First of all, you may not love Mike Tyson, that’s fine, but it would be hard to say you don’t love greatness. I think apart from all of us he wants to see greatness in action, particularly in sports. We are inspired by guys like Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Muhammad Ali, they move us to achieve more and be better. Just ask any child who they have on the sign on their wall and why he is there. There is no question in my mind that Mike Tyson was in that league. There has never been a heavyweight who wowed us and had us on the edge of our seats like Iron Mike. In his prime, we saw lightning speed, devastating power, slick defense, and a guy who wanted to fight and win every second of every round. He was young, the youngest champion in history, with endless promise to become the greatest heavyweight in history.

However, we weren’t prepared for that, no one was, to see Tyson fall from such heights and never really get it back. It happened too fast and too soon, many people felt the pain of it, whether they admit it or not. Seeing him lose to Douglas is a doom for most boxing fans. You may be a Holyfield fan, a Lewis fan or just a Tyson hater, I even remember my coach saying with a smile that “Buster Douglas kicked his ass”. Some people hate Tyson, for whatever reason. As an analogy, take a look at Usain Bolt, do you really want to see him go to prison for three years and then get out and never be able to run a sub 10 in the 100m again? It seems like a lot of people wanted something like that for Tyson.

Holyfield and Lewis were great fighters, but they weren’t Mike Tyson, they weren’t electric, they didn’t have the same trajectory destined for greatness. My question is, was the best of Tyson better than the best of Douglas, the best of Holyfield or the best of Lewis? My answer to that is a definite YES! And if you’re a Tyson fan, it’s not just that he lost or how he lost that’s the hardest part, it’s that what captured and inspired us is gone without replacement. We missed out on greatness and every boxing fan lost because of it, whether they were a Tyson fan or not.

In my opinion, Tyson was in his prime for the Spinks fight, and after that he was never quite himself. Was his downfall due to Cus D’amato’s death years before? Or the death of his manager and close friend Jim Jacobs? Was it because of Robyn Givens, crazy Don King, or going off with his trainer Kevin Rooney? Was it because he went to jail? The answer to all of them is another definitive yes. Ultimately though, and I hate to say it, Mike Tyson’s downfall was because of Mike Tyson. He made his own decisions and dealt with things the best way he knew how, and when it came to becoming the best, those decisions were sadly not enough. We had expectations for Mike Tyson, he was supposed to deliver for us, he was supposed to become the greatest heavyweight of all time so we could be entertained and inspired. He is a heavy load for anyone to bear.

I read a lot of comments on YouTube and on the net about why Tyson lost, we can talk about Holyfield’s headbutts, or Tyson’s coaches and life at the time, etc., but we have to stay away from that debate, because it’s almost a waste of breath The best Tyson was gone and there was no glory to Holyfield or Lewis in beating the Tyson that showed up on those nights. We all know he wasn’t a cousin Tyson, the guy who wowed us. These other heavyweights weren’t the inspiration everyone was looking for, they could never replace the Tyson we all knew existed, even if he was gone.