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by David P. Greisman - Maybe I identified too much with Mike Tyson. After all, I’d grown up with two loving, providing parents in middle-class suburban utopia, not as the poor son of a single mother who packed her family into a tenement in the Brooklyn slums. Never mind that I’d never been the heavyweight champion, never been in prison, never had millions of dollars and never spent myself into insurmountable debt.
But when Tyson had yet another incident, yet another tirade or loss of self-control, I knew better than those who said he was stupid. He was smart but troubled, and I had been, too, once again to a lesser extent. My youth had been one of antidepressants and psychologist visits, of failing grades and wasted potential.
Maybe I still identify too much with Mike Tyson, but it makes me relieved to see that he is the two most basic things I’d eventually aimed for: happy and healthy.
It also makes me relieved because I was there when it all ended for Tyson, when the former youngest-ever heavyweight champion now showed his age, when the one- or maybe two-time “baddest man on the planet” now was getting beat up by an unexceptional formerly anonymous opponent named Kevin McBride.
I watched as a fighter who had once instilled so much fear in his foes now sat on the canvas at the end of the sixth round, seeking the internal strength just to return to his corner. The referee motioned for Tyson to get up. Within a minute, the fight was over. [Click Here To Read More]
But when Tyson had yet another incident, yet another tirade or loss of self-control, I knew better than those who said he was stupid. He was smart but troubled, and I had been, too, once again to a lesser extent. My youth had been one of antidepressants and psychologist visits, of failing grades and wasted potential.
Maybe I still identify too much with Mike Tyson, but it makes me relieved to see that he is the two most basic things I’d eventually aimed for: happy and healthy.
It also makes me relieved because I was there when it all ended for Tyson, when the former youngest-ever heavyweight champion now showed his age, when the one- or maybe two-time “baddest man on the planet” now was getting beat up by an unexceptional formerly anonymous opponent named Kevin McBride.
I watched as a fighter who had once instilled so much fear in his foes now sat on the canvas at the end of the sixth round, seeking the internal strength just to return to his corner. The referee motioned for Tyson to get up. Within a minute, the fight was over. [Click Here To Read More]
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