After watching the video on Sam’s blog containing a bus driver uppercutting a girl who obviously wasn’t expecting that kind of a move, I googled the upppercut. After looking through the searches I came across the top 10 Mike Tyson Knockouts.

Young Iron Mike was vicious. He won his first 19 fights by KO, 12 in the first round. So this got me really interested in what happened along Mike’s life and further career. He grew up without a father and never really was close to his mother. He was arrested 38 times by the time he was 15. He was taken in my Cus D’amato and started training to become a fighter. He was a dedicated student to the sport and you can see how unbelievable he was in his early career. His top boxing form came in 88′ when he was just 22 and beat Michael Spinks in the first round to move to 33-0 and owning all the heavyweight belts. Around this time his personal life began interfering with his newly found fame.

He had married Robin Givens who claimed that he got her pregnant and demanded marriage. They went ahead with the marriage and she says she had a miscarriage. To let you know how things ended in Mike’s words (which are probably made up), “The best uppercut I ever landed was on Robin Givens.” A few years after the Spinks fight Tyson was involved in the biggest upset in boxing history when he lost to Buster Douglas who was a 45-1 shot. A year after this fight he was sentenced to 3 years in prison for raping Ms Black Rhode Island.

In 1996, 5 years after the Douglas fight, he fought Evander Holyfield and suffered the second loss of his career. We all know what happened the 2nd fight when he had an ear sandwich courtesy of Evander. He was 33 at the time of the first fight and these fights against Evander were essentially the end of his career. If you watch tape of Mike in his youth and then again at 30+, it’s like watching a different fighter. He seemed just your typical boxer and not the KO artist he was supposed to be.

What I find so interesting is that he was just a kid off the street of Brooklyn who propelled to the top and then didn’t have the street smarts to make it all work out for himself. He is reportedly bankrupt and is pretty much known as a novelty act at this point. Teddy Atlas, a longtime trainer and put a gun to Tyson’s head for grabbing his 12 year old relatives ass, calls Tyson “a shooting star.” He was never meant to be the best heavyweight champion of all time, he just didn’t have the smarts. A truly fascinating story on a rise to the top and eventual downfall.