The Baddest Man on the Planet

Mike Tyson is a terrifying man. He always was and always will be, and I've always had a fascination with him. It started with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! for Nintendo. It was the first video game I ever owned that incorporated a real life human being. And for those of you that have experience with that game, he was apparently some sort of super human. You had to have serious skills and a good hour and a half of free time to get far enough to face 'Kid Dynamite', and when you finally got there it would most likely be over in less than 30 seconds. It was like the game sped up to double speed or something. He was impossible to beat. [Side note: during winter break in college I made it my goal in life to go back to that game and beat Iron Mike, and I finally learned his timing and beat him, and it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life]. It was enough to convince me that Mike Tyson was the most powerful man on earth.

Looking back, I think the main reason that I was so drawn to Mike Tyson is that he was both the hero and the villain. Little Mac was the traditional hero, because you controlled him, and thus, you were him, and you are always the hero in any video game. But what other intellectual property on earth is named after, endorsed by, and stars a real life villain? There isn't one. Sports games that are named after athletes always feature athletes that you idolize, but Mike Tyson was an athlete that we idolized and feared. Even now, when I see the image (above) from the title screen, it both excites me and scares me just a little. I think every kid that played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! wishes that just once they could control Mike and beat the living shit out of Little Mac.

Of course, it was important that Mike Tyson's image from the game was perfectly mirrored in reality. The game was released in 1987, and on August 1st, 1987 he became the first heavyweight to own all three major belts (WBA, WBC, and IBF) at the same time. On June 27, 1988, Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks (who had been the heavyweight champion just two years earlier) in 91 seconds. He would win 3 of his next 5 fights by knockout in the first round. And these were heavyweight boxers who had been training for months. It seemed that if he were to punch a regular man, that man would likely be dead before hitting the ground. Perhaps this is what earned him his many nicknames, including "Kid Dynamite" and "The Baddest Man on the Planet". He was a machine.

Then, in 1992, he was convicted for rape and served three years of a six year prison sentence. Needless to say, this enhanced the 'villain' side of Mike and diminished the 'hero' element. But there was still a mystique that surrounded him. He regained the WBC in March 1996, and on November 9, 1996 he fought Evander Holyfield for the first time, losing by TKO in the 11th round. The rematch on June 28, 1997 set a pay-per-view record of 1.99 million paying households that stood for nearly 10 years. Of course, this was the fight in which Mike bit Holyfield's fucking ear off and spat it onto the mat. It was clear that he had gone from being a machine to being an animal. Or more likely, he had always been an animal, but he didn't need to resort to cannibalism when he could easily outbox his opponent. Once his skills started deteriorating a bit, he simply resorted to a more unorthodox approach to defeating his opponent. I was no longer a kid afraid that Mike could kill me with a single punch, I was now a teenager who was afraid that Mike Tyson might possibly try to eat me. This might also have something to do with some post-fight remarks Tyson had to Lennox Lewis in 2002, "I want your heart, I want to eat his children". Granted, I was 22 at the time and no longer considered a scenario in which Mike Tyson tries to eat me a realistic possibility, but what kind of man thinks threatening to eat his opponent's children is an acceptable form of trash talking. Then, in early 2003, he got a facial tattoo and pretty much secured his legacy as the most frightening man that ever lived. But to me, he'll always be 'Kid Dynamite' from Punch Out!!, and I'm always going to wish I could turn things around on Little Mac and beat the shit out of him as Mike Tyson.