I'd eat a dirty french fry before I'd watch Tyson
By Ben Smith The Journal Gazette
You may give Mike Tyson your $55, if you like. I'd rather not.
Fifty-five clams is the record rate for the pay-per-view tonight, Tyson vs. Lennox Lewis for either the heavyweight championship of the world or boxing's further descent toward the clowns-on-unicycles genre. I will save mine, but you go right ahead. It's a free country for all of us, suckers or not.
Me, I am not. So I think I will take my $55, and buy my daughter four Super Gymnast Barbies ($12.64 each at Wal-Mart).
Or maybe I'll take my $55, and buy my son 67 Matchbox cars (82 cents each).
Or maybe I'll plunk down my double nickel, buy 15 packages of bratwurst ($3.50 apiece), and invite the whole neighborhood over for a cookout.
Go ahead, drop your 55 simoleons.
Not me.
After almost two decades I do not get the appeal of Ironhead Mike, except that he's the car wreck we all slow down to look at. He's a convicted rapist and washed-up pug who hasn't beaten anyone in over a decade, and so affects a menace that is either all or mostly facade. He detonates f-bombs, he growls that he will eat Lennox Lewis's children . . . but is all that really Mike, or is it just the latest reworking of a tired act?
Mike Goes For Outrage. Part Whatever.
Or am I the only one who's noticed that for all Tyson's threats and bluster when the cameras are rolling, no one ever seems to get seriously hurt in these displays except for a bite on the leg here or a chunk from an ear there?
And yet America eats him up, no pun intended.
Oh, we'll pretend to be aghast, disgusted, thoroughly repulsed at the very sight of him - one letter writer to Sports Illustrated claimed that, upon seeing Mike on the front of the May 20 issue, he promptly dropped it unread into the trash - but then we'll resume making him millions. It is reported that the pay-per-view for tonight's fight/fine dining experience could exceed 2 million hits, another record. Clearly we love the guy.
"I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the world," Tyson told ESPN boxing analyst Max Kellerman, and for once this was not bluster, but simply the truth.
A frightened Lennox Lewis or a lucky punch from Tyson, for whom there remain the last vestiges of the puncher's chance, and Tyson will not only be the biggest fighter in the history of the world, but the champ again. What a proud moment that will be. What a repudiation of all those kids who actually ennoble the sport down in the amateur ranks, striving to be champions and decent human beings besides.
Oh, yeah. You go right ahead and watch the clowns and unicycles if you want.
I have a few other things on tap . . .
1. Cut the grass.
2. Cut the grass again.
3. Wash the car.
4. Retrieve all fast food wrappers from the back seat of the car.
5. Find and consume uneaten french fries from the back seat of the car.
6. Sort all my CDs according to age of the artist (Bach . . . Mick Jagger . . . Mozart).
7. Sort all my ties according to decade ('90s here . . . '80s there . . . '70s with the rest of the bedsheets over there).
8. Sort all my state quarters alphabetically by principal natural resource (Georgia, peaches; Arkansas, pigs; Texas, public executions).
8. Read "Ten Little Dinosaurs" to my son for the 1,571st time.
10. Read "Ten Little Dinosaurs" to my son for the 1,572nd time.
11. Stare blankly into space as I read "Ten Little Dinosaurs" to my son for the 1,573rd time.
12. Hide "Ten Little Dinosaurs" in the closet when my son is not looking.
And last but not least:
13. Call the office to find out who won the fight.
Surely that's enough.
Surely that's enough to keep Mike Tyson out of my wallet, an unpleasant thought to say the least.
You may give your $55 to Mike Tyson if you like, suckers.
Me, I have to go give the dog a bath.
(P.S.: I don't have a dog).
Ben Smith is a writer for The Journal Gazette. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
