For more of JCO's boxing writing, see On Boxing.
Mike Tyson
justice of such an instinct . . . Blood, Neon, and Failure in the Desert
Confronted with an opponent like "Bonecrusher" Smith, who violates the decorum of the ring by not fighting, Tyson is at a loss; he hits his man after the bell, in an adolescent display of frustration; he exchanges insults with him during the fight, makes jeering faces; pushes, shoves, laces the cut over Smith's eye during a clinch; betrays those remnants of his Brooklyn street-fighting days (Tyson, as a child of ten, was one of the youngest members of a notorious gang called the Jolly Stompers) his training as a boxer should have overcome. In short, his inexperience shows. Tyson/Biggs: Postscript
As with the young, pre-champion Dempsey, there is an unsettling air about Tyson, with his impassive death's-head face, his unwavering stare, and his refusal to glamorize himself in the ring—no robe, no socks, only the signature black trunks and shoes—that the violence he unleashes against his opponents is somehow just; that some hurt, some wound, some insult in his past, personal or ancestral, will be redressed in the ring; some mysterious imbalance righted. The single-mindedness of his ring style works to suggest that his grievance has the force of a natural catastrophe. That old trope, "the wrath of God," comes to mind. Rape and the Boxing Ring
Fury and Fine Lines
But Tyson's lack of fight is not what admirers of boxing should be considering. Tyson has provided us with an iconic moment, one that will take its place alongside that of Dempsey being knocked ingloriously out of the ring, legs flailing, in the notorious fight with Luis Firpo in 1923 (which Dempsey, who should have been disqualified by the referee, forged on to win). | |
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