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    • A rich story before the fight against Jake Paul
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    A rich story before the fight against Jake Paul

    Umito Posted on

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    Left hooks. Straight hooks. Uppercuts.

    Mike Tyson unleashed a flurry of punches, including a left to the body that brought Hector Merced to his knees. The referee sent Tyson to a neutral corner, then started counting.

    It was March 6, 1985.

    Tyson, then 18, was making his professional boxing debut at the Empire State Plaza Conventional Hall in Albany, New York. One minute and 47 seconds after the opening bell, with Merced on his right knee and appearing in no hurry to get up, the referee stopped. the fight.

    Tyson won by TKO and a famous but turbulent career began.

    Nearly four decades later, Tyson is 58 and prepares to fight Jake Paul27. Among the millions of viewers who plan to watch the heavyweight fight November 15 on Netflixa part will especially know the knockouts of Tyson. There were 44 during a career that ended 50-6.

    “He’s a guy with immense talent, but is there a problem?” said Mike Silver, boxing historian and author of “The Arc of Boxing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Science.” “Yeah, there’s a problem.”

    The problem would return later in the ring.

    Mike Tyson’s boxing career: how it started

    Tyson began his professional career wearing white boxing shorts with a red belt. But even without the menacing black trunks that would later define him, he was devastating.

    He scored by knockout against his first 19 opponents, including 12 in the first round. Almost as astonishing: those 19 fights took place in just over a year, which meant that on average Tyson fought once every 20 days.

    The pace was part of a plan formulated by Tyson’s first trainer, Cus D’Amato. The goal: to help Tyson become the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. The record belonged to Floyd Patterson, who was also trained by D’Amato and won the heavyweight title in 1956 at 21 years, 10 months, three weeks and five days.

    Of his first 19 victims, Tyson knocked down two three times each and broke at least one nose. But only five of those fighters finished their careers with winning records, leaving Tyson to prove he could beat elite boxers.

    Youngest heavyweight champion

    On November 22, 1986, at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas, Tyson was 20 years old with a 27-0 record when he entered the ring. His opponent was Trevor Berbick, 32, a WBC world heavyweight champion who seemed determined to get in Tyson’s shoes.

    Fighters are not allowed to wear jerseys of the same color, and as champion, Berbick must choose first. He chose black – the same color Tyson began wearing in his 20th fight. Tyson still wore his black boxer shorts and faces a fine of $5,000.

    SO Tyson made Berbick pay.

    Tyson hammered Berbick from the opening moments and knocked him down twice in the second round. Berbick fell twice after the second knockdown, prompting referee Mills Lane to end the fight with 25 seconds remaining in the second round.

    With that, at the age of 20 years, four months and 22 days, Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion – more than a year younger than Patterson when he beat Archie Moore for the world heavyweight title heavyweights in 1956. D’Amato’s plan had worked, but he wasn’t there to see it come to fruition.

    D’Amato, Tyson’s beloved trainer, died on November 4, 1985. But the grieving student continues his rise.

    Mike Tyson’s knockouts

    Thirty seconds.

    This is how long it took, on July 26, 1986, to Tyson will overthrow Marvis Frazier with brutal uppercuts, prompting referee Joe Cortes to stop the fight. This remains the fastest knockout of Tyson’s career.

    Generally speaking, Tyson wasted little time with his victims.

    Tyson has recorded 22 of his 44 knockouts in the first round. This included a KO of Michael Spinkswho started his 1988 fight with a 31-0 record and lasted just 91 seconds.

    Of his KO victims, Tyson knocked out seven in the second round, four in the third round, two in the fourth round, three each in the fifth and sixth rounds, two in the seventh round, and one in the 10th round. Silver, the boxing historian, said it was evidence of the emerging problem.

    “If a good fighter took it past the fourth or fifth round, it wasn’t as effective as a knockout,” Silver said. “Great knockout punchers can score knockouts in the later rounds like (Rocky) Marciano like Joe Louis did. The problem with Tyson is he got frustrated.”

    The frustration was evident in 1997 when he bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear during their rematch and were disqualified. And before that, Tyson’s invincibility was broken.

    On February 11, 1990, Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson in the 10th round of their fight in Tokyo – still one of the most shocking upsets in the history of the sport.

    Holyfield stopped Tyson by TKO in the 11th round of their fight in 1996. Lennox Lewis also knocked out Tyson in the eighth round of their fight in 2002, as did the less than legendary Danny Williams in 2004.

    Tyson retired in 2005 shortly after refusing to enter a seventh round match against journeyman Kevin McBride.

    Is Mike Tyson the best boxer of all time?

    In a recent post on Tyson’s Instagram account, Tyson wore a T-shirt that read on the back: “I’m still the best of all time.”

    At his peak, Tyson was perhaps the most formidable boxer in the history of the sport and his achievements were impressive. He defended the WBC title which he won against Berbick nine times in a row and defended the IBF title which he won in 1997 against Tony Tucker six times in a row. After a four-year absence from boxing while serving a prison sentence after being convicted of rape, Tyson won the WBC title again.

    But the best of all time? Perhaps the most feared.

    “He was a tyrant with enormous power,” Silver said. “He wasn’t a fighter in the mold of an Evander Holyfield or a Marciano, or even an Arturo Gotti, where you literally had to kill them to beat them.”

    But Gene Kilroy, who managed Muhammad Ali, had a different view during a recent conversation with Tyson.

    Kilroy said: “The only one who beat Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson.”

    Umito
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