Tyson’s Just Another Bully

The beast would come at him, snorting and bringing destruction in both fists, and Evander Holyfield would brace his legs and stiffen his spine and dig in, and then he would do something the beast wasn’t ready for - he would hit back.

The beast, bewildered and bleeding, tottered and fell, arose and was battered some more. He was swaying drunkenly, lashed by six, seven, eight punches in succession, sledgehammer heavy, when his tormentor was finally pulled off him.

And so in one of the most glorious upsets in sporting history, Mike Tyson was revealed for what he really has been all this time - an overrated bully.

It is astonishing enough that Evander Holyfield beat Mike Tyson as Saturday was turning into Sunday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. It is “how” he did it that is beyond belief.

This was one of those rare nights when you didn’t have to apologize for being a boxing fan.

This was a ringing reaffirmation of the very essence of sport - that the unimaginable really is possible, that no one, no matter how fearsome he may appear, is invincible.

And now you begin to reflect on Tyson and you ask: Whom has he beaten? A bunch of rabbits and deer, frightened creatures who were defeated before the first bell.

Holyfield is the first to stand up to him since Buster Douglas, and both those fights ended the same way.

For all the awe with which we have regarded Tyson, you now find yourself besieged by doubt. Wouldn’t Joe Louis have destroyed him? Wouldn’t Muhammad Ali have frustrated him? Wouldn’t Joe Frazier have cold-cocked him?

Now Tyson has someone to define him, an opponent against whom he can measure himself historically. The rematch with Holyfield will probably give us the first $100 million purse in history.

For that reason, the first thing you heard in the aftermath of Holyfield’s slaying of the dragon was a familiar accusation: fix.

No, no, no.

This was no tank job. This was strictly on the up-and-up. Holyfield knocked Tyson down once and had him out on his feet two other times. Tyson’s left eye was a swollen mess, and from the sixth round on, his own blood flowed down his face.

Yes, the reptilian Don King has the promotional rights to the rematch. Yes, boxing is always in need of a bath. Yes, almost every one of Tyson’s fights has had a rank and putrid aroma. But this … ah, this was a night of sweet redemption for boxing. This was a moment of shining triumph for a beleaguered sport.

One very large underdog won, and convincingly so, and there wasn’t the slightest whiff of anything untoward about it.

Holyfield had the perfect game plan. He timed Tyson exquisitely. Each time Tyson would come in and bend, like a rattlesnake coiling, preparing to launch that hybrid hook-uppercut, Holyfield would smack him, then step back.

He would reload, smack Tyson again, then muzzle him in a clinch.

Again and again he hit Tyson with the one punch to which he has always been vulnerable - the uppercut right down the middle. Because he is short and because he always fights from a crouch and because his defensive posture is both fists against his face, Tyson is open to the uppercut. But it must be delivered with precision and without hesitation.

Holyfield made about 400 such deliveries.

By the sixth round, when he had been butted (a butt he initiated) and then knocked down by a sweet left hook, Tyson was the one who looked fatigued.

Not Holyfield. Not the man with the hole in his heart. Not the man the Mayo Clinic had gone over with a microscope. Not the man whose very life we feared for.

No, Holyfield was the fresher of the two.

There was raucous rejoicing as news of the result spread. Holyfield is held in great esteem. But the rejoicing was as much a celebration of Tyson’s defeat. No one likes a bully. Or, in this case, his singularly obnoxious entourage.

This bully got no help at all from his corner. There was no tactical advice, just exhortation that became more desperate and finally deteriorated into panicked shrieking.

At the end of the fifth round, it had become evident that Holyfield was not running, and equally apparent that he was hurting Tyson. Carl King, Don King’s son, tried to catch Holyfield’s eye. King beat on his heart and nodded his head and crowed: “Now it’s coming. Now it’s coming.”

It was a typically classless reference to Holyfield’s heart condition. In his most recent fights he had begun to tire visibly by the fifth round.

But not this night.

No, this night a man who had seemed so oddly serene when he came into the ring fought the fight of a righteous man.

Holyfield had told us he would win. But he had not told us in the way that is popular these days. He did not strut and bray. He said all things are possible if you believe.

We know that to be true, of course. We have seen it often enough. Ah, but we are weak. We allow ourselves to be seduced.

We came to believe the dragon could not be slain.

It is good for the soul to be so gloriously wrong.