MIKE Tyson makes his return to the ring in an eight-round exhibition fight against Roy Jones Junior, who at one stage was rated the best “pound for pound” boxer on the planet.
Jones Junior’s last five years were more about taking a pounding than doing the pounding. Similarly Tyson, who was the youngest ever heavyweight champion and was infamously dubbed the “baddest man on the planet”.
The two will square off on November 28 in a fight Tyson has said will be everything but an exhibition. Tyson declared he did not understand the meaning of “exhibition” and promised to knock out Jones Junior.
Tyson, in recent months, has had social media in awe of his workouts. The 54 year-old says he is in the best shape of his life and transformed from the wreck who was taking cocaine on the day of his losing fights against Lennox Lewis and Danny Williams.
But the most outrageous of Tyson’s revelations was how he duped the doping testers by using a strap-on penis and his wife and baby daughter’s urine to ensure his samples passed whatever test.
Tyson boasted about his reliance on a “whizzinator”, which is a strap-on prosthetic penis and is attached to a bag which can be filled with liquid and squeezed between the thighs to empty the contents through the tip.
At least that is how the Daily Mail described the “whizzinator”. It is a crazy story because it asks such questions of the doping procedures in boxing, and indeed in any sport.
Tyson never tested positive before or after a fight.
When asked about his successful dodging of the dope testing, he said he initially used his wife’s urine but she questioned this on the basis that it may reveal a positive pregnancy result.
Tyson was married to Monica Turner between 1997 and 2003, and the two have a son, Amir, and a daughter, Rayna.
He said he had never thought about the pregnancy possibility and that it scared him if such a result should ever be produced, so he took to using his baby daughter’s urine. He thought it genius and hilarious. “It was awesome man.”
Drug testing, for recreational and performance-enhancing substances, is supposedly the best policed practice in sport. But it isn’t.
Cyclist Lance Armstrong, through the most complicated and complex blood transfusions, won seven Tour de France titles and never tested positive in that time. But post his competitive career all was revealed and he ultimately conceded to how intensely reliant he was on performance-enhancing illegal methods. He was stripped of all his titles and banned from the sport.
Most recently, Springbok and Sharks hooker Chilliboy Ralepelle was banned for eight years after a third positive Test in a decade. He got what was coming to him.
Equally, Christian Coleman, the man who beat Usain Bolt to third place in the latter’s final ever world championship 100 metres final.
Coleman has been banned for two years after missing three successive random drug tests. He should have been banned for life.
Justin Gatlin, who won gold in Bolt’s final race, was running faster at 34 than he did at 24. It had everything to do with two respective doping bans. Gatlin was a cheat and should never have been allowed back on the track.
Coleman will return in the next 24 months and potentially break world records and win Olympic and World titles, but given his history he shouldn’t be back on track.
And frankly Tyson shouldn’t be allowed back in a boxing ring, parading as a professional sportsman.
He cheated and he thinks his cheating was “awesome”.
If you believe in karma, his comeback should end with him knocked out and on his back.
@mark_keohane