All things come to an end, whether good, bad or otherwise, and so it seems that the reign of the boogie man, a.k.a. "Iron" Mike Tyson, officially closed up shop in the unlikely setting for a mega-fight of Memphis, Tennessee. This happened just one week prior to the death of mob kingpin, John Gotti. The American public is suddenly running out of bad guys, Osama Bin Laden notwithstanding.
Lest we start celebrating too early, it should be kept in mind that bad guys do serve a critical purpose. They give us someone to feel we're better than, to consider ourselves morally superior to. And in the case of those who earn their livelihood from the hard-earned dollars of U.S. citizens, it should be recognized that they are only in the spotlight for us to vilify because we put them there. We can call Mike Tyson a monster for his many transgressions in and out of the ring all we want. But we should also acknowledge that we played the part of Dr. Frankenstein in creating his legacy. Of all the names that can be justifiably thrown at Tyson, hypocrite is not one of them. He has been more or less the same person from the first day that he burst onto the national consciousness. He claimed to be the "baddest man on the planet", and we loved him for it. Then he began to get in bigger and bigger trouble for the sin of remaining in character, and many of those who had idolized him jumped off his bandwagon. Plenty of others remained on it, though. Through his first jail term and his second, through the propensity for fouling his opponents (though I suppose biting someone's ear off probably comes closer to assault and battery than to a mere rule violation) that blossomed in the latter portion of his career. The more numerous and vocal Mike's detractors became, the more passionate his remaining supporters grew.
In the early portion of his celebrity, Mike Tyson was not without charm. In fact, it was relatively easy to sympathize for him. You may recall that Robin Givens and her mother were the ones who came out looking the worst for their treatment of Mike, even though he was the one being accused of spousal abuse, a claim that today is pretty easy to believe. At the time it appeared that poor Mike was being manipulated by everyone close to him, the shrewdness of Ms. Givens only surpassed by the incomparable skills of one Don King. We were initially willing to overlook his thuggish ways, his lack of respect towards women, his criminal minded sensibilities, even though they were not well masked. If anything, these reprehensible aspects of Mike Tyson's personality were fully on display. And yet we tolerated him, to say the least. To say the most, we made him an icon, a role model for our children. And why? Because he was the most exciting athlete to come along in a long time, he gave us a thrilling rush of anticipation every time he stepped into the ring, and we appreciated him for this. There was a time not too long ago when "wanting to be like Mike" was not specific to Mr. Jordan.
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