Mike Tyson, the last assault to change his legend from cursed

Mike Tyson's story seemed written and closed.

He grew up poor in a violent neighborhood, trained to be a boxer with a legendary trainer, Cus D'Amato, and at age 20 he became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.

His name continues to resonate in the memory of the followers of this sport, which has both admirers and detractors.

But Tyson was lost, his life led to a career of excesses, lack of control and episodes of violence in and out of the ring and he became the antithesis of the athlete.

Even those who defended his viscerality on the ring were left without arguments before some of his actions, including the bite with which he tore a piece of the ear of one of his opponents.

His murderous gaze was imposed on that style that some praised because it turned him into a machine of knocking out opponents.

In 1992 he was jailed after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old model.

He always denied the facts and was released after serving three years of his sentence for good behavior, after stating that that time had served him to read and cultivate.

Others did not stop claiming that his good boy behavior was nothing if not a strategy to leave prison as soon as possible and that contacts within the prison allowed him unattainable perks for other inmates.

In one way or another, whoever expected that when the boxer was released from prison had ended his days of excesses, they found that he was very wrong.

Outside, a fortune of 400 million dollars awaited him and new fights to continue increasing it, but he squandered his money, went overboard with drugs, continued to spend in abundance on eccentric whims and ended up accumulating a debt of more than 60 million dollars.

Last Saturday Tyson wanted to close his boxing story in another way and went back into the ring to face Roy Jones.

He disappointed those who were waiting for the ancient beast but he closed the circle of a cursed boxer by changing the end of his sporting history, because the fight was like a training between middle-aged gentlemen and the collection, which some estimate at more than 10 million dollars, had a charitable purpose.

There was no career to relaunch because Tyson has already turned 54, but there is the desire to polish his image, to present himself with a still muscular body and the appearance of a man who is placing the messy pieces of the puzzle that has been his life and wants recompose it in some way for the public.

The journey to Saturday's confrontation had been very long and had included tigers in his garden, uncontrolled sex even during his years in prison, as he himself recognized in his biography, and drugs of all kinds.

He did not make any sports demonstration worthy of occupying the boxing chronicles, but at least he softened the memory of his last fights in which he appeared in terrible physical shape (he weighed 170 kilos) and even drugged at times.

He has been legally married three times and has had six children with various women.

His first marriage to actress Robin Givens was not without its problems.

The actress went so far as to affirm before requesting a divorce that life with Tyson was "torture, hell and the worst thing she could have ever imagined";

also that he was manic depressive.

The second link with Monica Turner lasted six years and ended amid accusations of infidelity, and the third was in 2009, when he remarried in Las Vegas with whom he is still his wife today, Lakiha Spicer, from whom he says has “saved the life both emotionally and financially ”.

With her he has had his two young children, Milan and Morocco, with whom he lives between Newport Beach and Las Vegas.

His personal misfortunes include having lost a daughter, Exodus, in 2009. The girl, the result of her relationship with a stripper with whom she has another son, Miguel, died at the age of four after accidentally suffocating on a cable from her home.

An event from which Tyson even today wonders if anyone can ever recover.

For 10 years Mike Tyson has declared himself vegan and has redone part of his fortune by undertaking businesses among which is Tyson Ranch, a company that is dedicated to producing high quality marijuana for therapeutic purposes and that reports millionaire profits, which some means they estimate around half a million dollars a month.

His business vision does not end with this idea and he has already launched a project to build two

located in Palm Springs and Antigua

where his guests can enjoy the controlled benefits of smoking marijuana in an atmosphere of relaxation and tranquility.

If the “baddest uncle on the face of the earth”, as they came to call him, manages to keep the demons that led him to hit rock bottom at bay or not, only the passage of time has the answer.

At least years ago he was aware that his life "has only been a joke", as he stated when he published his memoir, which included confessions and also somewhat grotesque moments.

Like when he lost a briefcase with a million dollars that was found days later by one of his assistants.

Or when Monica Turner asked for a divorce and he called to tell her he had AIDS.

Or when he found his first wife with Brad Pitt and, according to the boxer's version, the famous actor could not say anything other than "don't hit me man, don't hit me."

Mind you, don't expect a hundred percent conversion from Tyson.

During the post-fight press conference last Saturday, a

reporter

asked him if he had used

before going into the ring, and Tyson was sincere: “Absolutely, yes.

I can't quit smoking.

I'm a smoker ... I smoke every day.

It is what I do and as I am I am going to die ”.

A license that the anti-doping agency had already provided stipulating that it would not intervene if it detected this drug in the tests because it was a friendly confrontation with rules established outside those that govern the ring in a normal combat.