Tyson

[divorced]

Just finished watching this on the new Blu Ray player. I was a bit amazed at how he turned out to be a sympathetic guy after time. Part of it may be his recent loss of his child, but it seems like he's really trying to be a decent guy. Granted, he's never going to be a rocket scientist per se, but that's not the real measure of a man. He seems to want to learn from his past mistakes and become a decent person. I wish Tyson all the luck in the world.

[alexlitel]

I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society.

Oh…the film - well, it was decent enough, but was marred by the director's proclivity for ostentation as if he were compensating for an uninteresting subject. He should have just let Tyson talk, not put two or three overlapping audio tracks.

[Joe M.]

I didn't realize they made a movie about Mike Tyson.. man, this guy was bigger than life when I was a kid. I remember adults crowding about the TV and the question wasn't if he'd win, but how fast. Has anyone given a crap about heavyweight boxing since that era?

I'll have to give this one a look sometime.

[BlueJackalope]

I've never been a big Tyson fan, he fought too many tomato cans and never really had a good rivalry*. He is however, a fascinating, tragic, character and I'm really looking forward to seeing this (Thursday on DVD if my plans go right).

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*Some might say Holyfield, but I never liked him much and was not surprised to find out he cheated with steroids. Speaking of the ear incident, I was reminded of this great column by Katerine Dunn (writer of "Geek Love" of all things, who is a great boxing writer).

[John Reynolds]

I've never been a big Tyson fan, he fought too many tomato cans and never really had a good rivalry*.

That's exactly what I said sometime in the past week to a friend while we were discussing Tyson's boxing career. I said it was hard to assess Tyson's place in boxing history because, while full of natural talent and amazingly strong, in his prime he never had a worthy opponent.