Mike Tyson: Was he good or bad for the sport?

[kafkod]

My opinion is he was bad for the sport. Hell, he bit part of Holyfield's ear off and he bit Lewis on the calf. he got in a fender bender and beat up some old people for no good reason etc. He was a vicious thug in and out of the ring. Sure he brought attention to boxing but not the good kind like Ali.

Ali got a lot of negative publicity in his younger days. He made racist anti-white statements while influenced by the Black ******s, a lot of fans didn't like his pro wrestling type trash talk, and others viewed his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war as draft dodging, rather than a consciousness objection.

[kafkod]

- -Mike under the aegis of Cus and Jimmy Jacobs brought back the science of the Dempsey style and cleaned out the stink of the deadbeat Holmes era as if it was a walk in the park. He was the quintessential prison rags to redemption and riches American sucess story, something like double the career purses of Ali by age 23 with most locked in a retirement trust. Every biz wanted him in their commercials because he was so well spoken thanks to the 3 HOFers who managed him.

But Cus passed and then Jacobs, so King and Givens tag teamed him resulting in a manic/depressive drug dependency on dangerous experimental psychotropic sedatives in near 4 yrs in Prison. When he got out, he found out he was dead broke and now forced to box without respected trainers. He reverted back to delinquent thuggery that gave the expanding rap thug crowd their hero, and he didn't disappoint.

What else you need to know?

It wasn't just the rap thug crowd who idolised Tyson. He was, and still is, hugely popular with all kinds of people in the UK. A classic anti-hero figure, really.

[kafkod]

I'm a big fan of Dr. Grande's videos myself. He has a natural opposition to aggression in people due to his line of work. His series on serial killers displays his in depth knowledge of human aggression too so it's not like it's coming from a place of ignorance. I think that's why he came to his conclusion, and it'd honestly fair enough as Mike did embody too many negative traits for the public eye to perceive boxing well.

I was a little disappointed that Dr. Grande didn't spend more time analyzing Mike's personality, before moving on to his boxing career. In particular, I would have liked to hear what he thought about Mike's attempts, as a mature man, to psycho-analize his own younger self.

I guess the doc must be a boxing fan, and a purist too, going by his closing comments.