Shrewd defeat of Daniel Dubois showcased the sport’s best qualities before Mike Tyson took to the stage in LA It’s always the quiet ones. And they don’t come a lot quieter than Joe Joyce, whose impressive if inconvenient stoppage of Daniel Dubois has hurled him into the heavyweight spotlight alongside Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, his compatriots who share all four world belts.After making the 23-year-old Dubois quit in the 10th round at Church House on Saturday night – the British, Commonwealth and European champion taking a knee then pawing an eye injury that was confirmed on Sunday as a broken orbital bone, along with nerve damage – the best-case scenario for the 35-year-old south Londoner is a mandatory challenge...
Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr – both in their 50s – meet in Los Angeles in an unsanctioned exhibition boutNobody in the history of paid fighting has used the language of violence with as much undiluted enthusiasm as Mike Tyson. Iron Mike gave credible voice to the expression “bad intentions” and, from 1985 until 2005, he scared the pants off 50 lesser mortals until he began to rust and they started beating him up.Yet, on his return to the ring at 54 in the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Saturday night, the man who once threatened to ram an opponent’s nose bone into his brain and said he would eat Lennox Lewis’s babies (he didn’t), is being asked...
Iron Mike has chosen to eschew a taste of normality in returning to fight Roy Jones and with that continues his path alongside Sonny ListonNo one knows boxing history like Mike Tyson. He made plenty of it himself during 20 years as the most feared heavyweight in the world. But there are a lot of things he doesn’t know, and the consequence of his ill‑advised comeback is one of them. Tyson, 54, has not fought since Kevin McBride, a modest Irish heavyweight with much to be modest about, made him quit on his stool after six rounds on the undercard of a show in Washington DC, in June 2005. Like most champions, he quit too late, but what a ride...
Boxing has always been a flawed and dangerous game – the emergence of Daniel Kinahan is no betrayal of the sportThe footage is horrible, harrowing, traumatic. All the same, you can’t look away. The scene is the Regency hotel in Dublin in February 2016, the event a nondescript weigh-in before the big fight the following night. There’s terrible rock music playing. A couple of gormless-looking bald men standing on the podium bearing clipboards. A local cruiserweight called Gary Sweeney steps on to the scales in blue Superman briefs. The gormless bald men peer forward and write on their clipboards. Sweeney steps aside. All of a sudden, we hear the whip-crack of an assault rifle.At which point, a lot of things...
This is an ideal confection of nostalgia and viral oddity – with an eerie synchronicity for anyone who, like me, has spent their confinement watching Tyson’s startling early career blitzMike Tyson wants to make a comeback. And who can blame him? So do I. So do you. So does the retail industry, going to school, having fun, being a grandparent, having a job and going to the corner shop without standing outside in a face mask looking like a socially awkward moped thief.In Tyson’s case it seems unlikely the comeback talk amounts to a serious plan, at least not one that will extend beyond some kind of hairspray-and-steroids boxer-tainment. Tyson is 53 years old. No matter how good he looks...