“When you were watching him knocking out opponents and them flying through the air, it didn’t look mythical—it looked real,” says Jim Lampley, the former HBO boxing commentator who is now a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a contributor to PPV.com. “This kid was like nothing we had ever seen before. Mike became a cultural phenomenon from the get-go.”
It’s difficult to think of Tyson as being old. For millions, he is frozen in time as the twenty-year-old who conquered the world and could not be stopped. That’s not the guy who is training to fight Paul. Sitting in one of the black-leather recliners next to the ring in the training facility, Cordeiro says he understands the care needed to control his fighter’s fire. Cordeiro, who began training Tyson for the Jones exhibition fight out of Tyson’s garage at the start of the pandemic four years ago, is using the same message passed down by D’Amato all those years ago. Be the fire, control the fire, and turn the flame up to high when you absolutely need it.
Also, for a long time, the body of Mike painted a portrait of his ex-wife – pediatrician Monica Turner. The world first saw this tattoo on Tyson’s left forearm in 1995, when the boxer got out of prison, where he had been for three years on rape charges.
He has yet another portrait of Che Guevara on his left abdomen. It is a copy of the famous Guerrillero Heroico photograph. Tyson got it in prison as well, as he was deeply mistrusting of his state and current government back then. Additionally, Kid Dynamite has a portrait of Monica Turner on the left forearm and a Dragon tattoo on his right forearm.
On March 6, 1985, Tyson made his professional debut as an 18-year-old in Albany, New York. He defeated Hector Mercedes via TKO in the first round. In his debut year as a professional, he had 15 fights. Tyson won 26 of his first 28 fights by KO or TKO, site here with 16 of them coming in the first round.
Tyson regained one belt by easily winning the WBC title against Frank Bruno in March 1996. It was the second fight between the two, and Tyson knocked out Bruno in the third round. In 1996, Lennox Lewis turned down a $13.5 million guarantee to fight Tyson. This would’ve been Lewis’s highest fight purse to date. Lewis then accepted $4 million from Don King to step aside and allow Tyson to fight Bruce Seldon for an expected $30 million instead with the intention that if Tyson defeated Seldon, he would fight Lewis next. Tyson added the WBA belt by defeating champion Seldon in the first round in September that year. Seldon was severely criticized and mocked in the popular press for seemingly collapsing to innocuous punches from Tyson.
After the fight resumed, Tyson missed with a left hook but then connected with a thunderous right hand to the jaw that caused Etienne to collapse, his back leg buckling in spectacular fashion. There was no way he was getting back up. Etienne had landed only one left hook, failing to even test the tattoo on the left side of Tyson’s face.
On the left side of Tyson’s torso is a tattoo of another communist leader, this one being the great Che Guevara. The tattoo is a copy of the famous Guerrillero Heroico photograph taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960. It’s quite a large tattoo that takes up a lot of space on the left side of Tyson’s body.
The tribal face tattoo on Tyson’s face is a powerful symbol that marks a milestone in his life. Furthermore, he got the tribal design in 2003, right before his fight against Clifford Etienne. In addition, the tribal design is a unique Maori design from New Zealand.
From afar, George had cringed at how Zhang was being developed. There was no plan, he says. No visible signs of improvement. The only objective seemed to be to lard Zhang’s record with enough warm bodies until one of the top heavyweights would pay a premium to face him. “Do you remember Nikolai Valuev?” asks George, referencing the 7-foot Russian who briefly held a heavyweight title. “That’s how everyone was looking at Zhilei. Like a gimmick.”
He defended his title seven times, winning all seven fights by knockout before coming up against Tyson Fury. In 2018 the two faced off for the first time, fighting to a split decision draw. The action and result of the first fight led to a rematch, which Fury won by technical knockout in round 7.
