Tyson to retire after 3rd loss in 4 bouts
Reuters
Jun. 12, 2005 - Mike Tyson, the self-styled "baddest guy on the planet," announced his retirement after losing to an unheralded Irishman on Saturday night.
"This is it, I'm finished," Tyson, 38, told a news conference after failing to answer the bell for the seventh round of the non-title bout against Kevin McBride.
"It's just not in my heart. I'm just not interested in fighting anymore."
Tyson, a parody of the ferocious fighter who became the youngest undisputed world heavyweight champion at the age of 20, then bizarrely added he would now consider missionary work.
Three losses in his last four fights would suggest Tyson seek other challenges. Unfortunately debts of at least $30 million are the reason he took the McBride fight in the first place.
Tyson filed for bankruptcy in August, 2003, before announcing last year that he would fight McBride on pay-for-view television.
After promoters expressed reservations about McBride's pedigree, Briton Danny Williams stepped in and won the biggest fight of his modest career with a fourth-round knockout.
Williams's abilities were set in perspective when he was outclassed by Ukrainian Vitali Klitschko in a failed bid for the World Boxing Council title.
RAVAGES
On Saturday, Tyson showed the ravages of time and an undisciplined lifestyle when he exhausted himself by round five.
The man who lost his Nevada license when he bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997 fouled McBride with a head butt and tried to snap the Irishman's arm.
"I was desperate, I wanted to win," he said.
He still earned $5 million for six rounds' work although nearly all the money is destined for creditors.
Before his life unraveled in the 1990s, Tyson could legitimately claim he was en route to succeeding Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali as one of the great 20th century heavyweights.
Tyson, a student of boxing history, combined power, speed and intelligence with an unsettling streak of malevolence, the trait which was to take over his personality.
A troubled marriage to actress Robin Givens ended with allegations of violence and in 1990 he was knocked out by Buster Douglas in Tokyo.
He served half of a six-year sentence for rape, was embroiled in assault charges and lost what remained of his aura of invincibility with two defeats to Holyfield and one to Lennox Lewis.
For the past few years, Tyson has been promoted on the basis of what he once was in the ring and, cynically, what he might do outside. Those attracted to the latter, received full value when Tyson assaulted Lewis at a news conference to promote their 2002 fight. As Tyson knows, the list of heavyweight boxers who have know when to quit their brutal trade is dismayingly short.
Ali, now stricken by Parkinson's syndrome, is the most obvious. Dempsey and Louis also carried on too long with Marciano, who retired undefeated, a glittering exception.
The prospect of further beatings by fighters known to few outside the shrinking boxing world, holds no appeal for Tyson. Unhappily the pressing need to pay the bills for a profligate lifestyle is likely to ensure he keeps fighting.