Two weeks ago, having served an 18- month ban for biting a lump out of Evander Holyfield’s ear, Mike Tyson won his comeback fight with a single blow that shattered the hopes of all `right- thinking’ boxing fans. But whatever his crimes, and however unbalanced he may be, there are those who feel he is fighting for them, writes Jim White
What, asked a reporter, had Mike Tyson said to Francois Botha, just before he applied a punch of such force to the South African’s chin that it sent the 114kg man staggering on a comical excuse-me across the ring and ended the fight. “Just things boxers say,” lisped Tyson in that disconcertingly gentle speaking voice of his.
Come on, pushed the reporter (a braver man than most): when the two boxers had grappled at close quarters, whispering evil nothings into each other’s ears, what were the exact words he had used?
“Okay, since you ask,” said Tyson, his upper lip rolling into the sneer that once terrified half of the United States, “what I said was: `I’m gonna fucking kill you, white boy.'”
As the three-ringed circus of Team Tyson pulled into town a week before the fight, it seemed to many that Las Vegas was the perfect place for Iron Mike to take up his ugly trade once more. This city – built on the fortune made from convincing Americans that it offers them the chance of a better life even as it empties their pockets – could provide a platform like no other for what one senior American commentator referred to as “the mini- series that is Mike Tyson”.
Everything here is fake. The long strip of hotels and casinos that form the modern Vegas is stuffed with the ersatz: outside the Luxor Hotel, for example, is a Sphinx made of pre- stressed concrete, life-sized and perfect in every detail, only with those bits that the Egyptian original has lost to the weather thoughtfully restored; there’s a half-sized Eiffel Tower under construction a little way down the strip; an art gallery full of copies of the world’s great paintings; and though St Mark’s Square may be sinking under the Venice lagoon, don’t worry – someone is building an exact replica in Vegas. Every casino boasts entertainment featuring lookalikes: there’s a Will Smith doing comedy at one, the Spice Girls at another, and dozens upon dozens of Elvises – though, of course, one of them might just be the real thing.
It is all about as genuine as an apology from Bill Clinton – and therefore, according to many commentators, ideal for Mike Tyson, 1999 model. Because those who know about these things will tell you that the real Tyson disappeared years ago, lost in a cycle of depression, domestic violence and paranoia. He is now but a pastiche of that bull-like 20-year-old who terrified the heavyweight division in the mid- Eighties.
For various reasons, not least three years in prison for rape and the long ban for biting Evander Holyfield, Tyson had been to work only 11 times in the Nineties when he faced Botha. He had won eight of those fights and lost three; by no coincidence at all, he lost each time he faced a significant contender. Tyson is, say his detractors, on the slide. All that is left is an illusion, propped up by hype. Even the hype is in decline, now that he has parted company with Don King, the electric-haired big mouth who used to manage him, their relationship collapsing in a vortex of $100-million legal claims and counter-claims. “At least with King not around,” said one boxing writer, “there’s a bit more oxygen for the rest of us.”
But what makes Tyson’s decline all the more precipitate, runs the theory, is that he himself knows it’s happening. He is now engaged in the desperate, ultimately fruitless task that faces every sportsman whose powers are in decline: he is trying to turn back the clock. And the futility of the exercise is having major consequences on his mental stability.
Not that you could tell by looking at him. Just like the fake Canalettos and Van Goghs in the strip’s art gallery, he looked to the untutored eye like the real thing. All week, an enormous video screen outside the MGM Grand – the vast casino and hotel complex that was hosting the fight – announced Tyson’s comeback: “Six miles of roadwork, 500 sit-ups, 500 stomach crunches, 30 minutes jumping rope, one hour in the weights room,” read the captions over shots of Tyson sweating, toiling, looking terrific. “Then breakfast.” Which makes him a rarity among visitors to Vegas: the only thing most of them appear to manage before breakfast is three other breakfasts.
At the weigh-in two days before the fight, Tyson looked even better than on the video. When he stood on the scales and stared malevolently at the sea of cameras at his feet, he was a frightening sight – well, as frightening as any man can be when dressed only in his underpants. Muscles were piled on muscles, and his neck was so thick it looked as if it could easily have absorbed a sledgehammer blow to the head. All the vital physical statistics – the 43cm biceps, the 51cm neck, the 30cm fist – remained as they had been in his all-conquering youth.
But boxing, like all sports, is conducted largely in the mind. Or rather, in the mindlessness. The more a boxer has to think, the more he must persuade his limbs to go about their vicious business, the less chance he has. The best boxers move by instinct. Tyson has not been moving by instinct for a decade. Instead of having a clear head, it has become fogged with business and domestic problems, not to mention a seemingly endless battle with the media, which, he is convinced, want only to see him fall. Largely, he is right. He has turned from being the sharply focused fighter of his youth into a man whose mind is so full of angst that it is splitting apart at the seams.
It was only when I discovered at the weigh-in that he has a constant companion-cum- personal assistant that it finally dawned on me why the Tyson story seemed naggingly familiar. The man is called The Crocodile, and he goes everywhere with Tyson. He is, in short, Tyson’s very own Jimmy Five Bellies. And Tyson’s is, in effect, the story of Paul Gascoigne writ large – the timeless yarn of a once-great talent, dissipated largely by his own recklessness, desperately seeking ever more elusive confirmation that he is still capable of performing as he once did.
And, like Gazza, Tyson splits opinion right down the middle, dividing it into two camps, roughly consisting of the press (anti) in the red corner and the fans (pro) in the blue.
As the latest moment of truth loomed, the gap between the faithless and the faithful grew ever wider. This was no longer just a fight: there was a point to be proved here.
“Pound for pound, this is the greatest fighter that ever lived,” yelled The Crocodile at anyone within earshot. “We’re talking hand-to-hand combat. This is the most awesome man alive.” “There’s only one thing you need to know about Tyson,” said one long-time British boxing observer. “He is an unmitigated arsehole who deserves his come-uppance.”
There is, however, one major difference between Gazza and Tyson. Whatever his faults, Gazza is seen by the press as a fundamentally decent bloke, whereas everything Tyson does – from raping a beauty queen to beating up a car driver after a road-rage encounter – indicates that he operates on a different moral code from the rest of us. He is a thug, say his enemies, a crude, unhinged maelstrom of misguided machismo. No, say his supporters, he just takes no bullshit. “Every single person I hurt,” said Tyson in one interview before the fight, “they had it coming.” It’s a theory that probably came as little comfort to his ex-wife, the actress Robin Givens, who was battered insensible by those iron fists.
As the fight drew nearer, Tyson was constantly at it, behaving appallingly at press conferences and living up to low expectations. Some dismissed this as mere hype, an attempt to gain headlines in the hope of selling tickets. True, tickets needed selling – on the day of the fight, they were still freely available, and 3 000 had still not been bought as the bell sounded for the first round – but Jim Gray, the boxing reporter for Showtime, a US sports channel, believes that, for once in Vegas, there was nothing fake about Mad Mike’s outbursts.
He characterised the boxer by comparing him with the recently retired basketball player, Michael Jordan. “One guy named Mike is a true ambassador, who is utterly comfortable within himself. And the other guy named Mike isn’t. The only thing you can really say is that these two people are at totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately for Mike Tyson, he has wasted the opportunity to be a Mike Jordan. For that, we should all feel bad.”
It is an analysis typical of the anti- Tyson camp – Mike is just an unmitigated bad boy, they say – but it fails to acknowledge that the qualities required to succeed in a sport that involves popping a ball through a hoop are significantly different from those needed for one predicated on rearranging your opponent’s facial features. But perhaps that is the point: the real reason why the US’s huge, sprawling boxing media have been so condemnatory of Tyson is that he is the last thing they need. Those who make their living by commentating on a pursuit that grows ever harder to justify could do without someone growling around scaring the horses.
Which may be why, some years ago, an attempt was made to recast Tyson as the thinker and wit the game had been crying out for since Muhammad Ali retired. Peter Hammill, who in the Seventies was one of many would-be Boswells to Ali’s Johnson, was the first to make claims for Tyson’s intellect after speaking to the former champion in prison. Hammill reported that Tyson had converted to Islam, was a student of philosophy and an avid reader of Nietzsche and Machiavelli. Why, he even had a tattoo of Che Guevara on one of his pectorals, which must mean something.
Those who saw him in action last week, though, would have seen considerably less evidence of intellectual capacity than of alarming mood swings. One moment, as he moved through the media tent at the back of the MGM Grand, his entourage in his wake, Tyson was an engaging interviewee, laughing that he didn’t know how his current wife – Monica Turner, a doctor of paediatrics whom he married in 1997 (her previous husband is serving 10 years on drugs offences) – put up with him. The next, he was raging. On several occasions, he lost all control.
Machiavelli would not have been impressed by his response, live on air, to one television interviewer, who had merely asked the kind of question Tyson must have been asked a thousand times before: was he the same fighter as before? “Fuck you,” Tyson screamed in sudden fury. “Fuck you up the ass.” “I think we’d better terminate the broadcast here,” said the interviewer.
“Yeah, fuck you asshole,” yelled Tyson, before being dragged away by The Croc.
The one thing that everyone can agree on, however, is that Tyson has been so constantly exploited throughout his life – by managers, girlfriends, financial advisers, the lot – that he has some justification for thinking that the world really is out to rip him off. Whatever the cause, those who witnessed his outbursts could see that this guy has mental problems. Real mental problems.
But then, there are those who love a bit of mad misbehaviour from their champion, who see Jordan’s ambassadorial behaviour as compromise, who admire the way Tyson so steadfastly refuses to play the game of media nice guy. And they began to arrive in Vegas the night before the fight.
By its nature, boxing tends to attract followers who appreciate physical hardness above all things, and for whom the ability to knock someone out cold is the most accurate measure of a real man. Go to the York Hall, in Bethnal Green, London, to see a boxing bout and you would be hard-pressed to find a meaner-looking bunch of individuals – and that’s just the crowd. But Tyson’s supporters, in particular, have a reputation in the game: they are the Millwall soccer team of the sport. No one likes them and they don’t care.
Vegas is only an hour’s flight from Los Angeles, so it is the ideal place for the tribal gathering of gangstas and homeboys that always enfolds a Tyson fight; the perfect venue for deals to be done, meets to be made and scores to be settled. It was after seeing Tyson beat Bruce Seldon in Vegas in September 1996 that the rapper, Tupac Shakur, was shot dead. And after Tyson’s previous bout in the city, against Holyfield in June 1997, a full-scale riot erupted in the MGM Grand, causing the casino to shut down for two hours, at a cost, rumour has it, of $9-million in lost gaming profits.
Outside the MGM’s arena on the day before the Tyson/Botha bout, a security man filled me in on the arrangements for the fight: “Last time, Tyson fans ran through the casino stealing chips from the craps tables. This time, we’re putting 265 armed cops in the arena. We ain’t taking no chances.” It turns out that, the moment that earlier fight ended with Tyson’s disqualification for snacking on Holyfield’s lobes, shots were heard in the arena. Spectators fled in panic, giving the perfect cover for a heist on the gaming tables.
According to the security guard, however, the thieves never got the chance to cash in their chips. “The casino got them all back,” he smiled. “Let me give you a word of advice, because I know you Brits like to misbehave at sporting events: there’s one place you don’t mess with the management, and that’s in a casino.”
This is the bargain that the MGM Grand makes when it pays to stage a Tyson fight. Like every casino in town, it is touting for business, trying to encourage the punters to use its slot machines, roulette wheels and craps tables, rather than anyone else’s. For decades, the casinos have bought in big-name attractions to suck in passing wallets – and a Tyson fight attracts big spenders: the LA gangsta needs to prove to his peers that he is a serious player, and there’s no better place to do that than in a casino.
The night before the fight, I was sitting at a roulette table, quietly losing $25, when a punter in the leather-coat-and-derby-hat outfit favoured in certain subsections of LA gangland slipped into the seat next to mine. He slapped five $100 chips, specially minted for the occasion with Tyson’s face on them, on the black square. The wheel spun and the ball landed on a red number. He had lost.
“You should have gone red,” I said.
“On the black, man,” he said. “Like my man Tyson, always on the black.” Thus, up to a point, Tyson’s followers and their deep pockets are welcome at the MGM. And that point was reached at about 11pm the same night. By then, there were gangstas all over the casino, smoking big cigars, drinking champagne, greeting each other with complicated handshakes. Despite a conspicuous lack of threatening behaviour, it was then – apparently acting on a pre-arranged plan – that the casino management started easing them out. It was a simple operation: target the black people.
One man, who seemed to have stepped straight off the set of Superfly (why else would anyone be dressed in an ankle-length mink coat, matching mink homburg and mink-covered shoes?), seemed particularly aggrieved at being turned away before the Grand could take his money. He had a point: security had just let Donald Trump walk in, no questions asked.
At the casino’s gold-plated main entrance, security guards, backed up by brown-shirted Las Vegas cops, stopped anyone black from coming in. The tension and mutual distrust was palpable. As they say in these parts, this was fear and loathing. And when you see it in action – this assumption that anyone who is black is a riot about to happen – you begin to understand why these guys identify with Tyson when he complains about white America, and to appreciate why they admire him for refusing to behave by its standards. You can see why they love someone whose power and physique sets off the alarm bells buried deep in the white gene pool.
This is not to say that Tyson is watched only by black gangstas. Plenty of Americans of every hue and profession turned out to see his return to work. The celebrities, too, were out in force, their names announced as they arrived, to let us all know that this was the place to be seen. Jack Nicholson, Pamela Anderson, Roseanne, they were all there, none of them worried that their reputations might be damaged by association with the beast. And there was Ali himself, getting the biggest applause of the night as he tottered his way to a ringside seat, a just-about-walking indictment of the long-term consequences of this thuggish trade. It was a night for dressing up, not just in the celebrity enclosure, but everywhere in the arena; a night for showing how much you had spent on your latest suit, your chunky, gold finger furniture and your woman’s swell new chest.
It was an evening for Vegas-style show.
But the biggest show of all was the demonstration of power up in the ring. It turned out that Tyson’s detractors were wrong this time: there was nothing fake about this fight. Though he was by no means convincing in the early rounds, his boxing skills rusted to the point where his cornermen would have been better off splashing Q20 rather than water on his face, when the end came, it came quickly. The strength of the punch that befuddled the brain of his big, brave Afrikaner opponent echoed around the arena. “Boom!” went the crowd as Botha tottered. “Boom!” went Botha’s big backside as it hit the canvas. “Boom!” everyone shouted each time the shot was replayed on the giant video screens around the building.
And all around the arena, the homeboys were on their feet, acknowledging their man. Tyson had done them proud: he was back, as bad as ever – thuggery, viciousness and machismo had won the day. Once more, the ghetto had got one over the establishment. It was left to the man himself to sum up the euphoria that came from proving everyone wrong. “Me and my brothers,” he lisped to the post-fight press conference, at last apparently able to relax in the only way he knows how, by battering another man into senselessness, “now we’re top of the food chain.”
And, all around him, his enemies – those who want nothing less than to see him fall to the chain’s very bottom – were forced to gird their patience and wait a bit longer for the end. But it will come. In sport, as in life, it always does.