“He seemed to embody his own saying: if you work hard and put your mind to something, you can achieve anything."
If you have ever heard of the sport boxing, then you know who Mike Tyson is. Standing at 5 foot and 10 inches, he is arguably one of the best boxers to step in the ring. He is a force unlike any other, and he is the last man you would ever want to cross. With his face tattoo and drug issues, some people even believed that he was mentally unbalanced.
Indeed, he has done many questionable things throughout his career, but the craziest thing he had ever done happened in his match against Evander Holyfield. In this 1997 rematch, out of pure anger and frustration, he bit the ear of his opponent. This was not a normal bite of a human, this was the bite of an animal. He bit a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear off leaving his ear gushing blood and every single viewer scarred forever. You can question his decision making all you want, but you could never question his skill.
Mike Tyson is not a new boxer, he has been around the game for a while now. His first professional boxing fight was in 1985 when he was 18 years old. When he retired from boxing in 2005, his record stood at 50 wins, 6 losses and two draws. What Mike Tyson is known for isn’t necessarily his near perfect record, but instead his mindset. He was famous for who he was outside of the ring. He was an inspiration to many people. Today his legacy lives in his old quotations such as “In order to succeed greatly, you have to be prepared to fail greatly. If you can’t do both of them, you’ve got a problem,” and “As long as we persevere and endure, we can get anything we want.”
After he retired in 2005, he began to let himself go a bit. As he grew older he began to grow out of shape and gain weight. In early 2020 at the age of 54, a flip switched in Mike Tyson's head and he decided to start training again. It started off with simple workouts to get back into shape, but they quickly started to grow intense. His training sessions began to look like what they did 25 years ago. He would post his workouts on social media and they began to go viral.
He really looked as if he were trying to make a comeback to boxing, and sure enough, a boxing match was scheduled on November 28, 2020 between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. Everyone was blown away by this news, but this was typical Mike Tyson, doing something crazy. In around a year, he transformed from a washed up old man into a 54 year old inside of a 30 year olds body. Some people believed that he had no chance and others believed that Mike Tyson could do anything he put his mind to. Either way, everyone loves a comeback story (indeed, Tyson also served a prison sentence for a rape conviction).
When he and Roy Jones Jr. fought on November 22nd, it ended in a draw. The fairy tale did not have the happiest ending, but, at the end of the day, you can have nothing but respect for what Mike Tyson had done in terms of his sport. A 54 year old getting in a boxing ring is not something that happens very often. He put up a good fight and held his own against a professional boxer. He seemed to embody his own saying: if you work hard and put your mind to something, you can achieve anything.