TL;DR - Boxing. Mike Tyson.
He's an extremely intelligent guy and a REAL boxing historian too, and I have a lot respect for Tyson in many ways.. He's MASSIVELY emotional and cant handle or control it though, and that makes him very volatile. If Cus D'Amato hadnt died when he did, and had lived long enough to stay by Mike and help and train him through-out his career, we'd talk about Tyson in a very different way than we do now.
Make no mistake, Mike wasnt ever, and would not have been, the Greatest Heavyweight of all time, or any such silliness.. Mike *IS* an amazing fighter though, always was, and of course anyone with his power and ability can win against anyone else with just a touch, but Mike is not a 'big' guy. I mean, he's a piece of iron, but he's only about 5'10 (I say about because its been rumored he's more like 5'9 and they added that inch early in his career to make him seem a little bigger on stat sheets and such) and as a heavy weight, that's a significant liability. Tyson had really impressive defense and excellent head movement.. Cus built his style brilliantly to take advantage of speed, accuracy and of course power, and then to minimize the weakness' inherent in his size. Tyson also has GREAT ring generalship, and he took a lot of fights off larger, taller, longer opponents who thought they could play a defensive, keep-away game and use their reach and size to pick him apart.. That said though, his size and endurance issues (when he was in good shape he had decent staying power, but his whole style is massively tiring. Not just in how he swings, but how he moves), against a truly SMART and talented opponent, would have been enough to keep take him out and possibly put him down, down certainly on the cards and possibly on the canvas. Lucky punch aside (I dont like the whole 'lucky punch' ideal, but thats a topic for another time), he would have struggled. His era was really the end of the 'traditional' heavy weight fighters.. Street-fight, all guts and power.. That era was coming to a close during Tyson's.. lets call it 'dark' period. Lennox slowasshittomature Lewis was finally becoming what he should have always been, which is was a freakishly intelligent, massively long-limbed, immensely powerful heavy weight who could honest-to-god work behind a jab (a rarity in the HW division) and was playing Chess to everyone elses Checkers. The Bitchko, I mean Klitscho brothers were beginning to stand out as well.. Another two extremely intelligent, careful fighters with the power to put you OUT but with the boxing savvy to really move with the sport - and with the opponent. Glass jaws aside.
Mike really represented a kind of perfected 1920's - 1960's fighter. He incorporated so much that was beautiful and amazing from the age of boxing's REAL birth. Sure its kind of always been around.. but it didnt really become the SCIENCE we think of it as today, until the 20's on and I see so much that foundation in Mike. Cus was a brilliant trainer and he really understood how to make Tyson successful in the ring. He wouldnt have found the same success if MIke had been taught the more new-age methods though. Thats just too counter to Tyson's nature to have worked. We'll never really know what could have been though.. Tyson's self destructive and super scum baggy behavior, coupled with the media basically nailing him to a cross, then the courts doing the same (Tyson didnt rape anyone. If you think he did, do some research on the case brought against him and all the ins and out of it, you'll likely be surprised), then Don TheCancerAtTheHeartOfBoxing King wringing him out like a hand towel.. Cus's death years before.. Betrayal, everything. Sigh. We'll never know what could have been - but what i think is that we'd all look at Mike as one of boxing's last, great, old-guard champions who finished his reign, and the reign of the traditional/old school heavy weight* by seceding the title(s) and the sport itself to the new generation of heavy weights just coming into their own.
I met Tyson years ago. I was in Vegas acting as an 'assistant trainer' (listed as such to his sponsors so I could get a room and a ticket) to a friend who was fighting wwwaaayyyy down on the card of an HBO Boxing After Dark set of fights. Not even in the same stratosphere as the televised fights, there were about 150 people in the entire arena when he fought.. But after his fight we were kinda milling around ringside because no one was there to claim the seats and no one really gave a shit, we all had vests, so security didnt give a damn so long as we didnt bother anyone and I look over and he was sitting over by the press table talking to a couple people I assumed were scouts. I walked over when I saw a bit of a lull in the conversation and just said "hey, Im sorry to bother you, I just wanted to say i respect the hell out of you as a fighter and Cus as a trainer blah blah" and he said thanks, I walked away, back to the railing to watch the next fight, cause the next two groups of people were making there way to the ring, and he came up and stood next to me by the railing and asked if I had a fight or anything, and we just kinda stood there and talked for.. 10m, maybe 15. Just about the fights, and the guys about to fight, and that was it.. But he was cool, laid back and he you could SEE how much he loves the sport, it just rolled off him in waves, and he made some pretty damn astute observations, like that my buddy who had fought earlier wasn't a natural southpaw but was forcing himself to fight unorthodox. That's not an easy thing to notice.
Im bored - so I typed a novella.
* - There have always been scientific heavyweights and there have always been heavyweights that fight like today's do, but the division has a whole was never structured around them and trainers werent building fighters to BE them. We just occasionally got fighters who worked that way naturally.
