Mike Tyson’s fastest knockout is 8 seconds.
Joined by MMA stars, Ronda Rousey and Connor McGregor in the latest UFC 2 video game, the former champ performs in a chorus of counting up. He solos when he reaches the aforementioned time of his Junior Olympics knockout.
And if you didn’t know, or forgot it, it’s okay. The former champion boxer, recites the time in a I dare-you-go-Google-it tone, which I did.
Not that I don’t believe Tyson, but because when someone has “8 second knockout at age 16” on their resume somewhere between being trained by Cus D’Amato and stealing a scene in the Hangover, you think there must be video of this.
There is, and it doesn’t disappoint.
In it, Tyson is menacing, not rushing but charging towards the opponent before smiting with those lighting bolts he calls punches. He’s a shark stalking and destroying his prey: relentless, dedicated, and without any hint of mercy.
It’s no wonder why he had such a meteoric rise in boxing and the mainstream consciousness. It’s also probably why his fall left a crater that would make an asteroid impressed.
I don’t need to go into detail about Tyson’s story because everyone has their own take on it, as if it were nothing more than some art film where logic and sense is derived strictly from people’s theories and interpretations.
Or think of his tale as a single episode of Supernatural splintered into hundreds of fanfics as varied as the dyed hair of the authors that birthed them.
Fight Historians liken him as a modern Greek Tragedy; a brilliant fight specimen who couldn’t keep things together outside the ring.
Social commentators deride him as a convicted rapist ear chomper, and a lesson in celebrity downfall in the media.
Pop culture fanatics see him as a c-Lister currently making comedy fodder for the stoners.
And as for Tyson…well Tyson would see himself as a creature as crazy as his is smart like Nietzsche.
As he said in a feature story from The Guardian:
“I watch some crazy clips of myself from back then and I can say that I probably wasn’t sane for a period in my life. But Nietzsche was crazy too. He was born in 1844 and died in 1900 … but he only had sex once in his life and he got a venereal disease. He said some profound shit, man, but he was totally off his head.
“I have this book of the world’s greatest letters and his mentor was Richard Wagner. But he wrote Wagner a scathing letter. He had thought Wagner was perfect but he was just a leech. Wagner was an extreme megalomaniac. Nietzsche saw through all this and said: ‘Hey, you’re full of shit. You’re a charlatan.’ Yet the day Wagner died Nietzsche saw a picture of him and said: ‘I love him much … ‘
No one’s wrong here.
But I have to add, that in whatever take you have on Tyson, let’s not forget that the man could produce some efficient knockouts.
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