Mike Tyson blew away Lou Savarese in Glasgow last night as two weeks of high farce ended with 38 seconds of rubbish. Tyson decked Savarese with a left hook with the first punch of the fight and then, as he went in for the kill, even appeared to catch referee John Coyle as chaos reigned.
Coyle, who had issued a stunned Savarese with the mandatory eight count, had leapt in to save Savarese, out on his feet after a follow-up barrage. Apparently unknown to Tyson, Coyle was attempting to stop the fight, but Tyson carried on and almost knocked Coyle off his feet. Savarese's corner men leapt in to save their man - closely followed by Tyson's notorious cheerleader 'Crocodile'. As boos rang out around a soaked Hampden Park, Coyle told Savarese's bewildered trainer that he had stopped the contest. While it proved a fitting end to the ridiculous pre-fight activities, Tyson did enough to provide answers to those who claimed he had not trained properly in the build-up to the bout.
Simply, the 34-year-old Brooklyn ghetto boy proved the truth in the old adage that the last thing an ageing fighter loses is his punch. But it was an awful night for boxing. Ringside seats remained empty after a torrential early downpour and most of those fans who did turn up must have wished they hadn't bothered. And the controversy merely served as a fitting epitaph to a fight week which, even by Tyson's standards, had been utterly crazy. The former undisputed world champion, who is in the process of being divorced by his wife, the doctor Monica Turner, was grief-stricken by the death of a close friend on a New York street last week. He arrived in Britain four days later than scheduled and refused to train publicly.
And his bust-up with promoter Frank Warren over an unpaid jewellery bill kept him in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Tonight, Warren finally ended his unusual absence in the build-up to the fight and appeared at ringside - clearly without the broken jaw or fractured cheekbone it had been rumoured he had received in a scuffle. From the moment when he entered the ring, Tyson looked his usual mean and moody self. Savarese, anxious to get as many of the sparse crowd on his side as possible, climbed through the ropes to the sound of bagpipes. But he was nervous and hopelessly out of his depth and was roundly booed as he left the ring. Tyson, yet again, had beaten another man before he even stepped through the ropes.
PA Sports
