Born in Brooklyn, New York City on June 30, 1966, Mike Tyson was still nearly four months shy of his nineteenth birthday when he made a low-key professional boxing debut at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, New York on March 6, 1985. Nevertheless, his technical knockout of Hector Mercedes, achieved with a series of swinging hook, after just 0:47 of the first round, delivered a foretaste of things to come for the 5’10”, muscular teenager.
Over the next two years, Tyson carried all before him in the heavyweight division, fully earning his early nicknames, ‘Kid Dynamite’ and ‘Iron Mike’. Just one of his first 19 professional fights went beyond the third round and, by the time he challenged Trevor Berbick for the WBC world heavyweight title at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas on November 22, 1986, he had amassed a perfect 27-0-0 record, including 25 knockouts. Tyson dominated Berbick from the opening bell, knocking him down twice in the second round, the second time with a left hook to the temple, which left him stumbling around the ring and, ultimately, unable to continue. In so doing, he beat the previous record, set by Floyd Patterson in November 1956, as the youngest world heavyweight champion in history; he was 20 years, four months and 22 days old.
‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’, as Tyson became known, subsequently reigned as undisputed world heavyweight champion between 1987 and 1990. He won the WBA world heavyweight title by virtue of a unanimous decision over James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith at the Las Vegas Hilton on March 7, 1987 and the IBF world heavyweight title, in similar fashion, against Tony Tucker at the same venue on August 1, 1987. However, in what was supposed to be a routine defence of all three titles against James ‘Buster’ Douglas at the Tokyo Dome of February 11, 1990, Tyson suffered a shock tenth-round knockout.
Between 1992 and 1995, Tyson served three years of a six-year sentence for rape and although he recaptured the WBC and WBA titles, from Frank Bruno and Bruce Seklon, respectively, in 1996, it would be fair to say that he was never quite the force of old. A sixth-round knockout by journeyman Kevin McBride at the MCI Center in Washington on June 11, 2006 completed his 50-6-0 professional career,
