promises to be an explosive and emotional encounter, defining not just what remains of each fighter’s career, but, more importantly, the shape of Tyson’s destiny. There is a real danger that a third defeat for the most vulnerable of ogres will drain basic survival skills that have already been stretched beyond their limits. Larry Holmes once said Tyson would end up in jail or the cemetery before he was 40. Larry’s been half-right already.
If Tyson loses again, the friends on whom he has lavished cars and money since his release from prison will be gone soon enough. King – if he gets past the courts in an upcoming rematch of his own for insurance fraud – will probably not linger long with Mike. Then Tyson will be in for the toughest fight of all.
King knows a thing or two about switching camps. He stepped over Joe Frazier’s fallen frame to embrace the winner, George Foreman, in Jamaica in 1973; he did it again the following year when Ali beat Foreman in Zaire; he grinned alongside Holyfield in November … and be in little doubt that he will hug Tyson like a brother once more if Holyfield falls apart on Saturday night.
So, there is more at stake here than a version of the world title – the pedigree of the contestants transcends any sanctioning of the bout’s legitimacy by the rabble who run boxing. Holyfield, who took the championship in 11 rounds with a surgeon’s detachment, appears to have maintained his almost manic level of commitment, while Tyson has come out from behind the dubious warmth of his managerial apron strings to declare that he is ready to tear the champion’s head from his sculptured body.
Those of us who are paid to pontificate were so certain last time that Holyfield was risking not just a beating but irreversible damage to what looked like a used-up fighting engine. Now a measure of calm has entered the debate. The odds are about even, with no sure money going in either direction.
Countless reruns of the tape from the first encounter only confirm general impressions that the winner kept his form and focus under pressure while Tyson’s resolve ebbed more from his lack of success with single blows than from a systematic beating by his opponent. Surely it will be more of the same? If, as Mickey Duff observes, Tyson is a bully – “but a bloody good bully” – it is reasonable to speculate that Holyfield has the tools to undermine him again, that he “has his number”.
His trainer, Don Turner, one of the fight game’s better brains, had worked out last time that persistent counters with the right hand would not only keep Tyson at bay, slowing his one-paced and predictable assaults, but would discourage him once the weight of his punch had dissipated. So every time Tyson launched his left, he bought a right: that information will be stuck in Tyson’s computer on Saturday night and it will be fascinating to see if he has the ability and the will to do anything about it.
I think he has: and this is why. If there is one lesson Tyson took away from the first encounter with Holyfield it is that he had underestimated the man’s strength. Tyson had fairly deduced – like the rest of us – from Holyfield’s most recent outings that he was a fading fighter; what he did not count on was that Holyfield’s inner resolve – fuelled, he says, by God – was such that he could lift himself for one more awesome effort.
Tyson knows that now. He will not risk complacency. If he does he is finished, and not just in this fight. Nobody wants a washed-up demon. His only cachet has ever been as the intimidating force of the division. If he is destroyed again, Tyson’s days in the upper flight of boxing, the only place he’s safe, are done. Tyson, no philosopher, is life-smart none the less. He can see the ambush up ahead.
In a way, Tyson was born to lose: from the day when he was two years old and his father left home, through dark, wild days on whisky and drugs, in the despond of conviction for his sexual weaknesses, at every turn with a coterie of users. Now, “naked and cold”, he really is on his own. I get the feeling he will relay his lonely desperation to Holyfield the only way he knows how. Tyson in five.