When he was the peak of his physical powers, many people thought Mike Tyson could not get hurt.
Tyson dished out pain, he did not accept it.
When he was bashing bigger and older men, dribbling poor victims such as muscular Trevor Berbick across the canvas like they were made of straw, it was easy to think that Tyson was invincible.
It was easy to believe he was completely impervious to pain like some comic book superhero.
When he stomped into the ring, wearing no robe, no socks and showing no mercy, there was hell to pay.
Down goes Frazier, down goes Frazier, in this case Marvis Frazier, son of Smokin? Joe.
Tyson was ultimate bad ass, the self-proclaimed Baddest Man on the Planet.
He played the part in and out of the ring.
After thrashing Olympic gold medalist Tyrell Biggs in Atlantic City, and settling an old score from their amateur days when Biggs and others in a clique treated him like an ill-clothed hobo, Tyson sneered, ?How dare they challenge me with their primitive skills!?
Most thinking persons were a bit uncomfortable with Tyson snarling about wanting to hit opponents so hard their bones would be driven upwards in their skull but you were either in for a penny or for a pound meaning you admired his ferocity or you didn?t.
I never met or heard of a halfway Iron Mike fan.
He had wildly enthusiastic fans and few haters.
The heavyweight world was dull and dreary but Tyson brought electricity with his take no prisoners approach.
Yet we were all wrong in thinking he was Superman, in believing he could not be hurt.
Right now, Tyson is feeling the worst pain of his life, the inexplicable pain of losing a four-year-old daughter named Exodus. She somehow got her neck caught in a cord hanging from a treadmill inside the modest Central Phoenix home where she resided with her mother and a seven-year-old brother.
They say the mother was cleaning the house when the brother discovered little Exodus strangled by the hanging cord.
She is feeling the most horrible kind of grief now also. She must be doubting herself, wondering how she ever took her eyes off the little girl.
She must be wracked with self doubts. How could she not?
People were wrong, all of us were, about Tyson not even having a pain threshold.
He was hurt by his estrangement from his older brother whether he admits it or not.
He was hurt by the early death of his sister who battled obesity and asthma and left a few children behind.
I went with photographer Mickey Brennan to the sister?s burial in New Jersey and I remember the mask of pain on Tyson?s face that drizzly afternoon.
He was tremendously hurt by the death of his mentor Cus D?Amato.
He was hurt by the death of co-manager, Jimmy Jacobs, with whom he had a personal relationship. He had no such ties to the money man of the group, Bill Cayton.
You would have to search the North Atlantic to find a colder fish than Cayton.
I think his breakup with trainer Kevin Rooney hurt Tyson also although he would never admit it.
Rooney was the last link to Cus but when it came to a conflict between the trainer and Mike?s wife and mother in law (Robin Givens and Ruth Roper) you know who won. Rooney meant well but he had a thinking and drinking problem which clouded his conduct.
The failure of the storybook marriage to actress Givens hurt him deeply also. Tyson also had a complex about his looks, about not being attractive to beautiful women.
But then he snagged Rocking Robin or did she and the mother in law snag Tyson?
When the marriage busted up, Don King pounced on Tyson the way Tyson pounced on opponents.
Rooney sounded the alarm and one day up in Catskill he badmouthed the promoter as I spoke to Tyson after a workout.
“I know what do, Kevin,? Tyson said. ? I know what to do. Cus used to tell me, ?When you encounter a snake in your room, you keep the lights on and watch that snake.?
Still, Tyson was soon in the greedy clutches of King the way he had been in the greedy clutches of Jacobs and Cayton. One of their schemes was to “will” Tyson’s contract to their widows, hence his reference to them as “the white slavemasters.”
Always, it seemed, Tyson was a pawn in somebody else?s rigged game.
He made, they say, $140 million and it went out the window. One guy in the entourage took a Tyson limo, ran it down to Tijuana from LA and then reported it stolen. It was sold, not stolen, but Tyson never bothered with such things.
He was going from rags to riches and back to rags and it seemed like he didn?t care. All those material things he possessed, they could not possess him.
Frank Bruno hurt him with a wicked shot in their second fight. Tyson told me the next day, when he took me and one of his female admirers and a bodyguard to a movie, that it was single hardest shot he had ever been hit.
Imagine, Mike Tyson hit and hurt. But he then polished off Big Frank.
Evander Holyfield never mythologized Tyson. He never saw as anything but another fighter.
Holyfield played rough and he played dirty. He got over on Tyson twice although it cost him a piece of one ear.
Palookas named Brian Nielsen and Irish Kevin McBride clocked him. His bout with Lennox Lewis was really a joke because Tyson had stopped caring about being the Baddest Man on the Planet.
He made his mark, an indelible one, on boxing. The kid from 178 Amboy Street, in the worst slums of Brownsville, Brooklyn, plastered his name in capital letters on the history of his chosen sport.
The sport never hurt him like the tawdry business wounded him.
?It?s a hurt business,? Tyson often said philosophically.
So is life because life can only lead to death
.No boxer ever hit Iron Mike like this tragedy has.
You look at Tyson?s face today and you tell me.
His heart has been ripped from his chest and then stomped on.
You think Iron Mike is impervious to pain?
Michael is a former sports columnist at the New York Post. He was a criminal defense attorney and worked for sports legends Howard Cosell and Don King. Marley also operates Boxingconfidential.com. Email him your thoughts. He makes it a practice to always recommend Pacland, Philboxing and feisty upstart Pacfanscorner.
