For a few years Mike Tyson was the most feared man in sport, and then, almost as fast, he was not. Sports Illustrated’s retrospective on his career, written in 2010 when he was long retired, traced the full arc. It is a story that reads differently depending on which chapter you stop at.
A prodigy under Cus D’Amato
The legend began at the U.S. Junior Olympic Boxing Championships. Tyson, then 15 and a protégé of the trainer Cus D’Amato, knocked out Don Cozad in eight seconds to reach the final. He turned professional in 1985, and his career ran until 2024. Early on he was nicknamed “Iron Mike” and “Kid Dynamite”. Later came “the Baddest Man on the Planet”.
His breakthrough came against Trevor Berbick. A second-round knockout made Tyson the youngest heavyweight champion in history, at 20 years, four months and 22 days. He then unified the title with wins over James “Bonecrusher” Smith and Tony Tucker, and he held the undisputed world heavyweight championship from 1987 to 1990.
The peak
Fame followed the belts. Tyson signed a two-year deal in September 1987 to promote Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game reached shelves that October and became one of the most popular of all time. He endorsed everything from soft drinks to cameras to pick-up trucks, and Jet reported he was paid $150,000 for a plug of the 1989 film Lean on Me.
In the ring, the high point was a 91-second knockout of Michael Spinks, who had a legitimate claim to the lineal heavyweight title. Many regard it as the pinnacle of Tyson’s career. Muhammad Ali, appearing on The Arsenio Hall Show when Tyson turned up as a surprise guest, offered his own verdict: “I’m scared of him.”
Away from the ring his life was less orderly. His marriage to the actress Robin Givens lasted only months before the couple sat down with Barbara Walters on 20/20. A week later Givens filed for divorce.
The fall
The end of the reign came in Tokyo. James “Buster” Douglas, a 42-to-1 underdog, knocked Tyson out in the tenth round at the Tokyo Dome. Nearly two years to the day later, Tyson was convicted of the rape of a beauty pageant contestant. He served three years at the Indiana Youth Center and was released in March 1995.
Comeback and decline
The public still wanted him. His first fight back, a first-round knockout of Peter McNeeley, grossed more than $96 million worldwide and set several domestic pay-per-view records. Tyson regained the WBC and WBA titles and went into his meeting with Evander Holyfield an 8-to-1 favorite. Holyfield, 34, stopped him in the 11th round.
The rematch was worse. Tyson was disqualified in the third round for biting Holyfield’s ear.
His relationship with the media frayed after that. He returned against Francois Botha nineteen months later, and after a 38-second knockout of Lou Savarese in Glasgow he called out the champion Lennox Lewis. At the press conference to announce that fight, an emotionally unraveled Tyson traded words with a heckler. Lewis won in the eighth round, ending Tyson’s last shot at the heavyweight title.
Britain’s Danny Williams then knocked him out in the fourth, his fifth career defeat. It later emerged that Tyson had torn a knee ligament in the first round. His final fight was against the journeyman Kevin McBride, and he quit on his stool before the seventh round. “I just don’t have this in my heart anymore,” he said.
Tyson later credited a comic turn in the 2009 film The Hangover, a role that played on his tough-man image, with helping turn his life around.
