In deference to this entry, I offer these quotes from "Mike Tyson" by 
Joyce Carol Oates:


As soon as the bell sounds, opening round one, Tyson rushes out of his 
corner to bring the fight to Berbick. In these quicksilver seconds, when 
far more happens than the eye, let alone the verbalizing consciousness, 
can absorb, it is clear that Tyson is the stronger of the two, the more 
dominant; willful. He pushes forward unmindful of Berbick's greater age 
and experience; the fight is to be his fight. If boxing is as much a 
contest of psyches as of physical prowess, it is soon clear that Tyson, 
on the attack, throwing beautifully controlled punches, is the superior 


...

Early in the second round, Tyson knocks Berbick to the canvas with a 
powerful combination of blows, including a left hook; when Berbick 
manages to get gamely to his feet he is knocked down a second time with 

area." (As Tyson will say afterward, he had come to "destroy" the 
champion: "Every punch had a murderous intention.") Accompanied by the 
wild clamor of the crowd as by an exotic sort of music, Berbick 
struggles to his feet, his expression glazed like that of a man trapped 
in a dream; he lurches across the ring on wobbly legs, falls another 
time, onto the ropes; as if by a sheer effort of will gets up, staggers 
across the ring in the opposite direction, is precariously on his feet 
when the referee, Mills Lane, stops the fight. No more than nine seconds 
have passed since Tyson's blow but the sequence, in slow motion, has 
seemed much longer . . . . The nightmare image of a man struggling to 
retain consciousness and physical control before nine thousand witnesses 
is likely to linger in the memory: it is an image as inevitable in 
boxing as that of the ecstatic boxer with his gloved hands raised in triumph

For more JCO's teasers on Tyson and on Boxing see:
http://storm.usfca.edu/~southerr/ontyson.html

-Jim

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