BARELY a week after Argentine icon Diego Maradona passed away at 60, fellow sporting legends Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. stepped into the ring in an exhibition boxing match.
Tyson is 54, while Jones is 51, and while some critics called the encounter a “glorified sparring,” the two ageing fighters showed why boxing, even one made for charity, is “the hurting business.”
Both boxers showed flashes of brilliance, but it was Mike Tyson who displayed impressive footwork, defense and combinations as he chased and wore down Jones with wicked body shots all over the ring for eight two-minute rounds.
It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that Tyson, one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, even held back his powerful punches to avoid hurting former six-division champion Jones.
Tyson is still clearly a beast in the ring, but for all its ferocity, boxing, as another legend Manny Pacquiao would say, “is not about killing each other.”
And Pacquiao, still a reigning champion at 41, is spot on, because sports, even boxing at its most brutal, ultimately is all about the celebration of life, and athletes, for all their supremacy and flaws, are constant reminders of what it means to be human: enduring yet fleeting all at once.
Shortly after Maradona’s death, Tyson posted this tweet: “The Hand of God, Maradona has left us. In 86 we both won our championships. They use to compare the two of us. He was one of my heroes and a friend. I respected him so much. He will be greatly missed.”
One can only wonder what went on through Tyson’s mind that time, and when he faced Jones as shadows of their former selves.
Do the greats think about transience and defying it as much as we think they do?
In their latest—and probably the last—album, the great band Tool (three of its members are in their 50s) wrote about the subject in a track called “Invincible,” part of which reads:
Warrior struggling
To remain consequential
Bellow aloud
Bold and proud
Of where I’ve been
But here I am...