The Dark Fascination With Tyson

Public Is Still Riveted by Troubled Former Heavyweight Champion

On June 27, 1988, in Atlantic City, three days before his 22nd birthday, Mike Tyson reached the peak of his boxing career. His opponent, Michael Spinks, walked terrified to the ring, a gentle man wearing a mask of fear. You could feel the heat of the crowd. You had to shout to be heard. White lights flashed, and photographers, desperate to have their film developed, struggled against one another inside a darkroom with a ferocity one said he had never experienced. They had it, from one angle or another: Spinks stretched on the canvas, Tyson still the heavyweight king. It happened in 91 seconds.

There would not be another night like it in Tyson's time.

Seventeen years later, having lost most of his ring skills, bitten off part of Evander Holyfield's ear, served a prison sentence for rape, exhibited repeatedly bizarre behavior and squandered almost $300 million before declaring bankruptcy in 2003, Tyson, almost 39, comes to Washington to do battle Saturday night at MCI Center. Contradicting his decline as a boxer, Tyson can still sell tickets; a crowd of more than 12,000 already is assured. Although his scheduled match with one Kevin McBride is a far cry from that memorable night in Atlantic City, thousands more tickets are expected to be sold, and tens of thousands will watch on pay-per-view television. But virtually no one is anticipating a classic boxing match.

What then is the attraction for the paying customers? Are they undying fans of Tyson? Rubberneckers to a crash? The impetuous? The curious? Fight fans hoping to enjoy a decent card? Those who want to take a last look at a heavyweight who once gave promise of being ranked with the likes of Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and maybe even Muhammad Ali?

In his last fight 11 months ago, Tyson (50-5) was left on his backside by the little-known Danny Williams in Louisville. Before that he knocked out the undistinguished Clifford Etienne in Memphis. Washington seems to be the latest stop in a road show of minor talents. The 6-foot-6 McBride (32-4-1) was beaten by a British heavyweight who was in the process of losing 17 of his last 18 fights before retiring. The Tyson-McBride kind of matchup used to be regular fare in fight clubs and circus tents, a hoot that broke life's monotony for thirsting crowds. These days, in a sport without strict governance, it goes on under a sprinkle of glitz and the cloak of modern buildings.

A handful of explanations can account for Tyson's enduring attraction, but none would be in order if this were not boxing, where the participants can linger about as long as they care to, and have never wanted for witnesses to their ignominy.

"Most good fighters hang around far longer than they should," said Gerald Early, author of "The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture," responding recently by e-mail to questions about Tyson's enduring lure. "Perhaps this is true of elite athletes in general. 'The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd,' to use the title of the famous Anthony Newley musical from the 1960s. But there is more to it.

"Tyson is interesting," said Early, who is a professor of English, and African and Afro-American Studies, and director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, "because he has such an act, a persona, that accompanies his athletic achievement. In a sense, he seems trapped by the persona that has enabled him to make money and has been a source of great disruption and distress for him, although his self-absorption borders on the pathological, even more so than most successful athletes.

"In one way, he reminds me of Paul Reubens who played Pee Wee Herman to the point where it was impossible for the public to understand that Paul Reubens was not Pee Wee Herman. Mike Tyson cannot stop being Mike Tyson. What else would he be if he stopped? What else could he do?"

Downward Spiral

Tyson's descent has lasted longer than that of any once-great athlete. The deaths of his original trainer, Cus D'Amato, in 1985 and later co-manager Jim Jacobs began Tyson's downward spiral. He sued his other co-manager, Bill Cayton, at the time of the Spinks fight and broke off with his trainer, Kevin Rooney, after the fight. From that point, Tyson seemed to heed no one's advice, and although he knocked out Carl Williams in 93 seconds only two fights after ending Spinks's career, he already was evolving into an aimless swinger and short-cutting his training. On Feb. 11, 1990, Buster Douglas left him groping on the canvas for his mouthpiece. In years to come, Holyfield and Lennox Lewis would keep him reeling.

Tyson discarded the demands and the art of the sport, taught to him in the tradition of Jose Torres and Archie Moore and such greats. Worthy successor to Ali? Unbeatable like Marciano? The beginning of Tyson's greatness also was its end. His jackknifed career and its remains have peen painful to observe, strewn over nearly two decades and exceeded in frightfulness only by the wreckage of his life as he seemed to act out his baddest-man-on-the-planet persona.

His vile rants against Lewis precluded that fight from being held in Las Vegas and continued up to fight time in Memphis. Since then, Tyson has been more docile -- although he had his face tattooed shortly before fighting Etienne, taking the risk of having his skin ripped open by a punch. Like a lot of things Tyson has done, it made no sense. Yet over the years, for one reason or another, he has remained a compelling figure and, to some extent, a popular one.