Mike Tyson Loses Again

[Chisox73]

It appears that the boxing career of Mike Tyson may be over.He lost to unheralded Irish boxer Kevin McBride when Tyson couldn't answer the bell after the 6th round.

Full story here. (news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=531&e=1&u=/ap/20050612/ap_on_sp_bo_st/box_tyson_mcbride)

[Timberwolf]

I am glad Tyson called it a career. Hopefully, he can live a normal life. He does not need boxing whatsoever.

It's a shame how it ended for him. When I was a kid, Tyson was something else. It's really too bad that people are going to remember him for what he did after losing to Buster Douglass. In a way, his life was never the same when he lost to Douglas. Some of the stuff he brought it upon himself and he never listened to the people he trusted.

What he has to do is just look in the mirror and just be a good father for his children and all.

[Teddy Ballgame]

Timberwolf ... I am glad Tyson called it a career. Hopefully, he can live a normal life. He does not need boxing whatsoever.

It's a shame how it ended for him. When I was a kid, Tyson was something else. It's really too bad that people are going to remember him for what he did after losing to Buster Douglass. In a way, his life was never the same when he lost to Douglas. Some of the stuff he brought it upon himself and he never listened to the people he trusted.

What he has to do is just look in the mirror and just be a good father for his children and all.

- T - I would argue that Iron MIke was never the same after his mentor, trainer and surrogate father Cus D'Amato died and then after he fired his other trainer Kevin Rooney and later started to surround himself with hangers on whose onlt ambition was to fleece him, led by the reptillian rascal Don "Only in America" King.

- Had Tyson not lost D'Amato and then cut Rooney loose, he would never have gotten the swollen head and the swollen belly that led to his loss to Buster Douglas and he would have been atop the heavyweight heap for another five years or more.

- Had Tyson not surrounded himself with ne-er do well toadies and con men, he would not have believed his own press clippings and thought he was invincible and needn't bother with keeping in shape and training and taking opponents seriously and living more or less within the law including laws governing spousal abuse, rape, tax evasion, etc.

- Had Tyson not hooked up with King and his siren song about blacks doing business only with blacks (first and last only with King), he wouldn;t have been fleeced for an extra hundred million dollars or more and would have not had to fight so long past his prime just to pay the bills.

- Much like Elvis Presley who, too, was an unschooled kid who became an instant superstar and icon and who was surrounded by sycophants and con men including in Colonel Tom Parker someone every bit and more as criminal and blood sucking a predator as Don King was to Tyson, Iron Mike was a sad case of someone with great talent who was manipulated and steered wrong and robbed by others, was unable to handle the demands of fame and fine print of finances and the physical and psychological requirements of staying at the top of his field and who fizzled out far before his time.

- For me, I've always had mixed feelings where Tyson is concerned. He has done some really disgusting, unconscionable, disreputable and dishonourable things in his life. But he also had a great talent that should have ranked him up there with the greatest heavyweights, the Ali's, Louis's, Johnson's and Marciano's. While the loss of good people around him and the substitution of mercenary predators means that some of the blame for his misfortunes over the pat 15 years is not his alone, he is an adult man who must take the bulk of the burden of responsibility for his mainly misled and wasted life.

- Contributing to my mixed emotions about Tyson, I also feel that he is much smarter than some people think (for example, he is a real student of boxing history) and that he has some very decent human instincts and attitudes (I still have the VCR of the Arsenio Hall TV show of about 1990 where Tyson along with Sugar Ray Leonard pay real and sincere homage to Hall's special guest Muhammed Ali and I am convinced Mike meant everything he said in that graceful and thoughtful tribute).

- So I hope that he quits now while he is $40 million behind (owed to the IRS and others) but not yet seriously if at all brain damaged and that he can get his life together and be, as you say, a good father to his children and able to look back on his earlier days in the ring when he really was a great athlete and champion and smile with satisfaction.

[Royce]

Hopefully, he can live a normal life.

You can't live a normal life with an amazingly disgusting face tattoo.

[Teddy Ballgame]

- STEPHEN BRUNT is Canada's finest boxing journalist. This is his interesting and somewhat sad account of Tyson's last fight.

Tyson's con job fails miserably

By STEPHEN BRUNT

Monday, June 13, 2005 Updated at 3:51 AM EDT

From Monday's Globe and Mail

As he left the arena -- his last exit, surely -- they threw garbage at Mike Tyson.

It wasn't the first time. The night he tried to bite off Evander Holyfield's ear in Las Vegas, the fans did the same thing. But this was different. This was his crowd, a forgiving, supportive group that filled the MCI Center in Washington, desperately hoping to see some hint of past glories. And this time he went out not with a snarl or a snap, but with a quiet cringe.

On Saturday night, Tyson quit on his stool after the sixth round of a fight against a big, lumbering, awkward Irish journeyman named Kevin McBride, a guy handpicked as the least-threatening opponent they could sell to the gullible. It was to be the predictable kickoff of the latest comeback, a chance to build Tyson back into a payday and a title shot.

He'd knock the big stiff out spectacularly, and the way would be paved for bigger, better, more lucrative things, all designed to make Tyson's latest handlers rich, and to help dig the fighter out of unimaginable debt.

Judging by the size of the crowd, and no doubt by the size of the pay-per-view buy-in, the confidence game was already halfway home. Though Tyson had lost his last fight, lost two of his past three, though he hadn't beaten anyone of significance in a dog's age, there was clearly an appetite out there, in the press and in the public, a willingness to suspend disbelief one more time.

Muhammad Ali was in Washington to see his daughter, Laila, fight on the same card, and he visited Tyson in the dressing room as though passing on a blessing -- or perhaps a warning as to what happens when old champions hang around too long.

(When they showed Ali with Tyson on television, though his face was fixed in the Parkinson's mask, he was actually playing one of his cornball jokes -- making little cricket sounds with his fingers behind Tyson's ear. Later, after Laila won her fight, he held two fingers behind her head, like antennae, as she was being interviewed for television.)

Tyson was greeted deliriously during the long walk to the ring, but from the opening bell, the charade was off. He looked drawn and unfocused and older than his 38 years.

In the first round, he was passive, unwilling or unable to charge across the ring and do as expected, writing a quick end to the night with an exclamation mark.

Give McBride credit. He wasn't intimidated, and he was clever enough. Towering over Tyson, and outweighing him by 40 pounds, he used his bulk, smothered Tyson's punches, and when he was hit, took the shots well.

Through the first five rounds, there were only the briefest flashes of Tyson's old speed and power. There was one other echo of the distant past, though. Repeatedly, Tyson bit down on the left thumb of his own glove, a nervous, insecure tic that he used to display as a teenaged amateur. He looked in those moments like the kid sent to reformatory, classified as "retarded" because he was so unable or unwilling to communicate, separated from the hopeless crowd because of his fighting ability, coddled and exploited and saved and celebrated and ruined.

There was obviously going to be no quick knockout, and as the rounds passed, Tyson's work rate slowed. McBride's confidence grew, to the point where he began to punch back. A good heavyweight, which McBride certainly isn't, would have knocked Tyson out without much trouble. Instead, the former champion was cuffed around, leaned on, and utterly discouraged.

The final round of Mike Tyson's career was like the past 10 years in microcosm. For a few seconds, he tried to land one big finishing shot, and failed. Then, he gave up.

He locked McBride's left arm against his body and twisted it, trying to break it or to dislocate the elbow -- the old Tony Galento move Tyson had employed against Frans Botha. Referee Joe Cortez didn't see it, or didn't have nerve to disqualify him.

Seconds after that, he head-butted McBride deliberately, obviously and viciously, opening a gaping wound over his opponent's eye.

Tyson wanted out. He wanted an escape. He wanted to quit. When McBride leaned on him one more time and pushed him to the canvas, Tyson sat there, unwilling or unable to rise, reaching out to the referee for a helping hand that didn't come. Finally, he made it to his feet, like an arthritic old man, and went to his corner to surrender, like Sonny Liston.

"I don't have the fighting guts no more," he said after, as though relieved, the con finally over. "I'm just fighting to take care of my bills. . . . I don't have the ferocity. I'm not an animal any more. . . . I don't love this no more."

Just as significantly, Tyson is finally, definitively unmarketable. He owes $40-million (U.S.) to a variety of creditors. If there was a way to make a buck off him, somebody surely would and he'd have no choice but to go along.

This is it, though, 20 years after the professional debut, 19 years after the first world championship, 17 years after the summer of Michael Spinks and Robin Givens, 13 years after going to jail as a rapist, eight years after the ear bite, three years after Lennox Lewis destroyed him. And what now?

"I'm sure I'll find something to do," Tyson said. "Boxing doesn't define me."

Oh yes it did. Oh yes it does.

[golfergirl]

Yea, unfortunately, one bad deed can completely undo everything good you've ever done in the public eye. It's time he lays down the gloves - I saw his press speech afterwards and all I kept thinking was "what the heck is on his face?" ;)

[Big R]

it was worth the money just to see something crazy happen! but damn i wish mike was the same ol mike!

[bballmaster3rd]

i no the guy just doesnt have what he used to the dude is a complete pansy now even ali could take him right now lol jk

[Big R]

i no the guy just doesnt have what he used to the dude is a complete pansy now even ali could take him right now lol jk


its cuz hes on his medication when he fights now and before he didnt take it when he fought

its a damn shame!