Synopsis
'It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far as my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register'- Mike Tyson on boxing'My main objective is to be professional but to kill him'- Mike Tyson on Lennox LewisMike Tyson is one of the most famous and controversial sportsmen in history. Despised and adored, he has been world heavyweight champion, armchair philosopher and convicted rapist.In Facing Tyson , sportswriter Ted A. Kluck finds out what it was like to step into the ring with Iron Mike. Through a series of compelling interviews with the man himself and with opponents including Lennox Lewis, Kevin McBride and Evander Holyfield, he reveals what it was like to come face to face with the 'Baddest Man on the Planet'.
From the Back Cover
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.
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