Just say no

Public has a moral obligation to stop bankrolling Tyson

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours.

It's not even about Mike Tyson. Not anymore. It's not about who or what he is, whether he's a victim or victimizer. It's not about whether he's still a legitimate contender or just an overhyped has-been. It's not about whether he deserves the license he's been given to fight for the heavyweight title against Lennox Lewis next month in Memphis.

Those debates might have mattered once, but they're hardly relevant anymore. Mike Tyson is what he is, a seething, profane and apparently unbalanced bundle of rage who still happens to throw a decent punch. The question is: What are you going to do about it?

It's not that you can do anything to help him. It would take a squadron of mental health professionals to do that. The sad truth is that even if Tyson tends to turn up the shock meter on those vile and chilling rants of his in order to drum up interest in his next bout, as I believe he does, he's still a man in true psychological pain. No amount of money, not even the millions he's set to make for trading punches with Lewis on June 8, can fix that. Whether you dig into your wallet and shell out the record $54.95 pay-per-view fee to watch him fight Lewis or not, Tyson is still going to be a walking time bomb.

So it really comes down to whether you want to contribute to the sideshow, if you want to be a part, however small, of the public bloodlust that has allowed Tyson to remain a major drawing card, even as his skills have eroded. Tyson keeps getting big paydays, keeps making headlines with his outrageous statements and behavior, because a large segment of the public just can't bring itself to ignore him. But it's time to look away, not because it will change Tyson, but because if we can't be part of the solution, at least we can avoid being part of the problem.

Tyson was at his most repulsive the other day with a group of media members, making graphic sexual comments, including a suggestive remark to a female reporter, and telling the rest of them that he wished they had children so he could "stomp them on the head or kick them in the testicles so you could feel my pain." There was more, much more, some of it equally raw, some of it rather pathetic, much of it incomprehensible.

That's who Tyson is -- raw, pathetic and incomprehensible -- and despite the rape conviction, the biting incidents and the rest of his boorish behavior, it's hard not to feel sympathy for him. He may have made hundreds of millions of dollars as a fighter, but he can probably count on one hand the number of people in the industry who truly cared about him.

You don't care about him either, and neither do I, not in the way he needs someone to care about him, to get him the kind of help he needs. The most you can do is worry about yourself and where you fit into it all. You can do what you can do, and what you can do is not buy this or any other Tyson fight.

As silly as it seems to talk about morals when the subject is boxing, you have a moral obligation not to bankroll Tyson, even indirectly, or the system that uses him for its own profit and does nothing to stop the downward spiral he's been in for years. Don't buy the fight. Don't watch the fight. Don't pay attention to the fight.

It's not about Mike Tyson. We know who Mike Tyson is. Who are you?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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