Sports Illustrated

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

I don't mean to talk about the same stuff all of the time, but I've been sick and tired of how the media works for a long time. Today, another straw has been placed on this camel's back. I just read the June 17 Sports Illustrated and on the cover I was greeted with the words, "Iron Mike Goes Softly." Rick Reilly decided to devote his weekly peice on Mike Tyson so that the magazine could have two articles on how Mike Tyson was publicly humiliated, exorcised from boxing and whatever other crap they decide to call his loss to Lennox Lewis. Inside the magazine is an article by Richard Hoffer  who repeatedly referred to Tyson as a facade, which complimented the sentiment that Mike Tyson was scum that everybody wanted to see vanquished.

 

"Lewis reveled in the moment that many had waited so long to behold: a vanquished Tyson, down for the count."

 

Who were the many people? From what I have seen, most people wanted Tyson to win that fight. I'm not going to deny the fact that there are people who dislike Tyson (WBC president who's trying to make money by suing Tyson) but there are Tyson supporters. People have been trying to portray Tyson as a madman for a very long time, but I don't understand why they do that. It seems like they take things and run with them just so they can further tarnish his image. Tyson has admitted that he made a mistake when he bit Holyfield, but no one wants to talk about that. Holyfield has been acknowledged as a dirty fighter, but no one wants to talk about that either. Lennox Lewis himself (the man who wanted to vanquish Tyson from boxing) said in an interview that he understood why Tyson bit Holyfield, but nobody talks about that.

 

 

"You see, he is not canned hatred after all, stir and heat. What he is, he would very much liek you to know, is damaged goods, struggling for redemption, for knowledge, just like the rest of us. His excuse, is summary: 'I don't know what to do. I'm from the ghetto. I don't know how to act. One day I'm in a dope house robbing somebody; next day I'm heavyweight champion of the world.'

 

This would be more affectng, of course, if it were true. Not to disregard his early upbringing in Brownsville, but he did spend some of his formative years-age 13 on-in the Catskills refuge of his trainer and surrogate father, Cus D'Amato. Not many of his opponents enjoyed so generous a sponsorship."

 

Now he's a liar about his upbringing? Give me a break! Mike Tyson was in a gang called the Jolly Stompers when he was 10 and he dropped out of the fourth grade. The way Cus D'Amato found out about Tyson was because Tyson was in a juvenile center sparring with one of the workers, who then told Cus that he had found a prodigy. From what I have heard, Cus took Tyson under his wing so that he could make another Floyd Patterson and have his own chance at redemption, no matter what the cost. Furthermore, immediately after Cus died, Tyson did go back to Brownsville where he participated in a mugging with some of his old friends.

 

Mike Tyson the Rapist.

 

Mike Tyson had Don King's tax attorney defending him in a rape case. A tax attorney!? Basically, it was Tyson's words against hers, and everybody believed Desiree Washington. There was a woman on Sports Century saying that Tyson might have gotten off if he would have acted remorseful. Why would someone act remorseful if they hadn't committed a crime? If Tyson is contending that he had sex with a woman who is lying about being raped, why would he show any remorse? Is he supposed to say, "Oh I wish I would have never fucked her." Give me a break. Also, Tyson went into that case with the judge against him (she was a female judge BTW) and with a tax attorney who was ill-prepared. I bet he didn't know that Desiree Washington had accused other people of rape before.

 

 

I'm getting a bit long winded so I'm going to stop for now, but the main reason why I'm so pissed off is because after reading an article in Sports Illustrated where they called Tyson a carnival and all of this other stuff, I walk downstairs and see a Sports Illustrated with Tyson on the cover. A few weeks ago, they were trying to cash in on Tyson, now they are trying to condemn him. That's the media for you.

[Guest Anorak]

Tyson's been a joke for a good few years now, in most people's eyes the beating he took against Lewis was long overdue.

 

There's been no media conspiracy to portray Tyson as an unhinged psycho, the popular 'Tyson as Monster' image has been of his own making for the most part and recent years have seen Tyson and his 'team' consciously exploit that image for every last penny.

 

The Lewis fight saw a pathetic figure finally put out of his misery, most reasonably intelligent people had come to despise the whole Tyson 'facade' and recognised the sad reality behind the circus of hype which had engulfed him.

 

Why is it so hard to believe a proven thug and criminal like Tyson could also commit rape? Sure, we don't know whether he did it or not but the length of his sentence hardly made it the biggest miscarriage of justice in history did it?

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

There's been no media conspiracy to portray Tyson as an unhinged psycho, the popular 'Tyson as Monster' image has been of his own making for the most part and recent years have seen Tyson and his 'team' consciously exploit that image for every last penny.

 

If that's the case, isn't it a bit hypocritical to devote a cover on your magazine to him to make money?

 

The Lewis fight saw a pathetic figure finally put out of his misery, most reasonably intelligent people had come to despise the whole Tyson 'facade' and recognised the sad reality behind the circus of hype which had engulfed him.

 

Who are these reasonably intelligent people? Again, why would Sports Illustrated perpetuate the "facade" to make money if most reasonably intelligent people despise the Tyson "facade?"

 

Why is it so hard to believe a proven thug and criminal like Tyson could also commit rape? Sure, we don't know whether he did it or not but the length of his sentence hardly made it the biggest miscarriage of justice in history did it?

 

The problem is, along with all of the other titles that he has (proven thug, criminal) he now has to carry the title of rapist. I'm not saying it's hard to believe that he raped her, I'm saying it's not hard to believe that he didn't rape her. Tyson wrote a letter to Jim Gray (the man who interviewed him when he gave the "eat his children" speech) when he was in prison saying that he never raped Desiree Washington and he will never admit to raping her, but he felt that there were things that he had gotten away with that may have been worse than what he was accudes of, so maybe jail was the right place. On one hand, people can cry foul if he doesn't appear remorseful over something he claims he didn't do, yet when he admits wrong doing and shows signs of remorse for something that he did and got away with, people don't want to talk about it. Also, if you want to look at his prison stay, he missed the years of his career where he should have been at his prime. Look what happened to Ali when he didn't box during his prime: he lost the blinding speed that he used to have and was never the same fighter. I'm not making excuses for Tyson or anything of that nature, but Tyson takes a lot of crap undeservedly. It's unfair to add false transgressions to someone's list of transgressions, no matter how long the list may be. Desiree Wahington had accused men of rape before, and if she had been raped before, why was she going to Tyson's hotel room at 2 in the morning?

 

Facade or not, Sports Illustrated felt no shame in using Tyson to sell copies of their magazine by placing his countennance on the front of it. That was before the fight when people felt that he had a chance at beating Lennox Lewis and there were eggs to collect from the golden goose. This time around, they didn't give him the entire cover, but they made sure to let people know that they had a story about Mike Tyson.

[Guest jimmy no nose]

That whole Tyson rape trial was bullshit.  No way he should have been in jail for 4 years or whatever it was.  How exactly did they believe a person who had repeatedly accused others of raping her when they hadn't?  What happened to the prosecution having to provide proof?