Please, God, no!
Of all mankind’s abominations, his failures and weaknesses, his indiscretions and foibles, his vanities and his misadventures – surely a society that would permit Mike Tyson to step back into a boxing ring would take the biscuit.
It would be the final nail in the coffin of the already tottering human claim that we are higher beings, capable of reason, integrity and restraint.
Of course, it would all be about the money. Why else would the odious Don King be involved? The shock-haired impresario stood shoulder to shoulder with Tyson this week, having somehow repaired their differences, and claimed that he could create the right conditions for Iron Mike to lace’em up again:
“I think he can still be a fighter if he wants to be a fighter. Listen, whatever it is between Mike, it ain’t about the bankroll. We gonna do what has to be done…So whatever we have to do, we’ll do.”
There was something bile-inducing about their small reconciliation in Las Vegas, where Mike received some rave reviews for his TV commentating on King’s Treasure Island show. Tyson himself made it clear that he was all about the cold hard cash:
“If this guy (Don King) is going to pay for my training — my training team costs a lot of money — anything is possible. I don’t see it happening but anything is possible.”
Not a “no” then. And clearly His Hairdom has been in Tyson’s ear, and planted a seed. Tyson, however, is no publicist and has a degree of intelligence, and I think he’ll find it difficult to live with King’s inevitable rants about a second coming (or is it a third? Or fourth? Or, maybe, a fifth?) when he’ll know in his heart that another fight will be nothing more than an attempt to plunder the public’s pocket.
Tyson will also know that he’s eaten well since he gave up serious training, and he’s as fat as a house. No-one in their right mind would complain about that – if anyone’s earned the right to live out the rest of his life on a couch it’s Mike Tyson- but recovering from that kind of ill-conditioning at the age of 43 is an impossible task.
Don King, of course, doesn’t care. He’d have Tyson chopped into tiny pieces and his head delivered on a platter if he thought that would make a buck. He’s banking on the former champion, who’s thought to have frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars in the last 20 years, still having a nose enough for a dollar to put his health on the line. To hell with boxing’s integrity, or its public perception, or its legitimacy – there’s money to be made.
Which is why with Iron Mike hinting at a comeback, the clamor will immediately go up for him to renew his rivalry with Evander Holyfield. Holyfield is another old-timer who simply refuses to accept that his career is over, and having recently accepted Mike’s very public redemptive overtures on Oprah, Evander may well be feeling all warm and lit up inside about his former vanquished foe, even if he’ll retain bitter memories over Tyson biting off a part of his ear when they last fought 12 years ago.
Holyfield has had his own financial difficulties, which is partly why he continues to rumble on with a career that in truth died 10 years ago. Unlike Tyson, however, he can claim to have been active since their last encounter, and of course his fitness and physical prowess are beyond question.
Add to this the relative ease with which he handled Mike in their two encounters, and should these ageing warriors ever cross swords again there would only be one, very convincing winner.
Tyson hasn’t boxed since 2005, and last won a fight six years ago. In the interim he’s seen tragedy in his private life, and redemption, and been the subject of an internationally-renowned documentary in which he bared his soul on just about every subject out there (including, incidentally, a swipe at his new best friend, Don King, who he said “would kill his own mother for a dollar”). He’s sat on Oprah’s couch and proclaimed himself a new man, a pacifist and pacifier, who has finally been able to step outside of himself and look at the man he was – a man he didn’t like.
It’s hard to see the new Tyson entering the spotlight again and threatening to eat opponent’s children, or their mothers, or their extended family – a psychological state that young fighter relied upon to get him into the mood to fight.
But the paying public won’t mind. You’ll not see footage of an abject Tyson succumbing to journeymen Kevin McBride and Danny Williams, or of Holyfield fumbling through losses to Sultan Ibragimov or Nikolay Valuev, or getting starched by James Toney. There’ll be heroic images of Tyson’s blitz of Trevor Berbick and Frank Bruno and Pinklon Thomas, and of Holyfield busting up James “Buster” Douglas and Michael Moorer. Everyone will be asked to believe that Tyson-Holyfield III carries a legitimacy that it simply does not.
And boxing will be the loser, even if everyone involved gets a bigger bank balance.
