Mike Tyson Looks Back
Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson gave a candid interview to WFAN radio Thursday morning. Unpredictable as always, Tyson talked about Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Trevor Berbick, Desiree Washington, and prison.
Tyson doesn’t sit at home in Henderson, NV watching tapes of his old fights. But if he did, Mike said the one fight he’d watch again and again would be his KO loss to Buster Douglas in Tokyo in 1990. When asked why he would watch THAT fight, of all the fights in his career, Tyson said, “Because I took a beating like a man.”
WFAN’s host said he thought that Tyson got robbed, a point Don King tried and failed to make at the time, when he dropped Douglas for a presumed long-count. Tyson, however, wasn’t buying it.
“Nah,” Mike said, “he got me.”
Among the things Tyson admitted to in the interview was having gonorrhea when he knocked out Trevor Berbick on November 22, 1986, to become the youngest man in history to win the heavyweight title. Think about that for a second. If Tyson did that with gonorrhea, what could he have done without gonorrhea?
There have been as many low as high points during his life and career, but the lowest point, according to Tyson, had nothing to do with his three years in jail for his alleged rape, and ultimate conviction, of Desiree Washington in 1992.
“Listen,” Tyson said, “I’ve done a lot of time before I even got involved in boxing, so I never felt going to prison was a low point in my life. I would think Holyfield, biting his ear, that was lower to me, personally, than going to prison.”
It’s good to hear Tyson say that, because for many people that was the last straw, and it shows that he knows he really blew it that night, and blew it bad.
