This thread is very depressing to me as I see/realize that fight, which I also watched with my dad, was twenty six years ago?!?! To me THAT has always been and will always be the best fight ever.
I stopped watching boxing in the 80s as well and have never found MMA or any variations entertaining, at all.
For all Tyson's disgusting and pathetic personal failings and faults I will never forget the first time I watched one of his 'fights'. I'm one year older than Tyson. He was probably 18 at the time I saw his first fight. It was a late night broadcast and he was still pretty unkown. I had never heard of him before. Not even sure if his fight was the lead on the card. In any event, at the time he had apparently never gone beyond the third round in a fight and was undefeated, all by TKO. The commentators made some comments just prior to the fight that there was some doubt about whether or not he had the stamina to go beyond three rounds. I heard all that and thought, "I need to watch this guy". For four rounds I kept thinking to myself, "What in the world is so great about this guy?" I mean he was doing nothing impressive at all. The bell rang for the fifth and he walked across the ring with a decidely different demeanor. When he reached his poor unsuspecting opponent, he hit him so hard and so fast, it literally put fear in MY heart. And I was watching the fight on TV!! The second to last punch was a body shot that had his opponent bend over and his last punch was an upper cut. The guys nose literally exploded! The way he hit the ground I honestly thought he was dead. I remember thinking, "My God, I just watched an animal beat the life out of a human." Tyson, who wasn't even winded during the post fight interview said in that painfully distinctive voice something along the lines of "People were saying I couldn't go more than 3 rounds. So I told myself I'd let it go 5 and show them I could."
I made sure the doors were locked that night.
