Did Tyson ever have much heart?
The last vestiges of his once-ferocious armoury were not stripped from him by Danny Williams, Lennox Lewis or Evander Holyfield.
That accolade would go to James Buster Douglas, who might have shattered the myth back in 1990, that Tyson was one of the most irresistible forces in world heavyweight history.
Did Tyson ever possess much of a true fighting heart at all?
Tyson’s fighting style was based on his ability to bully his opponents in much the same way he had scraped a living terrorising easy targets on the streets of Brooklyn as a child.
Douglas was the first opponent to stand up ‘Iron Mike’, when he punched Tyson back, that lack of fighting heart was brutally exposed for the first time.
On that night in Tokyo, Tyson did not know how to respond when one man dared challenge his superiority. He suffered the ignominy of scrabbling around on the canvas for his gumshield, devoid of his senses.
Tyson was not going to let that happen again. Whether it be through intentional head-butts, arm-breaking clinches or cannibalism, Tyson tried every other escape route going whenever his opponent had the audacity to attempt to hit him back.
It culminated in Washington on Saturday night, when McBride shrugged off Tyson’s best shots and the former world champion resorted to his latest choice of ready-made escape plan: he shrugged his shoulders and stayed on his stool.
Tyson should think of Jess Willard, who is often derided as one of the worst Heavyweight champions.
During a fight with Jack Dempsey in 1919, Willard had his jaw broken by one of Dempsey’s first punches, but fought through four more rounds also suffering a broken nose, broken ribs, the removal of four teeth and both his eyes being closed.
As Dempsey proved, he was slow, one-dimensional and terribly easy to hit. But unlike Tyson, one thing Jess Willard can never be accused of is lacking the will to keep fighting.
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