TYSON - THE RISE OF IRON MIKE
RAW & UNCUT
The early
career of Mike Tyson continues to divide critics and fight fans. Was
Iron Man really the fearsome, near-unbeatable warrior painted by his
management’s propaganda, or was his propensity for early knockouts more
a reflection of the calibre of his opponents, middle of the road
journeymen hand-picked to make him look good?
Whatever the
answer many of his early bouts are still singularly entertaining to
watch, and Tyson’s focus inside the ring and his ability to dispatch
fighters with an incredible combination of power and speed still make
for compelling viewing a quarter of a century after the fact.
Collected
here are 24 of Tyson’s first 25 fights. His sixth professional bout
against a forgotten soup can named Larry Sims is missing, as it is from
all Tyson collections. Some say it was never recorded, some say the
footage was lost, but there’s also speculation the Tyson camp ordered
the footage destroyed after Tyson took several rounds to dispatch a
third-rate fighter he was supposed to put down in the first. Whatever
the reason the fight has never surfaced, and the present collection is
as comprehensive a summary of Tyson’s early career as has ever been
offered.
Many of these
fights have been offered on previous collections such as Fight Night
Volume II and all are obviously available on bootleg collections of
Tyson’s entire career, but where the series really shines is in
providing period pre- and post-fight interview footage, much of it quite
rare, even for the diehards. Another big plus is good quality footage
of Tyson’s 25th fight against Marvis Frazier, during which
Iron Mike absolutely demolished the son of legend Joe Frazier well
inside a minute. I’ve own five or six Tyson DVDs and a bootleg
collection, and I’ve never seen a decent full length version of this
bout, let alone the pre- and post- footage. It’s almost worth the price
of admission alone.
Tyson’s
propensity for self-destruction, his downward professional and personal
trajectory after leaving longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, his arrests and
later psychopathic outbursts both in and out of the ring - that all came
later. These early fights are an excellent reminder of what Tyson once
was, and what he could have been.
Audio &
Video
Picture
quality is necessarily a little rough - most of these fights are over a
quarter of a century old and many have presumably been transferred from
VHS. Some appear to be multi-generational. But by the standards of
other early collections the bulk are quite good, some appearing as fresh
as they’ve ever looked, and significant effort seem to have been taken
to source the best extant version of each fight. The standard 2-channel
audio is perfectly fine, and actually surprisingly robust.
Extras
The only bonus feature
is the fairly random inclusion of Tyson’s 36th fight, against
blustering, largely useless British bumbler Frank Bruno. Tyson had left
Rooney and his former manager Jim Jacobs and joined the Don King camp by
this point, to his eternal detriment, and his performance was hardly
conclusive. Not one of the better Tyson fights, and there were several
of the period that would have made for a better inclusion.
