The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books)

by Robin Barratt

  My mum and sister were delighted but my dad’s response sickened me: “Let’s hope she loses it!”

  I felt physically ill and had to force myself to keep quiet, otherwise forty-one years of bitterness towards him would’ve come tumbling out of my mouth. As he left to pick up the Chinese takeaway we’d ordered, mum cuddled me and told me to ignore his comments.

  I’d just add them to the stack of hateful comments he’d made over the years. He and Liz would’ve made a fine pair!

  * * *

  In February 2003 Mike Tyson commenced his boxing rehabilitation by meeting fellow puncher Clifford Etienne. The public needed to be convinced that Mike was deserving of another bout with Lennox Lewis before they’d part with their money again and so he’d agreed to several warm-up contests which, if successful, would lead to the lucrative rematch later in the year.

  Tyson blew Etienne away in the opening minute with a devastating right hand but this was incidental in comparison to the litany of incidents before and after the bout.

  Before arriving in Memphis, Tyson had announced that he was withdrawing from the contest. The reasons ranged from flu to diarrhoea, a back injury to an infection in the facial tattoo he’d had done (this was a Maori design across the left side of his face that got me thinking about tattoos again until Mags said “No!”). The real reason appeared to be that Mike had thrown several temper tantrums and refused to complete his training. Trainer Freddie Roach even advised Tyson not to turn up, as he didn’t feel that Mike was fit enough. Well, Tyson was physically fit enough to hammer Etienne into unconsciousness, but what about his mental fitness?

  Even after all those years of competing, Tyson still struggled to control his pre-fight fear and emotions. It wasn’t even the Lewises and Holyfields of the world that induced these self-doubts, for Tyson had exhibited similar nervousness and unstable behaviour before facing Julius Francis!

  Lennox began to get twitchy about the prospect of banking another multi-million payday and tried to convince Mike to meet him again in June 2003, without a prior contest. Tyson, however, stuck to his guns and stated that he needed at least one more fight before jeopardizing his health again against man-mountain Lewis and so a double-bill was arranged for June, in which Lewis would headline, whilst Tyson would face the decent Russian boxer Oleg Maskaev. Then, if both men proved victorious, they would have the rematch later in the year.

  So … this is what actually happened in Mike’s crazy little world. In May promoter Don King, who’d been circling Tyson warily from a distance for some time, hoping to ingratiate himself again despite their legal battle over King’s alleged fraudulent behaviour, made his move and attempted to speak to Tyson. Mike responded to him in words beginning with “f” and – allegedly – a physical assault. However, their altercation and King’s attempts at convincing Tyson that he could make far more money if he returned to Don’s camp seemed to have an effect on Tyson. He suddenly refused to fight Maskaev and, with his withdrawal, any hopes of the Lewis rematch were ended. (Subsequently, Maskaev became a heavyweight champion himself and so it’s a shame that we never got to see him swap blows with Tyson.)

  Lewis went ahead and defeated the dangerous Vitali Klitschko and then retired, stating that the only fight which still motivated him was the Tyson rematch but he no longer believed that it would ever take place.

  Tyson, meanwhile, did have a fight in June. Unfortunately, it was in a hotel, against two men who’d drunkenly mocked him. Tyson put them both in hospital and was promptly arrested.

  In July 2003 I was offered the role of Disability Project Manager for young people within a London borough, and – for the first time – commenced employment which offered both job satisfaction and decent financial remuneration.

  Then, in October, Mags and I celebrated the arrival of our beautiful daughter Delilah. We couldn’t have been any happier but we needed to find somewhere else to live now. This proved problematic.

  I didn’t want to rent a property, I wanted something I could call my own, but London house prices were astronomical, so we commenced searching for an area near to London but within our financial reach. Eventually we settled upon a small town in north Essex where my mum had moved to after her divorce but, although it was green and picturesque, it was also almost exclusively white, which caused Maggie extreme discomfort and the issue of race became a constant one in our conversations.

  It was apt then that, around this time, I was studying race and culture as part of my Informal & Community Education Diploma for work, as well as reading a lot about mixed-race relationships and being a mixed-race child, in order that I might understand the kind of issues Delilah might face as she grew older.

  This led me to examine what our friend Mr Tyson was struggling with for years. I wanted to understand how skin tone affects people’s treatment and perceptions of their fellow man. It’s obviously beyond the confines of this book to examine the subject in infinitesimal detail but issues of race must have a bearing on understanding Mike Tyson, for he was born into one of the most intense periods of change in American history, involving some of the pivotal figures in black social advancement.

  The battle for social equality and acceptance became an increasingly bloody one, as black intellectuals and activists fought against segregation and oppression, during the Civil Rights Movement. Much of this oppression took the form of what Frantz Fanon described as “the Colonial mentality”. After decades of assumed white supremacy many black people actually perceived themselves as sub-standard, submitting to the racism and bullying of white people because they genuinely believed – due to years of having it viciously beaten into them – that they were inferior. Thus, it became as much of a battle for black activists to educate their peers as to their right to equality as it did for them to convince the white establishment of this fact.

  One of the turning points was Oliver Brown’s battle to overturn segregation in the American South which, for those of you who’ve been living in ignorant bliss for half a century, was a process of discrimination by which blacks and whites were kept apart, to the detriment of blacks, and which Brown focused upon Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.

  The furore this caused was unprecedented and inspired Dr Martin Luther King’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, which finally resulted, in 1964, in legislation to eliminate all discrimination against race or skin colour.

  Of course, love and happiness didn’t happen overnight – or even at all! – leading to the more aggressive urgings of Malcolm X (formerly Malcolm Little), the minister of the Nation of Islam who advocated meeting white violence head-on with reciprocal black violence in order to achieve parity. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) started to promote “Black Power” and coined the phrase “institutionalized racism” as a way of explaining that discrimination was deeply ingrained in all levels of the white establishment, due to centuries of supposed white supremacy.

  Mike Tyson was thus born into a mid 1960s America that was in the midst of huge social change via the words and actions of the likes of the above and authors such as Maya Angelou, who vividly described her childhood in the prejudiced and segregated American South.

  As a young boxing fan Tyson must have been aware of the controversy surrounding heavyweight champ Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali as a rejection of his “slave name” – blacks were traditionally named after their slave masters – and aligned himself with Elijah Muhammad’s movement, which controversially rejected integration with white society and fought for separation (as opposed to segregation!)

  It still must have been hard though for the infant Tyson to hear songs such as “Young, Gifted and Black” or James Brown’s anthem “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”, whilst laying on his bed at night, listening to the sound of his empty stomach churning, wondering whether he would get his next paltry meal before or after another hideous beating from the brutal, disillusioned black youths on his deprived and crime-ridden
neighbourhood.

  No wonder then that the youngster grasped the opportunity to live in a large, rambling house in leafy Catskills with the elderly, white, boxing trainer and manager Cus D’Amato, who treated the delinquent Tyson like a human being for the first time in his life, as well as showing an interest in the teenager’s opinions, spending long hours talking to him about life and its unpredictability.

  However, the following years of living and interacting almost exclusively with white people would result in an ongoing confusion around race which Tyson would struggle with for years, as he sought to understand his own feelings and personal perception of “who” he was, especially when he later became surrounded by strong black characters such as Don King, who convinced him that everything wrong in his life was due to a white conspiracy to keep the black man down. (A conviction that has more than a shred of truth to it.)

  In July 2004 Mike Tyson stepped between the ropes for the first time in a year-and-a-half, ending eighteen months of speculation as to what his next step would be. In that time he’d declared himself bankrupt. He had also been linked with a bout against kick-boxing man-mountain Bob Sapp (in a similar financially lucrative stunt, during his ban from boxing in 1997–8, he’d appeared in the WWF). He and Sapp had swapped insults and shoves but never actually stepped into a K1 ring together. (Tyson had often stated his love for martial arts, being a big fan of movies of the genre, and had been tempted several times by offers to fight in mixed martial arts tournaments.)

  During this break Tyson had received six months’ anger management counselling for his hotel assault back in 2003, not receiving a prison sentence this time because the judge had accepted he had been provoked.

  The distractions were all very entertaining, but what was less clear was how Tyson was going to maintain his extravagant lifestyle without entering a boxing ring. He was thirty-eight years of age, the same age Muhammad Ali had been when first Larry Holmes and then Trevor Berbick finally ended the magic of the “Greatest”, and the exact same age Holmes himself was when a young Tyson handed him his first knockout defeat. His best years were long behind him but, as Mike himself acknowledged, he “wasn’t going to go into brain surgery” and so, with a sad inevitability, he prepared to wage battle again simply because he had no other option. There were still bills and creditors to be paid.

  Tyson’s latest comeback was different to the others in that there was no particular end product in mind this time. Whereas previously every ring return had been seen as a prelude to another assault upon the world championship, this time around no one – including Tyson himself – was under any illusions. This was all about the money. People were still prepared to pay to see “Iron” Mike in the flesh. It helped that his last contest had been a devastating firstround knockout victory. That helped erase the image of the Lewis humbling. He was an icon, a living legend and it was akin to buying a ticket to see Sinatra after 1970. You knew his voice was shot but he still retained the aura – he was still “Ol’ Blue Eyes”.

  Anyway, a bottle of rioja and I sat up late to watch my man but Mags didn’t bother. She happily watched endless Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and other martial arts movies with me, but she drew the line at sitting up until 3 a.m. to watch boxing. I was politely asked “not to shout too much” in case it woke Delilah. Oh, please!

  Tyson versus Danny Williams was a strange evening altogether. Mike had chosen someone whom he felt reasonably certain he could dispose of comfortably and earn a few quick bucks, although at this stage of his career there were no such certainties. Former British and Commonwealth champion Williams appeared made-to-measure in that he was a decent boxer with a reasonable punch but was emotionally as stable as Judy Garland and had a questionable chin.

  Williams had often threatened to emerge on to the world scene but had always stumbled when faced with opponents he’d been expected to defeat. By his own admission he was fragile mentally and thus appeared the perfect fall-guy for an intimidator like Tyson. Unfortunately for Mike, what Williams had perceived about Tyson’s reluctance to enter the ring on a regular basis was true. He was completely shot and no longer capable of intimidating a halfdecent young foe. And that’s why Danny had been so eager to accept the bout.

  Williams admitted afterwards that he’d been in awe of Tyson when he was a twelve-year-old boy watching “Iron” Mike decimate the heavyweights. That Tyson, he knew, no longer existed. Only his marquee name survived, offering a spring-board for Williams to leap into the heavyweight title picture, if he could only hold himself together emotionally under the intense pressure Tyson was still liable to provide.

  In the opening three minutes Tyson’s hand-speed was awesome and he blasted Williams with an assortment of hurtful punches, staggering him and causing him to lurch drunkenly from one side of the ring to another, defying gravity by remaining upright. I shouted my appreciation – Mags can’t claim that she wasn’t warned! – at what, so far, had been the most devastating Tyson performance since Gołota. Little did I know that he’d practically exhausted himself with that three-minute burst of non-stop punching.

  Tyson hadn’t taken training that seriously, believing that he’d walk through Williams based upon his erratic record and reputation. Mike hadn’t foreseen that this wasn’t merely a nice payday for Danny but, rather, a life-altering opportunity for him – a chance to emerge from obscurity – and so a hitherto unseen mental fortitude allowed Williams to come out for the second round and risk everything, matching Tyson blow-for-blow.

  It was an exciting fight whilst it lasted. In the second and third rounds the two men swapped fast, damaging punches but it was noticeable that Tyson’s work rate was already slowing. Instead of putting his punches together in quick-fire clusters Mike was now regressing to throwing single big shots and then absorbing Williams’s rapid counters.

  The end came in round four. Whilst it had been acceptable for the likes of Holyfield and Lewis to batter him, it was painfully embarrassing to watch a lower-grade heavyweight walking forward and pouring punches into a clearly demoralized Tyson’s face.

  When Tyson fell backwards into the ropes and slid to the floor it saddened many boxing people to watch him simply sit there, waiting for the referee to complete his count. Mike’s brave and stoic acceptance of his pummellings at the fists of Douglas, Holyfield and Lewis had led even his fiercest critics to applaud his courage and warriorlike spirit; a willingness to go down fighting. Now, he simply gave up! As soon as he realized that Williams wasn’t going anywhere and had tasted Danny’s determination via repeated punches to the face, Mike waved the white flag. It was a fantastic moment for the unheralded Williams but the latest method Tyson had conceived to further damage his standing in the annals of boxing history. FUCK!!! (Note: There’s only one “fuck” to follow this defeat, symbolizing both my new-found calmness and contentment, and my realization that “Iron” Mike Tyson had long since departed. It was the bankrupt Michael Gerard Tyson who now begrudgingly pulled on the black shorts and ankle boots, echoing the image of Jack Dempsey but without his previous savagery and spirit. Tyson without the anger was impotent.)

  In October 2004 Delilah celebrated her first birthday and we’d planned a party for family and friends. A week or so prior my dad had gone to my sister’s for the weekend and suffered severe stomach pains and diarrhoea, which had continued over the following days. Concerned at his drastic loss of weight, his neighbour contacted the doctor and dad was admitted into hospital for tests.

  I was explaining this to my friend Danny and he said he’d pop into the hospital and say “hello” to my dad the next day. None of us believed that it was anything more serious than dehydration due to days of diarrhoea and sickness, until Danny phoned me the next evening and warned me that it appeared more serious than we’d thought.

  The following morning I packed a bag and spent the next fortnight at my dad’s, going back-and-forth between his house, work and the hospital, and watching my dad slowly deteriorate each day.

>   It was a mystery as to why he was getting worse instead of better. The hospital had diagnosed that he’d been suffering from food poisoning when admitted but his condition had rapidly worsened and he was pumped full of drugs, virtually comatose, incapable of interacting with anyone around him.

  Late one evening the hospital phoned me and asked my permission to operate. They didn’t really know what they were looking for but stated that, if they didn’t “open him up for an exploratory”, he would definitely die.

  I phoned around friends and family and then spent the night waiting for the hospital to ring back. When they eventually called it was good news. They’d discovered a section of “dead” intestine which they’d removed and had reconnected each end of the working intestine.

  I went to the hospital in the morning and was amazed to see my dad sitting up in bed. I explained to him what had been happening for the last few days and why they’d had to operate, and told him that I’d see him later, after work. It was the last conversation we ever had. Within hours his condition had deteriorated again and, several days later, he was dead. A combination of an infection and blood poisoning had killed him. Mum, my sister Lisa, our cousin Karen and I sat around his bedside and watched the last remnants of life drain slowly away from him.

  For hours afterwards I cried. I cried for myself, I cried for Lisa, I cried for our dad, but most of all I cried for the relationship we never had.

  The time I spent staying at my dad’s and the subsequent period leading up to the funeral gave me an opportunity to reflect upon my life and my relationship with my father and how it had affected my adulthood.

  I regretted a lot of decisions I’d made and actions I’d taken over the years and wondered how much of the man I’d been back in the 1980s and 1990s had been a self-creation or the sum of my genetics and all the influences around me.