Should we root for Mike Tyson? What an inane question. It implies we can’t watch a sporting event without investing emotionally in the athletes, without identifying ourselves with them. It’s as if we couldn’t read a novel without considering it our story or watch a play or movie without seeing ourselves as the main character. Rather than representing “why sports don’t matter anymore,” as the New York Times Magazine recently phrased the issue in a bitter, nostalgic article by Robert Lipsyte, Mike Tyson represents why sports matter as much as ever, if not more. Lipsyte’s article was typical of the current judgmental school of journalism in that it bemoaned the loss of heroes and heroism, something repeated ad nauseam in the wake of Mickey Mantle’s death. It’s true that athletes are no longer considered heroes and role models, but we think that’s a good thing. It’s been our belief since we were nine or so, when we discovered athletes were not descended from heaven but were simply gifted or unusually determined human beings. This, however, is a stage of sophistication not yet reached by most sports columnists.
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We see athletes in the round these days, in all their glory and with all their failings, and this has made sports not less dramatic but more. A Tyson, who might once have lived a sheltered, comfortable life as a media-made hero, must now combat not only the other man in the ring but himself. That may not necessarily be a new thing in sports, but it is a level of the game we weren’t normally privy to in the so-called golden or even gilded age of athletics, extending right up into the 60s. This combat doesn’t just come into view following trials or tragedy. Money and comfort, we’ve seen, have proved to be as damaging to an athlete as any injury could be. Where a Ted Williams, a Joe DiMaggio, or even a Mantle was once kept hungry on a salary that, while certainly comfortable, did not necessarily guarantee a lifetime of ease, today’s athlete must find the hunger after signing a long-term contract. It’s something that ought to give us a new appreciation for Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, and, yes again, Tyson, who collected $25 million for his comeback fight and who plans to fight again this year.
If he hadn’t ordered the pay-per-view fight, we would have had to high-tail it out of there to find a bar carrying it, but it turned out there was nothing to worry about. For whatever reason, to root for Tyson or against him or simply to study his comeback as the personal drama it seemed above all to be, about ten of us chipped in $5 apiece with what John Schulian once called that mixture of humanism and voyeurism that makes boxing unique among sports.
The fight itself took 89 seconds, but the bout was over at the introduction at the center of the ring. McNeeley rocked back and forth nervously, avoiding eye contact, while Tyson focused on his head with the intensity of a cat watching a bird fly back and forth inside a cage.
