After the Golota fight, Mike Tyson really didn’t show signs of wanting to fight anymore, despite his usual rhetoric. He traveled to Copenhagen to face the chubby and slow Brian Nielsen, who to me was nothing more than an overrated punching bag. Tyson easily hammered him for 6 rounds before the referee ended the mess. Having lost most if not all of his money, Tyson wanted a bout with the champion Lennox Lewis for the payday as much as the championship belts the Brit held.
In January of 2002, while at a press conference in New York to announce the Lewis-Tyson super-fight, Tyson went into a psychotic rant, bit Lewis on the thigh and proved to everyone in attendance that he was absolutely insane. No longer ‘Iron Mike’ screamed profanities at a reporter, calling him vial and disgusting names which left everyone speechless. After this pathetic display, Las Vegas said they wanted nothing to do with the bout, and it was relegated to Memphis, Tennessee instead.
During training, Tyson made vulgar comments to female reporters and showed no respect for anyone, which made me count the days until Lennox knocked him out. While at the Holyfield vs. Rahman fight at Convention Hall in Atlantic City on June 1st, the guy sitting next to me asked me what I thought would happen in the Tyson-Lewis bout. I told him boldly “Tyson is going out on his back!”
My brother came over to watch the card on my 46″ projection TV, and we were both anxious to see Tyson get stopped. It was never a contest, with the much bigger and better Lewis landing punches at will throughout. Tyson’s best ally in the bout was referee Eddie Cotton, who did everything in his power to give him an edge. Despite the lousy referee job by Cotton, Lewis kept his poise until the end came in the 8th by the way of a powerful right hand that knocked an already battered Tyson down and out-flat on his back as I had predicted. It was a happy sight for me to see, and it signaled the end of the Mike Tyson myth for once and for all.
He would fight three more times, win a one round knockout over an overmatched Clifford Etienne on February 22,2003 back at the Pyramid in Memphis, then stay out of the ring until July 30 of 2004. Tyson proved he was shot when he was beaten up by an average heavyweight named Danny Williams, and stopped in the 4th round.
Incredibly he tried it once more on June 11, 2005 at the MCI Center in Washington, but was stopped in six by a mediocre at best 6’7″ Kevin McBride. Tyson finally announced his retirement after the loss in the ring, and this time he meant it.
While I respect Tyson for his 2 championship reigns, I never liked him one bit. People still look at him like a legend, but to me he was a good fighter who had a huge punch, but was far from great. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011, an honor he truly deserved. He is still hugely popular amongst boxing fans, and just the mention of his name still gets fans talking.
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