The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : The sport needs Tyson

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 14, 2004

Sport

Sport - Athletics

The sport needs Tyson

LAS VEGAS, APRIL 14. If all goes according to plan, and it rarely does when Mike Tyson is involved, the former "baddest man on the planet" will walk into a Phoenix gym sometime this week and begin hitting the speed bag.

Or maybe he will walk into a Phoenix strip club and begin hitting on the dancers instead. He's Mike Tyson, after all, so you never really know.

Tyson is 37 now, soon to be 38, and the days when he could terrorize an opponent simply by climbing into the ring seem only a distant memory. He's fought a total of 49 seconds in the last 22 months, and got the stuffing beaten out of him by Lennox Lewis the last time he fought for the title.

Reasonable people shouldn't care anymore.

For some reason, though, we still do.

We're drawn to Tyson for the same reason we slow down to see an accident on the roadway.

He's bitten off ears, tried to break arms and threatened to eat children. He's served time in prison for rape and been in court repeatedly.

He's that accident waiting to happen, ready to implode or explode at any given moment. You're not sure what Tyson you'll get, but you can be sure that it will somehow be entertaining.

And there's no doubt that boxing can use somebody entertaining these days.

Not since the early 1980s has the heavyweight division been so devoid of talent and so lacking of personality. It's filled with alphabet soup champions who can't fight, can't sell tickets and don't ever fight each other.

There's an old adage on boxing that as the heavyweights go, so goes the sport. And right now boxing is going down for the long count. — AP

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