GUEST COLUMN
But Mike was special from the very start of his career
Memories of ‘Iron’ Mike as an amateur
MIKE TYSON first came into my consciousness back in 1983 when he competed as a 16-year-old in our local Golden Gloves tournament at the Boys Club in Holyoke, Massachusetts. They used to call Mike “The Tank” back then and he impressively won the tournament by stopping Jimmie Johnson in the first round in the finals with Kevin Rooney and Matt Baranski in his corner.
Then Mike made amateur boxing headlines later that summer when he won the prestigious Ohio State Fair tournament at age 17. Kevin Rooney was quoted that week as saying that they were having to send professional sparring partners home because Mike was banging them all up in Cus D’amato’s famous Catskill, New York gym.
He was just a kid who was stopping much older and more experienced national level amateurs at tournaments all over the country. His exceptional hand speed, combination punching and head movement was special at that age, definitely. He was so into his boxing and improving his technique that his love for the game was off the charts back then. When he was motivated and happy doing what he was doing he was a real force well beyond his years, and writers were calling him the future heavyweight champion even when he was just 17.
You couldn’t help but like Mike Tyson the fighter because he brought and aura and a level of ferociousness that is very rarely seen at all. You knew, 100 per cent, what Mike’s intentions were when he came into the ring and that’s why people who didn’t even follow boxing closely tuned-in to see him do his thing. Mike Tyson absolutely was must see TV back then.
I’ve been around Mike several times over the years and had a couple of nice discussions with him, and I can verify that his reputation as a very knowledgeable boxing person in terms of history, even with the amateur game, is well deserved.
I’ve also found him to be a guy with a good sense of humour, just a regular and down to earth former boxer like any other. As an example, back in 1996, he trained at my gym in Hartford, Connecticut in advance of his fight with Bruce Seldon. I was surprised to find out during the course of a conversation with him that not only did he know that the aforementioned Jimmie Johnson had passed away, but he also relayed details of his demise to me.
Tyson is an interesting boxer historically because, like Rocky Marciano before him, he is often overrated and underrated at the same time by so many boxing fans around the world. Some will say he is the most destructive and hardest punching heavyweight who ever lived and would have definitely gone down as the greatest were it not for the combination of Robin Givens, Don King, drug use and a lack of discipline.
Others will claim he is an overrated and one-dimensional slugger who crashed and burned way too quickly, and doesn’t deserve the praise he now generates today.
Personally, I put him somewhere in the middle. A man who won a version of the heavyweight title one calendar year after turning pro. A boxer who, in 1987 after he flattened Pinklon Thomas, I just couldn’t picture ever tasting defeat in his career. I thought he would rule for as long as he wanted to because I just couldn’t see any way anyone could withstand his ferociousness, his punches in bunches and the power of those punches.
But on the flip side, he also never seemed to fully recover mentally from the shocking loss to Buster Douglas in 1990 and that affects his place in history. For me, his prime was awesome but simply too short to eclipse the likes of Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Joe Louis and George Foreman.
All things considered, statistically and skills wise, I’d think it fair to put Mike somewhere between numbers eight and 12 in the pantheon of heavyweight greats.