Mike Tyson, John Rocker and Why Tyson Will Lose to Lennox Lewis

I saw the unexpurgated tape of the Tyson-Lewis "press conference" held in New York on Tuesday, January 22. The end and the aftermath were pure Americana (circa 1970s through 2002, that is) with Tyson standing on stage, grabbing his crotch and yelling at "you white boy" (some reporter in the audience who had the temerity to say that Tyson belonged in a straitjacket after he sauntered across the stage and attempted to do mayhem on Lewis's bodyguard and on Lewis himself) that he would stick the thing he was holding with his hand up the "white boy's" butt and anally rape him. He challenged every and all reporters to come up on the stage and fight him. That was very brave of the man once billed as the "baddest man on the planet" as many reporters there can actually walk two, but not three, blocks without getting winded. And the only fights most reporters have with their fellow reporters is who gets to the free eats at a press conference first.

The next day I read the reports of the riot on stage (as opposed to a staged riot) and something odd struck me. While every reporter discussed the lunacy of the press conference, and some came down hard on Tyson (Wallace Mathews, writing in the New York Post, said that Tyson was a "freak show"), I did not read one report or see one report on network television that mentioned the racist, homophobic spewing of this evil man who proudly wears tattoos of Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevera on his thin skin. And then I thought of John Rocker. Certainly threatening to beat up and anally rape white boys is every bit as egregious, perhaps far more egregious, than Rocker's comments concerning the types that ride the New York subway. It was really Rocker's tone, not his text, that was the issue, since anyone who rides the New York subways with any regularity sees everything Rocker said and far, far more.

But the "redneck" Rocker was held up to the nation and symbolically "stocked" for his comments, but no one in the media (that I read or saw) had anything to say about Tyson's remarks, just his behavior. Let us just say that instead of Tyson's grabbing his crotch and threatening to anally rape white boys, that had been John Rocker grabbing his crotch and threatening to anally rape "black boys." Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings would have editorialized on hate, civic responsibility, the role of sports in American life, the nature of role models, and on and on it would go. Every front page would blast the comments in headlines so big you could see them on a corner newsstand in New York if you were standing on the top of the Empire State Building.

And why is that? I am of the opinion that most in the media, 90 percent of whom vote Democratic, went to liberal institutions of journalism, and see themselves as superior to the poor sods who don't share their leftist views, refuse to see the cascade of hate that can come from a black man, but can easily see it when it comes from a white man. The Dan Rathers of the world treat certain minorities as if they are a protected species; they patronize them. In reality, when you don't take to task the Tysons the way you take to task the Rockers, you are saying to black men: "We don't think you merit the same standards as whites. Obviously, you don't know any better." What crap. That is racism with a capital "R" as in, yes, Rocker.

But that press conference showed me something else. Tyson can't fight anymore, at least with his fists. When he rushed across the stage to be met by Lewis's bodyguard who tried to gently hold Tyson back, the now rusted "Iron Mike" launched a left hook at his stationary and totally unprepared foe -- and missed by more than half a foot. Listen, that "white boy" reporter who would later be cowering in his seat at the thought of an amorous encounter with Tyson, could have hit that bodyguard, no problem. Yet, Tyson missed. But Lewis didn't miss his shot. He bopped one off the top of Tyson's lunatic head. Tyson then did what he does best in a real fight -- he went to the floor where, reports say, he bit Lewis on the leg.

Some in the press made excuses for the deranged pugilist; his public relations department issued a "kind of" explanation/apology (which Tyson probably didn't dictate, probably didn't read, and might not even know about); and the fight with Lewis looks to be still on, if not in Vegas then somewhere in the world.

The only thing that makes this fight the least bit interesting (other than for those who will thoroughly enjoy watching Tyson take a beating and get knocked out for a third time in his dismal career) is the fact that Lewis has shown that he has trouble taking a punch. Tyson can still punch. The question is -- can he land a punch? If the bodyguard and the missed left hook are any bellwethers, Tyson can't land and he gets knocked out; or, just as likely, he does something ludicrous to Lewis and gets disqualified.

The aftermath of that fight will ultimately see Tyson work his way to a long prison term, if not for the reported rape of that woman in Nevada (as I write this no charges have yet been filed against the gnawing pugilist but the police say there is evidence of a crime) then he'll be imprisoned for something else. In prison, there will be plenty of "white boys" and "black boys" and other "boys" that he can impose his will on. But in the ring and in the game of life, Tyson was, is, and always will be a loser who tattoos the mass murderer Mao on his arm and the enslaving Che on his belly but doesn't have the stomach to be a real man. In short, this crazed cretin is nothing but a bullying coward, a sexual criminal, and a contemptible creep.