Mike Tyson is not the only Tyson in the sport of boxing. There is also Tyson Fury, and Fury too, like Mike, is from the heavyweight division. Floyd Mayweather and Lennox Lewis are what I and my not-so-well-behaved but boxing-savvy friends have aptly termed “RnB fighters”. Their swagg is for RnB crooners, not warriors. In fact, Floyd Mayweather will never impress me with his ‘running-like-a-headless-chicken’ style of fighting. Some of us who know what boxing is all about want lock-down combat fighters like Mike Tyson from Catskill, New York. And how does a boxer worth their salt and name go around introducing himself as “Pretty Boy?” and his crew as “The Money Team?” Are you for real? Leave that to modern Hip Hop artistes like Lil Wayne and Whiz Khalifa and Meek Mill and Nicki Minaj. Mayweather should pick a leaf from this slew of catchy and thoughtful boxing nicknames: James ‘Bone crusher’ Smith, Bernard ‘The Executioner’ Hopkins, ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, Arturo ‘Thunder’ Gatti, James ‘lights out’ Tony, Marcos ‘el Chino’ Maidana, Thomas ‘Hitman’ Hearns, Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini, and Samuel ‘the Nigerian nightmare’ Peter. Boxing is also marked by such slogans as “I’m the best knockout artiste ever’, ‘I will eat your heart’, and ‘I will take your belt and your girl’, not ‘pretty boy’. Sometimes I prefer to watch fights in the lower divisions, especially the Welter Weight, to the heavyweight division which is usually awash with bulky men clinching and getting locked in a tango with every one or two punches thrown. What this means is that I like watching men like Marcos Maidana, Amir Khan, Victor Ortiz, Marco Antonio Barrera, Zab Judah, Ricky Hatton and Adrien Broner fight. And I don’t believe it when Many Pacquiao tells the world that his favorite dish is white rice and chicken. Dude’s muscles are just too sinewy and concrete that I can only think of one staple entry on his daily menu, and that’s cassava. Manioc. Myumbati. Mike Tyson’s worst boxing fight was not the Evander Holyfield bout in 1997 with its now infamous ear bite incident, and certainly not the humiliating loss to Buster Douglas in Tokyo, Japan in 1990. It was against the beefy Irish lad Kevin McBride aka the Clones Colossus in 2005. It was the day that Mike Tyson hit rock bottom as far as boxing goes. Donald Trump, the quintessential US entrepreneur and presidential hopeful made a sizeable chunk of his financial fortune playing host to some of the biggest fights in boxing history at his numerous Trump hotels and resorts that are spread all over the US and beyond. The astute businessman that he is, he would always be right there in the ring as the ring announcers and boxing officials clamored in before a boxing duel. No wonder when Mike Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992 Trump was one of his most vehement defenders. “I think that’s probably the first time my mother absolutely got angry at me. My mother was so crazy when I came out in defense of Mike Tyson. By that time she was already 80 years of age,” Trump would later reveal in an interview. “My mother is tough, but more than that she’s quality. She didn’t exactly like the fact that I was defending Iron Mike.” Now you know why Trump exudes the air of a heavyweight division boxer.
