After Ban Comes a Bomb

One punch.

In his heyday, when he was young and dangerous and terrifying, one punch was all it took for Mike Tyson to smash an opponent to the canvas and add to his legend.

One punch.

On Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, that’s all it took for Tyson to overcome 19 frustrating months of inactivity, an obstacle course of commission hearings, psychiatric examinations and court proceedings that threatened to end his career, nearly five full rounds of missed punches and lost opportunities and the considerable lead being built up on the judges’ scorecards by Francois Botha.

But with one solid right hand from the past delivered with full force on the chin of Botha, a punch that finished the South African at the 2:59 mark of the fifth round, Tyson served notice he has a future in boxing.

He is certainly not back to the Tyson of old. The boxing world probably has seen the last of that Tyson.

But back enough to reestablish himself as a force in the heavyweight division.

“He was just hitting me,” Tyson said, “and I was lucky to get in a shot to knock him out. It’s a matter of time until I get it back.”

No argument there. Tyson remains a work in progress. For nearly five full rounds Saturday, he looked like a fighter who hadn’t fought a competitive round since biting Evander Holyfield’s ears in a June 1997 title rematch.

Tyson came out swinging wildly in the first round, missing badly on several occasions. His timing was off, his movement was nonexistent, his confidence was missing.

At his peak, he would have marched right in on a slow fighter like Botha, a look of intimidation in his eye, and fired away with combinations. But Saturday, it was Botha who was the aggressor, Botha who did the taunting and trash talking through four rounds.

“I told him he was losing,” Botha said.

Tyson suffered a small cut above his right eye in the first round. That appeared to come from an upward thrust of Botha’s right shoulder.

Much of the interest in this fight centered on Tyson’s mental state. Would he be able to control himself if things did not go his way or would he lose his temper and revert to the tactics that got him disqualified in his second fight with Holyfield?

At the end of the first round, it appeared that Tyson was about to go over the edge. Locked in a clinch on the ropes with Botha as the bell sounded, and referee Richard Steele trying to pull the two men apart, Tyson threw a late punch as Botha firmly held Tyson’s arm. Botha responded with a punch and the two men rolled along the ropes as handlers from both sides poured into the ring.

“He was trying to break my arm,” Botha said.

Police, mindful of the riot that erupted in the MGM Grand casino after Tyson-Holyfield II, leaped up on the apron.

For an instant, it appeared the worst fears of the Tyson camp were about to come true. Disqualification seemed to hang in the air.

Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, talked to Steele. Steele then went to each corner and told the fighters, “You can’t win on a foul.”

Steele reinforced that warning in the second round when he deducted a point from Tyson for unnecessary roughness.

Tyson repeatedly looked to Steele for help rather than to his own devices to turn the fight around. Much as he had done in the second Holyfield fight, he seemed to have conceded he was going to need help from the referee to win the fight.

By the fifth round, Tyson was in deep trouble. He had not won a single round on any of the judges’ scorecards and he was running out of time because this was only a 10-round fight.

But then, in the closing seconds of the round, Botha made a move inside and, for one brief second, there was the old Tyson waiting for him, the man with the power to turn a fight around with one violent turn of his body.

“Maybe I got a little too cocky and I paid for it,” Botha said. “He’s a great fighter. I won’t take anything from him. I walked right into the punch. He has a lot of power. He’s probably one of the hardest hitters in boxing.”

Botha even went down in the manner of some of Tyson’s opponents of old. Botha, a former heavyweight champion himself who lost for only the second time to drop to 39-2 with 24 knockouts, collapsed on the canvas, made one attempt to get up, then another, and finally, as Steele signaled the fight was over, staggered across the ring into the ropes and then went down a third time.

All from one punch.

That’s good news and bad news for Tyson. Good because it enabled him to win a fight he was losing. Bad because, despite all the talk from trainer Tommy Brooks about the new Tyson who was going to go back to foot and head movement, bobbing and weaving with combinations, Tyson did none of that, fighting instead flat-footed, throwing bombs until one finally hit the target.

“He learned a lesson tonight,” Brooks said. “When you set up a fight plan, you’ve got to stick to that fight plan.”

When it was over, and after he had embraced Botha in the middle of the ring, Tyson, who is now 46-3 with 40 knockouts, turned his aggression toward his critics, real and imagined.

“I need respect,” Tyson said. “Everybody’s been writing trashy articles about me. I’m just angry. They are trying to assassinate my character. I’m a man. I can only take so much.”

For now, he can take heart from the fact that he has survived his first shaky step on what he hopes will be the road back to the top.

And Botha can take heart as well. He was at least able to get out of there with both ears intact.