(Check out this inspiring behind-the-scenes video of Johny Hendricks bouncing back from his loss to Georges St-Pierre to win the welterweight title at UFC 171. / Props: Ask Men)
(Check out this inspiring behind-the-scenes video of Johny Hendricks bouncing back from his loss to Georges St-Pierre to win the welterweight title at UFC 171. / Props: Ask Men)
(Check out this inspiring behind-the-scenes video of Johny Hendricks bouncing back from his loss to Georges St-Pierre to win the welterweight title at UFC 171. / Props: AskMen)
(Check out this inspiring behind-the-scenes video of Johny Hendricks bouncing back from his loss to Georges St-Pierre to win the welterweight title at UFC 171. / Props: AskMen)
Forget, if you can, that sad and limited group of considerations that say two fighters from different sports and weight classes can never meet in anger. Disregard the idea that says, “It would never happen because…”
This kind of thinking …
Forget, if you can, that sad and limited group of considerations that say two fighters from different sports and weight classes can never meet in anger. Disregard the idea that says, “It would never happen because…”
This kind of thinking has no place in the Theater of the Bizarre.
Instead, once again, let your imagination run wild. This is a stage where fights unfold due to the virtue of violence, and two authors come together to do their worst to each other, just to see who is best.
Of course, there is always at least one caveat per fight. Perhaps it is the size of the gloves or the duration of the rounds. Perhaps it is the number of rounds, the venue or even the application of rules that reign in contrast to the combatants.
At least one circumstance always prevails amid the chaos.
The bout in question this evening? The legendary Mike Tyson, rejuvenated and resurrected from his most glorious and violent past, faces Junior dos Santos. The action is called in typical play-by-play style.
Mike Tyson vs. Junior dos Santos
Caveats: Four-ounce gloves; 12 rounds; three minutes per round; no grappling on the ground; takes place in the legendary Blue Horizon.
Advantages for Tyson: Speed, punching power, defensive skills, aggression, explosiveness.
Advantages for Dos Santos: Heart, reach advantage, size advantage, elbows, knees and kicks.
It’s a brutally cold night in Philadelphia, with a wind-chill factor that lowers the temperature well below freezing. The snow feels like sand across your face as you make your way up the front steps and into one of the true hallmark locations for the sport of boxing, the legendary Blue Horizon.
Inside, the temperature is warm, and the crowd is anxious for the fight to begin. This is the Blue Horizon, after all, where the crowd has high expectations for aggression.
Larry Merchant, a Philadelphia standard, is in attendance, but the rest of the crowd is a motley crew. The balcony level of the Horizon extends almost to the parameter of the ring, and if you lean over the rail, you can almost spit onto the canvas or throw whatever is in your hand.
It is a sobering sight to see a prime Mike Tyson pacing about the cage. This isn’t the same fighter who lost his desire and with it all sense of dedication to training and discipline. This is the young Tyson who ripped through the heavyweight division with shockingly fast hands, brutal punching power and unbridled aggression.
This is the Tyson who was the full realization of all the virtues that Cus D’Amato felt made a fighter great.
Across the small ring stands Junior dos Santos, looking grim and determined in the face of such an eager crowd. He, too, is pacing, perhaps not as much as Tyson, but he is moving and seems fully aware of the task in front of him.
It is a big one.
Dos Santos wanted to fight a great boxer because, as Merchant put it: “He has the daring that is required of all true fighters. He isn’t just talking the talk, he’s walking the walk, and that brought him all the way to Philadelphia in the heart of a snow storm. He wanted to test his boxing skills against a dangerous opponent, and tonight he gets his wish.”
While Tyson is expected to be the faster fighter, Dos Santos is clearly the bigger man in the ring, which becomes clear when the referee calls them to the center. Dos Santos looks to be about six inches taller than Tyson and has six inches in reach over the Brooklyn-born legend. Yet, despite the size advantage, one cannot help but stare in horror at those incredibly small gloves that surround the granite fists of Tyson.
Both men touch gloves and go to their separate corners. Dos Santos is bouncing in place, ready to go. Tyson stares at him, emotionless, with his fists together right below his chin.
The crowd is going insane as the bell is about to ring…
There isn’t a human being among us who doesn’t have some skeletons in their closet. As a species, we are often genetically predisposed to mental disease, addiction, and all kinds of abnormal behavior. When combined with the meat grinder that is everyday life in the public eye, it is only a matter of time before some of these skeletons, these abnormal tendencies, are uncovered for the world to see and later criticize from our two most prestigious ivory towers, Hindsight and Judgement.
And while there are plenty of combat sports competitors who were raised under “normal” circumstances in a “normal” household, who went on to become poster boys for the “normalness” of their organizations/sports and so on, there are just as many fighters who came from nothing, and when faced with the overwhelming eye of the public, allowed these abnormal tendencies to be placed center stage and eventually destroy them.
One such fighter is Mike Tyson, who after rising to the highest ranks of the boxing world some thirty years ago, saw his fame, fortune, and fanbase crumble beneath the weight of drug addiction and scandal. Nowadays, a wiser, gentler Tyson has emerged, unabashedly sharing the most intimate details of his past in an effort to both restore his shattered reputation and warn young fighters of the potential dangers they could face down the line.
The problem is, “Iron Mike” is being a little *too* candid as of late. Join us after the jump to see what we mean.
There isn’t a human being among us who doesn’t have some skeletons in their closet. As a species, we are often genetically predisposed to mental disease, addiction, and all kinds of abnormal behavior. When combined with the meat grinder that is everyday life in the public eye, it is only a matter of time before some of these skeletons, these abnormal tendencies, are uncovered for the world to see and later criticize from our two most prestigious ivory towers, Hindsight and Judgement.
And while there are plenty of combat sports competitors who were raised under “normal” circumstances in a “normal” household, who went on to become poster boys for the “normalness” of their organizations/sports and so on, there are just as many fighters who came from nothing, and when faced with the overwhelming eye of the public, allowed these abnormal tendencies to be placed center stage and eventually destroy them.
One such fighter is Mike Tyson, who after rising to the highest ranks of the boxing world some thirty years ago, saw his fame, fortune, and fanbase crumble beneath the weight of drug addiction and scandal. Nowadays, a wiser, gentler Tyson has emerged, unabashedly sharing the most intimate details of his past in an effort to both restore his shattered reputation and warn young fighters of the potential dangers they could face down the line.
The problem is, “Iron Mike” is being a little *too* candid as of late.
While we’ve heard Tyson admit to being “a vicious alcoholic on the verge of death” in recent months, the former boxing great’s memoir, Undisputed Truth, hit stands earlier today and Jesus tittyfucking Christ is it revealing. Uncomfortably so. The Sydney Morning Herald passes along a few revelations:
“I was a full-blown cokehead,” Tyson says in Undisputed Truth, published today (Wednesday). Recalling his shock 2004 loss to Britain’s Danny Williams, he reveals he was taking drugs until shortly before the fight.
He says that he was high before taking to the ring for a match against Lou Savarese in Glasgow in June 2000 – and came up with an ingenious method to prevent detection by the sport’s official testers.
Confessing that he had taken “blow” and “pot” before the bout, he says: “I had to use my whizzer, which was a fake penis where you put in someone’s clean urine to pass your drug test”. He blamed a $200,000 fine for testing positive for marijuana after a 2000 fight against Andrew Golota in Detroit on the fact that he was tested before having a chance to get the ‘whizzer’ from a member of his team, whom he claims typically carried the device from fight to fight.
Tyson explains that he had taken cocaine before a notorious televised press conference with Lennox Lewis in New York in January 2002, which descended into an onstage brawl between the rival camps. “I lost my mind,” Tyson recalls. “I looked over at him and wanted to hit the mother——.” As the pair of heavyweights tussled, Tyson bit Lewis’s leg.
We understand that these revelations will likely make Tyson even more endearing to his legion of fans, but at the same time, it’s sad to see that these horror stories are all that a boxing legend and former millionaire has left to sell. Tyson’s reading like a humble, self-deprecating version of Jose Canseco these days, to the point that it’s challenging our already warped perception of him as an individual and the sport of boxing in general.
The truly scary thing is, Tyson’s story is one that a fair share of MMA fighters can probably relate to. Sure, “Iron Mike” probably lies on the extreme end of the spectrum in most cases, but we’ve heard everyone from Kendall Groveto Drew Fickett share similar tales of fighting under the influence, and God only knows what treats we’ll be in for when Mayhem Miller publishes an autobiography from Death Row in 2015. It’s not that we don’t appreciate honesty, it’s just that maybe some fighters should first consider how their crazy stories could impact the MMA community as a whole before recounting them to every interviewer who will listen.
Despite how far our beloved sport has come in recent years, even the President of the UFC will tell you that MMA is “just not mainstream yet.” We’re still fighting for credibility, for people to take us seriously. And with organizations like The Culinary Union latching onto every fighter with a somewhat troublesome past in an attempt to discredit the sport and/or keep it banned in certain states, the last thing we need is a bunch of “professionals” bragging about how unprofessional and incompetent the system can be at times. And believe me, it really can be incompetent, but so is any major organization/sport/business in its infant years.
The point is, this CagePotato Ban is a preemptive strike, a warning if you will. Please, you guys, learn from Tyson’s mistakes and maybe keep that story about “needing weed to avoid beating your wife and kids” to yourself.
(“So if you win, your salary doubles from $22,000 to $44,000? And if it’s the best fight on the card, they give you a $50,000 bonus? Wow. That’s adorable, man.”)
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s record $41.5 million guarantee for facing Canelo Alvarez in September elicited a series of reactions from the MMA community. Some fighters like Tito Ortiz made ridiculous comparisons (“What am I doing different from [Floyd Mayweather Jr.]?”). Others, like current UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones knew it was more politically expedient to downplay any direct comparison between revenues in boxing and MMA (“Boxing has been around over 100 years…The foundation is set and the money is there. MMA is so new.”). But the question looms large — why is it that boxing can boast stratospheric paydays whereas MMA’s purses are deliberately obscured from public knowledge?
We could talk about the structure of modern boxing where there is competition between promoters (Bob Arum, Golden Boy, etc.) and TV networks (HBO, Showtime, etc.), which drives boxing purses up. Or we could focus on the formula for self-promoting fights that Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. derived tremendous benefit from. The fact remains that with its limited 20-year history, MMA has much more in common with the monopolistic and mafia-controlled boxing of the 1950s and ‘60s than it does with modern boxing.
What the industry tends to ignore is that the passage of time is not what leads to progress. It was five years ago in 2008 that Jon Fitch was tossed overboard by the UFC for refusing to sign away his likeness rights away in perpetuity. While managers and fighters could have drawn a line in the sand, squared up with Zuffa and said “You’ve taken enough from us,” their response to the likeness rights situation was completely muted.
Thus, the precedent was set. MMA managers acting out of fear negotiated with the UFC by giving up something in exchange for nothing.
(“So if you win, your salary doubles from $22,000 to $44,000? And if it’s the best fight on the card, they give you a $50,000 bonus? Wow. That’s adorable, man.”)
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s record $41.5 million guarantee for facing Canelo Alvarez in September elicited a series of reactions from the MMA community. Some fighters like Tito Ortiz made ridiculous comparisons (“What am I doing different from [Floyd Mayweather Jr.]?”). Others, like current UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones knew it was more politically expedient to downplay any direct comparison between revenues in boxing and MMA (“Boxing has been around over 100 years…The foundation is set and the money is there. MMA is so new.”). But the question looms large — why is it that boxing can boast stratospheric paydays whereas MMA’s purses are deliberately obscured from public knowledge?
We could talk about the structure of modern boxing where there is competition between promoters (Bob Arum, Golden Boy, etc.) and TV networks (HBO, Showtime, etc.), which drives boxing purses up. Or we could focus on the formula for self-promoting fights that Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. derived tremendous benefit from. The fact remains that with its limited 20-year history, MMA has much more in common with the monopolistic and mafia-controlled boxing of the 1950s and ‘60s than it does with modern boxing.
What the industry tends to ignore is that the passage of time is not what leads to progress. It was five years ago in 2008 that Jon Fitch was tossed overboard by the UFC for refusing to sign away his likeness rights away in perpetuity. While managers and fighters could have drawn a line in the sand, squared up with Zuffa and said “You’ve taken enough from us,” their response to the likeness rights situation was completely muted.
Thus, the precedent was set. MMA managers acting out of fear negotiated with the UFC by giving up something in exchange for nothing.
*****
Boxing was corrupt in the ‘50s — the mafia having gained control of the industry during the prohibition of the sport from 1830 to 1920 — and most fighters were simply objects to be used and discarded. (Of many available examples, 110% of Joe Louis’s purses were committed to other people, and the IRS still needed to be paid on top of that).
There were still people who pushed back, playing the dicey game of making certain compromises while maintaining a larger strategic aim. One such man was legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, understood to be the driving force behind world champions Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres and Mike Tyson. In Confusing the Enemy: The Cus D’Amato Story, a new biographical novel by Scott Weiss and Paige Stover, the strategy and tactics of D’Amato throughout different eras of boxing are explained — ideas that still apply to the embryonic mixed martial arts game today.
From 1949 to 1958, the International Boxing Club (IBC), led by Jim Norris, ruled the major divisions of boxing. From fixing matches to slicing and dicing up the fighter’s purses, Norris and the IBC ruled the roost with the compliance of shadowy organized crime figures in the background.
As Cus D’Amato groomed Floyd Patterson to be heavyweight champion of the world, he avoided opponents who were controlled by the IBC. Jim Norris of the IBC wanted a 50% interest in Floyd Patterson in exchange for headlining cards at Madison Square Gardens; D’Amato had no interest in serving Patterson up to the IBC on a silver platter.
Fortuitously, the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) and the US Senate began putting heat on the IBC. D’Amato walked into Jim Norris’s office for a sit-down to get Floyd Patterson the big fights he deserved: “By keeping this fight out of the Garden and off of network television, we’re both leaving money on the table…How long are we gonna keep this up? Neither of us is getting where we wanna be.”
D’Amato and Norris worked out a compromise, but it was clear that the IBC was losing ground. When Rocky Marciano vacated the heavyweight title, D’Amato used the hard sell — bluffing a potential Patterson-Marciano fight with another promoter — to negotiate for Patterson to fight for the world title in November of 1956 for the staggering sum of $150,000. Eventually, the IBC was declared a monopoly by the courts and ordered dissolved.
D’Amato had earned scorn for opposing the IBC monopoly because his tactics kept both Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres inactive or facing unranked opponents. In the end, however, he prevailed, not just in that both Patterson and Torres became champions, but because in retirement, their careers extended beyond boxing: Patterson became chairman of the NYSAC and Jose Torres a respected writer and author.
*****
With the right representation at the right time, a talented MMA fighter can secure a better deal. PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko went from earning paltry purses of $15,000 to $20,000 under Russian Top Team manager Vladimir Pogodin to clearing $200,000 per fight plus win bonuses throughout 2004 thanks to agent Miro Mijatovic.
Fedor had been unhappy with Pogodin for quite a while, as Pogodin had been skimming money off the top. Mijatovic promoted Fedor’s fight against Yuji Nagata at Inoki-Bom-Ba-Ye 2003, giving Fedor a purse of $150,000. PRIDE was so terrified of the prospect of losing their heavyweight champion — and more importantly, the threat of competition from a new promotion — that the yakuza (organized crime) who ran PRIDE held Mijatovic hostage at gunpoint in order to extort the rights to Fedor of him.
Throughout 2004, Mijatovic was part of the management team that guided Fedor to record purses ($200,000 per fight plus win bonuses) and the PRIDE Heavyweight Grand Prix title. When the PRIDE brass attempted to bribe Mijatovic at the end of 2004 in order to control Fedor’s earnings, he refused and was dumped from Fedor’s management team by Vadim Finkelstein. The rest of this story, including PRIDE’s demise is, as we say, history.
The lesson throughout eras in combat sports is simple — when you control the consensus heavyweight champion, you can control the sport. This was not lost on Cus D’Amato, and it certainly wasn’t lost on Miro Mijatovic.
*****
Just about the only force that can reform MMA involves government intervention, the same way the US Senate investigated boxing. California attempted change in 2012 through Assembly Bill 2100, which was designed to prevent promoters from claiming unreasonable future merchandising rights, prevent unreasonable restrictions on fighters’ seeking outside sponsors and prohibit other onerous contract provisions.
While the legislation was doomed from its inception due to a variety of factors, the anti-AB2100 speakers are worth noting because of what they tell us about the current MMA landscape. Ronda Rousey adopted Zuffa’s stance and spoke out against the bill due to the simple matter of self-preservation: In 2012, she was champion in the sinking ship known as Strikeforce; in 2013, she became the champion of the newly-created women’s bantamweight division in the UFC. Matt Hughes, who spoke positively about Zuffa’s influence on the sport to the California Assembly, was rewarded for his loyalty by being hired in January 2013 as the UFC’s VP of Athlete Development & Government Relations.
The Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into Zuffa’s acquisition of Strikeforce fared no better than AB2100, with the case being closed in February 2012. It’s hard to believe that the Feds got a clear picture of the current MMA scene — limited leverage for negotiation; zero transparency into a promotion’s financials; no legit rankings for organizational titles; and no agency on the part of fighters no matter how big they are.
The irony is clear: Name brand Zuffa fighters with the most to gain from Federal intervention into MMA are conditioned from all sides to maintain a code of silence that diminishes their position.
*****
When Cus D’Amato first met 13-year old Mike Tyson, he was clear about his vision for Tyson’s future, “If you listen to me, I can make you the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.”
In an excerpt from Mike Tyson’s new autobiographyUndisputed Truth, Tyson reminisced on how D’Amato began conditioning him to overcome his fears, “Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning,” D’Amato tells him. “But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.”
Tyson overcame his fears to win the undisputed heavyweight title. No one knew better than Cus D’Amato that having the premier heavyweight in boxing meant that D’Amato could change the way the game was played, just as he had done before with Floyd Patterson. Tyson’s management team of Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton helped solidify his financial status behind the scenes. But when Cus D’Amato and Jim Jacobs passed on, Tyson was rudderless in rough seas and succumbed to the vile influences of boxing, including Don King’s machinations.
Today, of course, the lessons from those bygone eras of boxing have been lost on today’s MMA fighters and managers. Instead of building up a fighter from the ground-level with emotional intelligence and a strong sense of self-worth, we see Ronda Rousey insecure to the point where she believed she’d be cut from her coaching gig on The Ultimate Fighter. We have Georges St-Pierre delicately trying to articulate his feelings about not being supported by Zuffa for attempting to get Johny Hendricks to go through with the VADA drug testing Hendricks had already agreed upon. We see Jon Jones being thrown under the bus by the Zuffa brass over the cancellation of UFC 151 in a way that diminished his market value by inciting the fans to further hate him.
Fighters and managers might win battles like getting a women’s division in the UFC or Jon Jones (supposedly) out-earning his NFL brothers, but they have lost sight of the war. In another five years, the only difference will be the influx of many new contenders to push out the current crop of Zuffa fighters, the same way Jon Fitch and Yushin Okami were kicked to the curb in 2013.
Instead of waiting for the sky to open up and the gods to bestow change upon the MMA landscape, fighters and managers have to look at ways to organize and start pushing back in a strategic manner at the right junctures. If more men like Cus D’Amato come along, they can outfox and out-hustle the dark forces of the industry, perhaps improving the sport (or forever changing it, as Miro Mijatovic did with PRIDE) for generations to come.
In the late 80s and early 90s, there was no man on the planet more feared than “Iron” Mike Tyson. The youngest fighter to ever lay claim to the heavyweight throne was settling fools left and right as he dished out a unique and brutal brand of viol…
In the late 80s and early 90s, there was no man on the planet more feared than “Iron” Mike Tyson. The youngest fighter to ever lay claim to the heavyweight throne was settling fools left and right as he dished out a unique and brutal brand of violence inside the ring.
Tyson’s ferocity and killer instinct put him in a league of his own, and the thought of challenging him between the ropes created a notorious aura which defeated many of his opponents before the opening bell ever sounded.
His reign as the heavyweight king would ultimately come to a shocking end at the hands of heavy underdog Buster Douglas in February of 1990 in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history. Nevertheless, “Kid Dynamite” would rebound to win five consecutive bouts before his career was stopped abruptly in 1992 as the result of a three-year prison stint in the aftermath of a rape conviction.
While Tyson’s popularity had elevated the “sweet science” to new heights, there was another combat sport planting its seeds in the distance as the UFC launched their inaugural event in 1993.
In the early days of MMA, Brazilian submission phenom Royce Gracie was the man to beat as he dominated three of the organization’s initial four tournaments, solidifying his legacy in the history books of the sport.
In the 20 years that have passed since the birth of the UFC, the boxing legend has become a fixture around the MMA scene. As a close friend of UFC President Dana White, the 46-year-old is a regular at the promotion’s Las Vegas events.
With Tyson’s interest in the sport, the analysts on Wednesday’s edition of UFC Tonight asked the New York native how he felt a hypothetical showdown with Gracie would have gone down in 1993.
While Tyson is a prideful man and confident in the fireworks he could make with his hands back in his prime, he believes that power would not have been a factor against the grappling ace.
Well, in ’93, I was in prison, so there would not have been a fight, but there is no way I would have won. I had no idea what was going on with that type of fighting and would’ve been taken by surprise. I would have had to train in that particular art of fighting for that to happen. That’s a particular art. You are not going to go in there with your just your hands, you need to have a great ground game as well. You also need a great wrestling game to be successful. You have to have both skills, wrestling and boxing. That’s the truth.
In the aftermath of his storied career inside the ring, Tyson has gone on to reinvent himself in mainstream pop culture, having hit cameo appearances in The Hangover I & II. In addition to that, he is also the subject of his highly acclaimed documentary Tyson, which gives an intimate look at the rise and fall of his boxing career.
He is currently the subject of a mini series titled Being Mike Tyson, which airs on Fox Sports 1.
