No one is perfect.
We all have our shortcomings in this life and most of us have the luxury of lurking in the anonymity that keeps us from the public eye so that we can play as though we are flawless.
But we know exactly what lurks under the hoods of our falsely projected external illusions and would instantly vaporize if we even suspected that someone was afforded a peek into our inner world of personal turmoil.
He who is without sin cast the first stone?
You’re damn right!
So here we are watching yet another very public episode in the life of one of the most intriguing Heavyweight Boxing Champions ever if merely because of the roller coaster ride of a life that hasn’t even hit 50 years old yet.
…….and from the looks on the faces of most who still relish seeing Mike Tyson in the headlines for yet another controversial revelation into the inner workings of his mind and the events of his world, his recent confessions of his unbridled alcoholism gave many yet another thrill from which to escape from their own sorry mediocre drenched existence.
I’ve heard Mike Tyson called many things ever since he burst into the spotlight 30 years ago as a rising amateur force in boxing under the tutelage of mentor Cus D’Amato.
It was a sight to behold when seeing the sheer brute force and animal-like rage controlled and focused in the boxing ring giving the modern generation a much needed shot in the arm into a sport that was weak at the time and in much need of a savior to revive its diminishing and plunging interest.
There was a time when Mike Tyson appeared to be damn near perfect. His image was carefully engineered by managers Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs as they had the added advantage of already having great media connections through their company Big Fights Inc.
While the story has been told countless times as to the facts of Mike Tyson’s rise through the ranks of professional boxing, I wanted to share my perspective on a few things concerning his life that the naysayers refuse to acknowledge as they put him down with their perfect selves as though they would have maintained their sanity in such a swirling storm of a life where sheer madness is literally guaranteed.
First off it pisses me off when so many people say that Cus D’Mato “saved” Mike Tyson from the streets as though he was doing this from the kindness of his heart.
Now granted, I will admit that their union saved and preserved Mike from a certain doom or early death because of the way that he was living as a young man in the Brownsville Brooklyn section if New York City but it wouldn’t have played out like this if Cus D’Amato didn’t see something in it for himself.
What did he see in it for himself?
Well you’ve got to remember that Cus D’Amato was in the boxing business long before Tyson was born. He stepped on many toes back in those days and made many enemies. He was blackballed in the sport of boxing for so very long and didn’t have any high caliber fighters in his stable from which to exact a revenge on those who made things difficult for him once upon a time.
But it’s not as though he didn’t taste the big time as a manager and trainer in his beloved sport, he had heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson in his stable as well as light heavyweight champ Jose Torres amongst others.
But at his advancing age he felt as though his time was running out and he needed just one more shot at his detractors who felt as though his last chapter in the sport of boxing had been written years before and that nothing more was to come from the eccentric bitter old man that Cus D’Amato was generally accepted to be.
So here comes this physical monster of a young man with absolutely no direction that the world had given up on just waiting to be molded into what Cus felt he needed before he left this earth.
What many people do not understand is that the so called “pre Don King” Mike Tyson was already getting into trouble as he was on the rise from the amateurs and into the professional ranks. No one knew much about his run in with trouble because his managers were always there to pick up the slack with a substantial sum of payoff money to make every negative incident “go away.”
Mike Tyson had issues adjusting socially to people and Cus D’Amato never took the time to teach him about being accountable for your actions and making the proper choices in life because HE wanted this champion as a tool to get his revenge on the boxing establishment and never took the time to raise a complete man!
So while the world saw this seemingly invincible awesome man-child of a superstar that had the world in the palm of his hands when most at that age are still riddled with their high school insecurities of inadequacy, the gullible public never knew the cracks in the armor that existed under the aura of invisibility that intrigued the world beyond measure.
These cracks were the proof of the neglect of a greedy Cus D’Amato, he concerned themselves not with the total development of a fully developed man, but only the part that would bring him once again to the helm of the sport to afford him the opportunity to thumb his nose in victory to his detractors before stepping triumphantly into the grave.
In my opinion this was very selfish indeed…….
So then Mike Tyson was thrust wholeheartedly and head first into a world unprepared beyond the wildest dreams of 99.99% of the population and most of his detractors couldn’t handle if they tried.
He went from being considered an ugly ignorant repulsive thug by most to being highly desirable because of his celebrity. Most people will work their entire lives for a retirement that couldn’t touch a week of the reckless spending that Mike Tyson did to lose out on a 400 million plus amount of earnings that he went through over his career.
Money beyond the comprehension of most!
Power because of his popularity and funds that made many who had control lose it once in his presence!
Sex with women from every corner of the world. Imagine flying to a foreign country unannounced yet somehow the word got out that you would be there and when you do you find dozens of gorgeous women waiting to fulfill your every sexual whim?
I’m not condoning or saying that he was really living such a great life at that point but what I’m trying to get at is that many of us couldn’t handle the little things in life so how could we judge or ridicule the life of another whose range of carnal pleasures go so much higher?
No one cared about what he was ever feeling inside as they saw what they could extract from him. Wasn’t this all he ever knew? But we are thrown off by the powerful physique and the countless memories of brutal knockouts to ever consider that this man feels hurt and abandonment too.
But this American society that we live in shuns the idea that men can cry out in pain. We look down on them because we’ve been conditioned to believe that a real man takes the travesties endured and spits them out like sunflower seed shell and keeps on trucking.
But when was Mike Tyson ever handed a proper road map that would help him navigate through the rough waters that accompany that much sought after position of being a superstar? It never happened and to tell the truth after all that he has been through whether he understands it or not, I think that he has done quite a damn good job of surviving his inner turmoil.
But because of the sharks that he has always courted in his inner circle, it made me realize that Mike Tyson for the most part has never really lived. He never really received a sincere touch whose intentions were honest and pure at the root. You see, there is a reason why he has self medicated himself and I think it’s a step in the right direction for him to come clean with his secret life.
He will live and I believe his best days are ahead of him if he continues to keep things real with himself. I’ve read a lot of nasty comments about him on the internet as well as even more expressions of care and support. But to those who have malice in their heart for him possibly because of his past discretion’s, all I have to say is that if you had to walk for a lifetime in the shows of Mike Tyson, where would you be?
We kill our family members when the pressures of life reach unbearable levels. We jump off of buildings when our assets in stocks drop overnight. We have affairs on our mates after the slightest disagreement.
We live miserably seeking every carnal distraction as a chance of escape from our predictable mediocre realities, yet we point fingers at a man who has been through worse and keeps on improving himself from a place of triple darkness that most have never seen.
The old Mike Tyson is dying alright, he’s dying so that the real Mike Tyson can finally live. God bless his soul.
Peace & Righteous Love Always,
Your Sympathetic Brother,
LanceScurv
407.590.0755
