By Mark Workman

In the latest shameful example of those out to exploit Iron Mike Tyson for their own personal gain, we now have light heavyweight Antonio “Magic Man” Tarver actually entertaining the idea of fighting Mike Tyson in what is sure to be another episode of pure humiliation for the faded ex-champion, should this charade actually be allowed to move forward.

I hope it’s not allowed to move forward.

Five months ago I wrote a story about Mike Tyson called The Death of a Killing Machine. In a cathartic sort of way, I closed my own personal book on the career of Mike Tyson when I wrote that story. It was my way of letting go and finally coming to grips with the end of a long and tumultuous career that I had followed religiously for nearly twenty years.

I wish we could all do that. Even more so, I wish Mike could do that.

A short time later, I wrote a fictional short story called Iron Mike Tyson – Resurrection. It was a fictional account of Tyson reuniting with his old trainer Kevin Rooney and launching a comeback. 99.9% of the readers got it and realized that the story was meant to be nothing more than a fun read. But there were a few unfortunates who took the story seriously and actually believed that Tyson was reuniting with Rooney and returning to the ring.

Kevin Rooney is a good trainer but he’s not a magician. He cannot restore skills and physical elements that are very clearly diminished by the ticking clock. He simply can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. No one can.

I couldn’t be more disgusted with Antonio Tarver and his advisors right now. Rather than do what’s best for boxing and fight the other light heavyweight champions and unify the title or even fight the exciting IBF super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy who has recently challenged him, Tarver stoops to a money hungry low by even entertaining such a mockery of the sport in fighting Tyson.

Except for those who care nothing about Iron Mike and his future health, I don’t think anyone wants to see another image of him lying on the canvass bleeding, glassy-eyed and staring at the ceiling in a semi-conscious state.

Is that what we now call entertainment?

Do we actually want to pay for such a miserable excuse of a boxing match, knowing full well that after it’s over we’re the ones who paid for this fight and that the spending of those dollars could one day help to contribute to Tyson suffering ill health in later life?

I’m not going to do that. No one should.

Some will say that Tarver can’t hurt Tyson; but Mike is almost forty years old and has endured some serious punishment in his past fights. It’s going to catch up with him sooner or later. There’s no more iron in Mike Tyson. We all need to get that into our collective heads once and for all. His career is over. It has been for a long time.

Someone said to me this past week, “Mike could make a comeback and beat all of the current champions. Those guys mean nothing. No one knows who they are. He should take this opportunity and fight Tarver and regain his place in boxing.”

My first impulse was to call someone with a net and have this guy thrown into the local insane asylum. But then I realized that he’s just another person who still believes the hype, holds onto the past and truly believes that Iron Mike has something left as a fighter.

You don’t need to be a boxing “expert” to see that Tyson’s career has been over for a very long time and that he has absolutely nothing left. He’s a shot fighter. He’s washed up. Accept it. It’s reality. Mike needs to go on to something else in life while he still has his health. And he knows that.

Tyson needs money to pay off his debts, we’re told. So he continues to allow the same sharks who have manipulated him for their own personal gain throughout a large part of his career to bring him back again for another round of degradation before the eyes of the entire free world.

Many of us continue to justify the idea of this fight by telling ourselves that a fighter’s punch is the last thing to go and Mike is one of the best punchers that ever lived. Have we not seen Mike fight for the past few years? He can’t hit a wall in front of him anymore. Having a great punch is useless when you can’t hit anything with it and your speed, reflexes and timing are so gone that you can’t properly defend yourself anymore.

That is the Mike Tyson of today.

In case you’ve been away on a trip through the Amazon jungle for the past six months, back in June Iron Mike quit against an unknown journeyman by the name of Kevin McBride who currently has a record of 33 wins, 4 losses, 1 draw and 28 KOs. All of those wins and KOs were against bums. No one in their right mind views Kevin McBride as some great fighter because he beat Mike Tyson. He’s a mediocre journeyman who beat a faded legend. Plain and simple.

Anyone who thinks that Kevin McBride could beat any of the four reigning heavyweight champions: Hasim Rahman, Chris Byrd, John Ruiz and Lamon Brewster must still believe in Santa Claus. Let me clue you in on a little secret. Your mommy and daddy put the presents under the Christmas tree every year, not Santa Claus. There is no Santa Claus and Mike Tyson is done. Come to grips with it.

If we consider concrete logic for a minute, we can deduce one simple thing: If Kevin McBride has zero chance of beating the four current heavyweight champions, why in the wide, wide world of sports would anyone think that the man who was losing miserably to and finally quit against Kevin McBride would beat any of these four men? Where is the genuine logic in this?

Tyson, short of a darn lucky punch, has more of a chance winning the Powerball lottery than beating any of the four current heavyweight champions. Disregard the fact that these four belt-holders aren’t the most popular heavyweight champions to wear a belt in years, and you’ll still see that they all four still have enough to beat Mike Tyson at this stage of his life.

I always admired Iron Mike’s work in the ring when he was still a fully functioning fighter. I waited patiently for three years while his prime rotted away in prison, believing that when he returned to the ring the glory days would return with him. But they didn’t.

Those three years in prison, a man named James Buster Douglas and Tyson’s own self-destructive hand changed everything for him. He was never the same fighter when he came out of prison despite what promoter Don King hoodwinked us into believing. He really wasn’t the same fighter after the loss to Douglas but we weren’t ready to accept that reality just yet.

Sure, Mike had some good post-Douglas moments, before and after prison; but they were only mere glimpses of the fury that knocked Trevor Berbick down three times with one punch and destroyed Michael Spinks in ninety-one seconds and pretty much pummeled everyone thrown before him during a three year championship period.

All one needs to do is pop Tyson vs. Holyfield I and II into the VCR and see some real reality. And that was nearly a decade ago. Hey, why not pop in Tyson vs. Lewis while you’re at it, a fight that took place just over three years ago. You’ll see the same thing: a fighter who should definitely remain retired.

If those three fights aren’t clear examples of where Mike’s at today as a fighter, you’ll never get what I’m saying. Against top fighters in the division, he’s looked really bad and lost miserably these past few years. The fights he’s fought since his loss to Douglas, except for the three with Holyfield and Lewis, for the most part, have really meant nothing. They were money fights that Mike was almost sure to win.

There has to be another way for Tyson to make a living. Maybe those who advise him need to start being a bit more honest with him about the erosion of his legacy and health that more of these abominations disguised as fights will cause. Maybe he needs money so badly that he has no other choice but to fight again. That saddens me.

I always find it amazing to hear so many people mock Tyson today, knowing full well that in his heyday they followed his every movement and spent their money on every one of his fights. We now deride him and call him a joke; but in many ways we’re the writers of that joke by continuing to buy these fights that he shouldn’t be fighting. We just need to stop repeating the punch line and stop paying for these ridiculous fights.

If Antonio Tarver is only speaking of this potential Tyson fight to get some much-needed press for his upcoming role in Rocky VI, he should get a new publicist. This isn’t funny. If he’s serious about fighting Tyson, he should be ashamed of himself; and real boxing fans that care about the sport should boycott this joke of a boxing match.

Mostly hardcore boxing fans read articles like this one, and most of those fans already know what I’m saying is true. It’s the casual fight fan that will be conned into spending pay-per-view dollars on a Tarver vs. Tyson fight and then end up with a bitter taste in their mouth and feeling cheated when the fight ends up being another Tyson farce.

And then we wonder why boxing defectors would rather swan dive off the back of our boxing bandwagon into the fiery pit of Hell and land at Satan’s dinner table than stay on the bandwagon with us. Go figure.

I’d like to give Tarver the benefit of the doubt and think that he’s actually entertaining the idea of fighting Iron Mike to help him get his finances back in the black and secure his economic future; but I no longer believe in Santa Claus and think that this is only about money for Tarver.

I seriously doubt that Tarver has suddenly become so benevolent that he’s considering this fight for the positive gain of Tyson. He’s obviously taking advantage of the fact that Tyson desperately needs money to pay off the IRS and other creditors. And it’s even more obvious that Tarver’s convinced that Mike is a shot fighter or he wouldn’t even be considering the idea of fighting him. At Mike’s peak, Tarver wouldn’t have stood a chance against him and most certainly would’ve been seriously hurt.

I hope this fiasco never sees the inside of a ring and that someone actually figures out a better way in which Tyson can solve his financial problems, for his sake and the sake of the sport.

The last thing I want to see is Tyson so physically debilitated in his later years that he’s reduced to eating apple sauce with a plastic spoon three meals a day because his brain has been beaten to a pulp in fights that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. That would really cast a bright light on the sport we love so much.

For all of the people who still live in the dreamy land of fantasy holiday travelers in red suits bearing gifts, Elvis has a bigger chance of making a successful comeback than Mike Tyson.

If not for the sake of Mike Tyson, then for the sake of boxing, Antonio Tarver should let this go. And Mike Tyson should do the same.