TYSON, Michael Gerard ("Mike"; "Iron Mike")

(b. 30 June 1966 in Brooklyn, New York), professional boxer whose power, speed, and accuracy made him one of the most recognized athletes in the world and the most dominant figure in boxing.

Tyson, born at Cumberland Hospital in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, was the third child of Jimmy Kirkpatrick and his girlfriend, Lorna Smith Tyson. Lorna had used the Tyson name since her brief marriage to Percel Tyson and retained it until her death from cancer in 1982. The arrival of eight-pound, seven-ounce baby Michael forced Lorna, a single parent, to search for larger living quarters. Tyson's first years were nomadic; he moved often with his mother, older brother Rodney, and sister, Denise. When he was seven, the family settled at 178 Amboy Street in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, an urban slum, where Tyson was surrounded by awful living conditions, poverty, and crime.

Young Tyson was not tall, but he was unusually strong. As a child he never read a book or played games. He became a chronic truant, and by the time he was eight he was beating up anyone in the neighborhood who bothered his family. Stealing became a way of life. By age eleven he was drinking, smoking marijuana, mugging people, and shooting up the streets of Brooklyn. He was arrested over forty times before he was twelve. Since his mother could not control the boy, he was sent upstate to the Tryon Reform School in Johnstown, New York, in 1977.

Bobby Stewart, a prison counselor and its athletic coach, hoped that the five-foot, six-inch, 186-pound Tyson might be able to redirect his anger if he learned to box. Coached by Stewart, Tyson became a fanatic, shadow boxing in his cell until three or four each morning. In 1979 Stewart introduced Tyson to Constantine ("Cus") D'Amato, a fight trainer who had developed Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres, both former world champions. D'Amato immediately recognized the tough kid's potential and got him permission to stay at his training camp, a gym above the police station on Main Street in Catskill, New York. D'Amato became Tyson's legal guardian in 1981.

Under D'Amato's training, Tyson worked hard and began to fight in unofficial competitions. In his first match, when he was thirteen, he knocked out a boy four years his senior in the third round. His confidence and desire grew. He won the Junior Olympics in 1981, a program designed for children under sixteen. He lost only five of fifty-two amateur bouts. Tyson developed a reputation as a wild animal in the ring; his fame spread quickly throughout the boxing community. Because of his hammer-like punches, the only sparring partners willing to work with him cost D'Amato $1,000 a week.

Tyson made his professional debut on 6 March 1985, knocking out Hector Mercedes in the first round. He won his next fourteen fights by knockouts. The next year, on 22 November 1986, Tyson beat Trevor Berbick for the World Boxing Commission's (WBC) heavyweight title, becoming at age twenty-two the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. Within four months he gained his second title, the World Boxing Association (WBA) crown, by beating James "Bonecrusher" Smith. In August he beat Tony Tucker in his thirty-first consecutive victory, consolidating three world titles and becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. When he earned $21 million for knocking out Michael Spinks on 27 June 1988, Tyson became the biggest moneymaker in the history of boxing.

While in the ring Tyson seemed in total control, his personal life was anything but controlled. His promiscuous sex life led to frequent bouts of gonorrhea. He admitted to friends that he enjoyed hurting women. In March 1987 he began dating Robin Givens, an actress on ABC's sitcom Head of the Class. The couple was married in New York City on 9 February 1988. Soon newspaper articles appeared that alleged that Givens was afraid of her husband, that he hit her, and that he might even have caused her reported miscarriage. There seemed to be two Tysons: one who laughed, hugged, and spoke softly in a high-pitched voice, and another who enjoyed inflicting pain.

Eight months after their wedding, Givens filed for divorce. A few days later Tyson told reporters he was a manic-depressive. On 30 September 1988 Robin and her mother, Ruth Roper, who had taken formal control of Tyson's earnings, appeared on ABC's 20/20, telling the country how Tyson was a sick man and life with him was hell. Shortly thereafter, in a rage, Tyson broke up the kitchen in his Bernardsville, New Jersey, mansion. The divorce became final on 14 February 1989.

A professional for five years, Tyson began 1990 with a 37–0 record with thirty-three wins by knockout. But on 11 February he suffered his first professional loss when James ("Buster") Douglas knocked him down in the tenth round. He won his next four bouts, trying to regain his title, before he was convicted in 1992 of raping eighteen-year-old Desiree Washington, a beauty pageant queen. Upon his release on 25 March 1995, after a forty-eight month break from boxing, he knocked out Peter McNeeley in round one of their 19 August 1995 match. In 1996 Tyson regained his WBA and WBC titles, then on 9 November 1996 he was knocked out in the eleventh round by Evander Holyfield.

In the famous 28 June 1997 rematch for the WBA title between Tyson and Holyfield, Tyson bit off part of Holyfield's ear, claiming later the cause was referee Mills Lane's ignoring Holyfield's constant head butting. When in the third round Tyson bit Holyfield's other ear, Tyson was disqualified, resulting in a one-year ban from boxing and a $3 million fine, the largest in sports history. His attempts to regain the boxing titles after his reinstatement were interrupted in 1999 when he served nine months at the Montgomery County Correction and Rehabilitation Center in Rockville, Maryland, convicted of assaulting two men in a road rage incident. After his release Tyson boxed both in and outside the United States.

Tyson lives in Bethseda, Maryland, with his wife, Monica Turner Tyson, a pediatrician, whom he married in 1997, her daughter, Gena, and their children, Rayna and Amir, along with Mickey, a daughter Tyson had from a previous relationship.

Tyson's powerful punching, swift movement, and ruthless aggression dominated professional heavyweight boxing throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since the 1960s, when Muhammad Ali was king of the boxing ring, no other fighter but Tyson has been the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And no other boxer has gained such wealth and such notoriety.

Jose Torres, former light-heavyweight champion of the world and longtime friend of Tyson, relates numerous anecdotes in Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson (1989). Richard Hoffer, A Savage Business: The Comeback and Comedown of Mike Tyson (1998), relates many comic details of Tyson's life, including the efforts of various promoters, such as Don King, to capitalize on Tyson's name. Former New York Times sports editor Phil Berger gives an impartial rendering of details from Tyson's life in and out of the ring in Blood Season: Mike Tyson and the World of Boxing (1996).

John J. Byrnem