We Interrupt Your Sunday Football Viewing With The Following Announcement - Mike Tyson Celebrated An Anniversary Today
A little bit of a clickbait title and thumbnail because this blog has very little to do with Iron Mike's love life, but I tend to post clickbait-ish titles on otherwise unread boxing blogs on NFL Sundays.
And I also have a tendency to post cheesecake that has nothing to do with boxing in my boxing blogs... However, I very rarely do both.
Anyhoo… On November 22nd, 1986, a young and fresh-faced (not really) Mike Tyson entered the ring to take on WBC champion Trevor Berbick. It was Trevor's first defense of the title he won just 8 months earlier after an easy 12 round unanimous decision versus Pinklon Thomas.
So Berbick was looking to hold onto his newly acquired strap while a twenty-year-old Mike Tyson was looking to break Floyd Patterson's record and become the youngest ever heavyweight champion.
In the second round, Tyson dropped Berbick early, but he recovered. Then later on in that same round, Trevor went down again.
That second trip to the canvas was precipitated by a left-hook from Tyson that took Berbick off of his feet THREE TIMES WITH ONE PUNCH before legendary referee Mills Lane waved the fight off to end Berbick's short reign as champion.
You can count the knockdowns from the 3-for-1 punch right here…
So it became official- On November 22nd, 1986, Michael Gerard Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion of the world at the age of 25 years and 4 months old.
I bring up this anniversary for 3 reasons…
1) I really like that punch… It's not the devastating thrown-from-your-shoes-type uppercuts we've seen from Tyson in previous GIFs I've attached such as this…
…But it's still a solid representation of just how powerful a right hand to the body and a left hook to the chin from a 20-year-old Kid Dynamite could be.
2) Mike Tyson is fighting Roy Jones Jr this Saturday on pay-per-view. I was at the press conference and I am interviewing Jake Paul tomorrow (Jake is fighting ex-Knick Nate Robinson on the undercard), so I will be typing up a much larger preview of this potential circus. Until then, I felt like a little Tyson history might be in order.
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And 3) Speaking of history… I don't think people know Berbick's story, and it's a good one, so I am going to tell it to you now.
Bullet points are awesome…
- Berbick is Jamaican. He was born in Norwich, Port Antonio, Jamaica on August 1, 1954, and he would die in that same town years later (more on that in the final bullet).
Is that a Jamaican jersey?… And does it really matter?
- Not only did Trevor hold the WBC title here in the States, but he also held the Canadian heavyweight title twice (from 1979 to 1986 and 1999 to 2001)… Which means nothing, but I had it written down.
- He was the first fighter to go the distance with Larry Holmes in a title fight… Trevor lost, but he went the distance.
- After losing his first title shot to Holmes in April of 1981, Berbick fought and beat Muhammad Ali by unanimous decision in December of that same year… The victory was Ali's last professional fight and came after Clay absorbed over 200,000 punches from 60 other opponents.
- However, that meaningless victory over a 40-year-old Ali, made Berbick the only man in professional boxing history to have fought Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, and Mike Tyson.
AND HERE'S ANOTHER SIMILARITY BETWEEN TYSON AND BERBICK THAT PEOPLE SELDOMLY POINT OUT: BOTH OF THESE FIGHTERS ARE ALSO CONVICTED RAPISTS.
In February 1992, Mike Tyson was convicted on rape charges and spent three years in prison.
Just two weeks after that well-publicized event, Trevor Berbick was convicted of rape as well. Jurors deliberated for just two hours before finding the former champion guilty of raping a 26-year-old woman that worked as a babysitter for his family. The accuser claimed that Berbick had driven to her apartment in Miami on Halloween in 1991 to pay her for her services but then physically assaulted her, ripped off her clothing, and then raped her. Berbick, who claimed that the incident was consensual (obviously), was sentenced to five years in prison but served just 15 months.
(by the way… I was unable to secure an interview with Mike before Saturday's events, and I don't think the mention of his most notorious past indiscretion helps my chances going forward.)
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What can I do?… It happened.
But back to Berbick's bullets…
- After being diagnosed with a brain clot he retired from boxing in 2000. He finished his career with a record of 50-11-1, including 33 knockouts.
- Throughout the mid-90s and early 2000s, Berbick had various run-ins with the law, including assaulting his former business manager, being involved in an alleged plot to commit mortgage fraud, and multiple parole violations.
- He was deported from the US to Canada, and then eventually deported to his homeland, Jamaica.
- On October 28, 2006, Berbick’s body was found in a church courtyard with multiple chop wounds to the head. After hearing about a land dispute Trevor was in with his nephew, police arrested 20-year-old Harold Berbick who would eventually be convicted of the murder and given a life sentence for bludgeoning his uncle to death with a four-foot-long metallic pipe.
Here's the big ending…
I will close with this… Even after Trevor's long list of transgressions, he is still regarded as a folk-hero in his native land. So if you take nothing else away from this blog, just remember that Jamaicans are either terrible judges of character OR are in serious need of some sports heroes.
Either way, take a report, mon.
-Large
Did you just mumble to yourself that you want more boxing history?… Well, I once did the Twisted History of The Sweet Science with a man who did NOT go the distance with Larry Holmes BUT did go the distance on a podcast with me. That man is "The Gentleman" Gerry Cooney, and you can check us out right here…
TAR
-L