Once again perspective?or the lack thereof?rears its ugly head, this time in the form of a decapitated fish?
?Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography? by Mike Tyson will hit bookstores in November. If the book ?Undisputed Truth? is indisputably more truthful than the one-man stage show of the same name, only time will tell. But an excerpt of the book length version of the World According to Mike Tyson is available, and an excerpt of that excerpt is below.
To start things off with a bang instead of a whimper, Tyson, in his inimitable voice, delves into the infamous Bite of the Century.
?Holyfield and I were originally supposed to fight for the second time on May 3, 1997, but I got head-butted in training and the fight was postponed to June twenty-eighth. I was the challenger, so I had to enter the ring first. On my walk in we played a song by Tupac. People think that I would use gangster rap to solidify my image, but that wasn?t the case. I was just listening to good music going in.?
It sounds like Mike is rewriting history. Denying that he wouldn?t ?use gangster rap to solidify? his ?image? doesn?t fly. He wore his street cred like a badge of honor. There was lots of ?good music? out there. Gangster rap, however acceptable now, was equally unacceptable then. I?m not convinced that the ?baddest man on the planet? wasn?t making a statement, despite his avowals to the contrary.
?The fight started and I was feeling pretty good. I was confident, my body felt good, my movement was fluid. I was pretty elusive, moving around, not throwing anything big, just boxing. Then Holyfield butted me again. It was obvious to anyone watching that Holyfield?s tactic was to wait for me to throw a punch and then burrow in with his head. So the head butts were no accidents, they were a strategy.?
In the recent ?Being: Mike Tyson? on FOX Sports, Mike admitted during a sit-down with Evander that he started it by throwing his elbow. That didn?t make it into the book. The blame for what went down is Holyfield?s alone, if the book, as opposed to the FOX series, is to be believed.
?It got worse in the second round,? continues Tyson. ?I started winging some punches at Holyfield and he dove in again and, boom! A big gash opened up over my eye. I immediately turned to Mills Lane.?
Tyson told the referee, ?He butted me!? but ?Lane didn?t even say anything, but he ruled it an accident.
?Now Holyfield started looking at the cut on top of my eye. He was charging at me with his head. He was taller than me, so what was his head doing underneath my head? I was getting frustrated.
?When the third round began, I was furious. I was so anxious to start fighting that I left the corner without my mouthpiece, but Richie called me back and put it in.
?We started the round and I hit Holyfield with a couple of hard punches. The crowd started going crazy. They could feel that the fight had really shifted. And that?s when he butted me again.
?I started feeling weary, like I was blacking out a little, but my anger and adrenaline jolted me back. I just wanted to kill him. Anybody watching could see that the head butts were so overt. I was furious, I was an undisciplined soldier and I lost my composure. So I bit him in the ear.
?From that point on, I don?t remember too much because I was so enraged.
?When I looked at the tape, I must have spit the piece of his earlobe on the canvas because I was pointing to it. It was, like, ?Yeah, you take that.? They actually found that piece after the fight and tried to sew it back on but it didn?t take.?
I?m no anatomist, but it wasn?t Holyfield?s earlobe, which is the soft, fleshy part at the bottom of the ear, Tyson bit off and spat to the canvas. It was the upper ear, which is hard and gristly and generally more resistant to the bad intentions of sharp teeth.
?Holyfield leapt up in the air in pain and then he turned to go to his corner, but I followed him and pushed him from behind. I wanted to kick him right in his groin, but I just pushed him. It was a street fight now.
?The doctor took a look at him and allowed him to continue and then Mills Lane took two points away from me, but in my mind, it didn?t matter. They were all against me anyway. So the fight resumed and he butted me again. And the ref, of course, did nothing. So we clinched and I bit him again on the other ear, but we kept on fighting till the end of the round.?
Tyson is telling a story, his version of a story, and reflection may be inappropriate in this context. But by raising the specter of a whitewash, there are as many questions as there are answers. For example, why had the second fight with Holyfield become a ?street fight? only after Tyson ?pushed? Holyfield from behind? Wouldn?t the elbow to the face have made it a street fight? How about the head butts? And let?s not forget the ear biting. Why is pushing someone from behind so egregious, especially under the circumstances?
?Then all hell broke loose. Holyfield?s corner complained to Mills Lane that I had bitten him again and Lane stopped the fight. I was too enraged to even hear the ring announcer say, ?Referee Mills Lane has disqualified Mike Tyson for biting Evander Holyfield on both of his ears.?
?Holyfield was in his corner. He didn?t want any part of this shit, but I was still trying to get a hand on him. I wanted to destroy everything and everybody in his corner.
?People were pulling me and blocking me and he was standing in his corner, huddled up. Everyone was protecting him. He looked frightened. I was still trying to get at him. I had fifty people on me and I was still fighting the cops.
?Somehow they got me out of the ring. On the way back to the dressing room, someone tossed a full bottle of water at me and someone else gave me the finger. I climbed over the railing and tried to get at them, but my cornermen pulled me back. Then more people were throwing their sodas and beers on us. Anthony Pitts?s $2500 tailor-made suit was ruined.?
Tyson is nothing it if not consistent. It was Holyfield?s fault that Tyson bit him. It also sounds as if the fact that ?someone tossed a full bottle of water? at Mike and gave him ?the finger? were more serious than his having disfigured an opponent. (And the less said about the ruined ?tailor-made suit? the better.)
?Mills Lane was interviewed in the ring and he claimed that all the butting Holyfield had done was accidental. Holyfield was interviewed and he praised Mills Lane.
?I was still going crazy in the dressing room. I had my gloves on and I was punching the walls. John Horne went out to talk to Jim Gray, the Showtime announcer.?
The unsavory John Horne told Jim Gray, ?All I know is that Mike got a cut over his eye three inches long and Evander got a little nip on his ear that don?t mean nothing. He jumped around like a little bitch. The head-butting was going on so long. Come on, one head butt may be accidental, fifteen is not.?
Horne was as unwilling to accept responsibility then as Tyson is now.
?I barely remember being interviewed after the fight. My face was a grotesque mask, all cut up and swollen. I looked like a monster. Then I stormed off. We drove straight to my house where all the women were waiting.
?There were angry protesters outside my gates. People were blowing their horns and screaming, ?Fixed fight!? and ?Move out of the neighborhood!? and someone even threw a fish head onto my property.?
Once again perspective?or the lack thereof?rears its ugly head, this time in the form of a decapitated fish.
?They kept it up until some of my security guys shot some BBs in their direction. After a while, I smoked some weed and drank some liquor and went to sleep.
?Back at the MGM Grand, people were fighting one another in the casino, being sent to the hospital. Gaming tables were knocked over and people were grabbing the chips. They had to close it down. And then they looked at the surveillance videos and tracked down and arrested the people who stole the chips. It was mayhem.?
If there?s anything new in the above excerpt I didn?t see it. Tyson tells a tale we?ve heard a thousand times before with zero analysis or elaboration. What is not included?a bombshell or two?a little responsible awareness?is far more revealing than what is included. Tyson and his collaborator, who never challenged his subject, failed to take into account that there are discerning readers, and discerning readers ask questions as they read, as do discerning writers as they write.
