 The Worldwide Boxing Magazine Site |
Got your free t-shirt yet? |
| articles from the magazine ... |
|
February 1999
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
|
 |
THE ROT HAS SET
Tyson's comeback against Botha suggests that the glory days have gone forever |
|
HE'S GOT THE POWER, BUT...: Tyson's big right-hander bailed him out,
but next time he might not be so fortunate
- Get Big Pic
One big punch saved what is left of Mike Tyson's career at Las Vegas on 16 January
but his regression has gone deeper than the simple erosion of boxing technique.
The Tyson who was humiliated and outpointed for the better part of five rounds by South
Africa's Francois Botha looked passive and almost reluctant. The fire, the fury, the
arrogance of the unbridled aggressor, were all noticeably absent from his performance. The
predator's instinct was no longer there.
And his boxing form itself was worse than anyone could have anticipated, even allowing
for his 19 months of inactivity after biting both of Evander Holyfield's in this same
ring at the MGM Grand casino hotel in June 1997.
Tyson threw one or two punches at a time and missed hugely. There were a few jabs but
no combinations, no body attack, practically no head movement.
But, in the waning moments of round five in the scheduled 10-rounder, Tyson finally hit
the target. Botha, getting careless, leaned in with a wide, slow right and Tyson fired a
right of his own, a straight punch this time, not a swing as earlier, and it travelled
straight down the middle to make violent and conclusive contact.
Botha went down heavily on his back and one knew immediately that the fight was over.
The South African bravely tried to rise, tilted over on to his side but managed to get his
feet under him just as referee Richard Steele signalled that the count had been completed
with one second remaining in the fifth.
Disorientated and with his legs too weak to support him, Botha staggered back into the
ropes as the referee rushed to his aid, assisted by Tyson in an unfamiliar show of
compassion that brought to mind an anxious Floyd Patterson stooping over Ingemar Johansson
after knocking out the Swede in their famous rematch in 1960.
The one-punch finish electrified the crowd of 12,519 which, along with the millions
watching on world-wide pay-per-view TV, must have thought it had been witnessing a huge
upset unfolding.
Tyson was physically menacing at a muscles bulging 223lbs (15st 13lbs) but seemed
strangely unwilling to press his attack against the pudgy but sturdy Botha, who was 10lbs
the heavier man at the weigh-in two days before the fight.
Once Tyson would have walked through a brave but limited opponent such as this,
overwhelming him with an in-your-face assault and the speed and variety of his blows.
In this fight, though, he lingered so long in the clinches that one thought of the
words of one of his early trainers, Teddy Atlas, that Tyson enters into "silent
contracts" with opponents who offer resistance, not really opening up as long as the
other man also does not do so.
As a result the fight was clearly slipping away from him. Two judges gave Botha the
four completed rounds, the third gave Botha three rounds and one to Tyson. When you
consider that referee Steele told the judges to take a point from Tyson in round two, for
excessive holding, there was clearly cause for concern in the Tyson camp. Botha was
building an uncomfortably clear lead on points.
But, with Tyson, it can take only one blow to wipe out a disadvantage in the scoring.
And so it was in this fight.
Until that punch landed, though, Tyson looked worryingly vulnerable, distinctly
beatable. Botha almost mocked him at times, dropping his hands to his sides, talking in
disparaging terms to Tyson, saying things such as: "Is that all you've
got?" along with rather more personal comments, and moving away from his
opponent's hooks and swings so easily that the 8-1 on favourite looked clumsy and
off-balance.
Tyson looked disturbingly open to rights to the head, but Botha is not a seriously hard
hitter - a prime reason why he was chosen as Tyson's first comeback opponent.
The boxing people and reporters talking in huddled groups afterwards seemed unanimous
in agreement that if only Botha had a little more power in his right hand, the 30-year-old
underdog could have knocked Tyson out.
The crowd cheered when Botha landed the right. The South African, who now lives with
his wife and two children in the Los Angeles area, was winning the fight by the simple
strategy of throwing a couple of punches and then tying Tyson up.
Tyson, who used to call himself the "baddest man on the planet", complained
to the referee about rough tactics from Botha - and this from a fighter who has handed out
more than his share of outside-the-rules treatment. But Tyson did not lose his head after
being cut over the right eye in the first round.
There was, briefly, fear of a chaotic ending when round one ended with the fighters
locked in a clinch on the ropes and trying to throw punches after the bell as handlers
from both corners rushed into the ring to assist referee Steele in parting them. Steele
conferred with Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada commission, before going to
both corners to issue cautions.
"I was never worried about another disqualification," Ratner said afterwards,
referring to the way the Holyfield-Tyson rematch ended, "but I told Richard to take
control and take points if necessary, and he did an excellent job."
Botha complained that Tyson had been trying to break his arm in the ropeside clinch.
Asked afterwards at the press conference what he thought of Botha's allegation, Tyson
replied: "He's correct."
Things seemed to have settled down in the second, but Tyson had the point deducted and
was cautioned for throwing a punch after the bell. He looked almost an old fighter under
the bright lights, but whenever he threw a punch the crowd "oohed".
The trouble was, few of these blows landed although Botha sported a bruise under his
right eye and a slight cut on the bridge of the nose at the post-fight conference.
Afterwards, Tyson admitted that his corner was, in his words, "getting excited"
at the state of affairs but said that he knew it was "just a matter of time" before
he caught up with Botha.
"He told us not to worry, he had him in his sights," Tyson's new trainer, Tommy
Brooks, said afterwards.
Tyson's new boxing adviser, Shelly Finkel, said he was impressed by Tyson's
composure in a trying situation. He declined to say who he thought the next opponent might
be, but Axel Schulz, of Germany, is the name that was being most freely mentioned for a
tentative 24 April date.
"Oh, yeah, he fought Botha, didn't he?" Tyson said of Schulz at the post-fight
press conference. "I thought he won that fight. If he fights me, he'll get knocked out."
Tyson thanked Botha for giving him the opportunity to fight for the South
African's No. 2 ranking in the International Boxing Federation. On rushing to
Botha's help after the knockout, Tyson drew applause from the throng when he said:
"He's a brother. Look, it's just a boxing match, it's not that serious."
It was a typical example of the ambivalent nature of Tyson, bearing in mind the
apparently serious admission that he had been trying to break Botha's arm in the first
round. "He got rough and I got rough back," was how Tyson described that little
incident.
Tyson said he did not even remember throwing the right that ended it, that he was
surprised to see Botha on the floor. Not as surprised as Botha, though. "I thought I
was controlling it, but I got hit by a punch I didn't see," Botha said afterwards.
Asked what he thought of his performance, Tyson merely said that he had been doing his
best. But he admitted to feeling "kinda crappy" about how he had boxed and said
he realises he has a lot of work to do.
However, all the training in the world is unlikely to bring back the Tyson of old. That
Tyson, it seems, has gone forever. But, at 32, the power of his punch makes him a
dangerous foe for anybody. The single wallop that felled the "White Buffalo", as
Botha calls himself, was truly prodigious, not thrown in desperation so much as with the
innate impulse of a fighter's years of training.
But that one blow cannot disguise the fact that the man who launched it is but a pale
reflection of the Mike Tyson we once knew.
- GRAHAM HOUSTON |
|
Also available to read from issue:
|
|
On sale on the last Thursday of every month Ensure you never miss a copy . . . buy your subscription or back issues here. |