Facing Tyson Fifteen Fighters, Fifteen Stories

Watching Mike Tyson walk into a boxing ring was akin to watching Barry Bonds hit a home run or Michael Jordan shoot a basketball. Or maybe it was more like watching one of those mushroom clouds billow up during a documentary about "the bomb." It was a thing of such ferocious beauty that one couldn't look away. Tyson was the Picasso of the ring walk. He had it down to such an extent - with the gladiator-themed garb (towel, black shorts, no socks), frightening physique, and blank stare - that he often beat men (see Michael Spinks) with it before the fight even began. Regardless of how one feels about Tyson's body of work as a whole, especially in recent years, he mastered the ring walk with brutal style. Mike Tyson was, and is, a cultural icon. In his hey-day, before his defeat to Buster Douglas, he was a box office draw and marketing commodity of Joranesque proportions. This is a Tyson who punched often and with no wasted motion. A Tyson who showed head movement and didn't pose after punchesheroes. The punches themselves were physics lessons delivered with a maximum of bad intentions, as he liked to say. He was an anti-hero before the '90s made anti-heros cliche. Facing Tyson reveals more about Tyson by interviewing his contemporaries - the men who walked into the ring opposite him and survived. Author Ted Kluck talked to these men in their own environments - their homes, their gyms, and their streets - and heard each tell the story of his brush with the "baddest man on the planet." Some of Tyson's opponents went on to fame and fortune in the ring (Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis);others, as is often the case in boxing, have ended up back on the streets. Of late, Tyson's public life has become the train wreck from which we can't turn our eyes. Though he hasn't won a meaningful fight in years, he could still sell out an arena if he chose to fight again. Ted Kluck grew up in the Tyson era. He played Tyson's video games and watched his fights, usually wanting to see him lose but, recently, rooting for him in the way that one roots for nostalgic figures whose character flaws have gone remarkably public while most of us manage to keep ours private. Mike Tyson has been many things (heavyweight champion, armchair philosopher, criminal), but he was, and still is, if anything, interesting.Kluck, Ted A. is the author of 'Facing Tyson Fifteen Fighters, Fifteen Stories', published 2006 under ISBN 9781592289196 and ISBN 1592289193.