Pop Culture: Mike Tyson - Assignment Example

However, it was under the guidance of D’Amato that Tyson started performing well at amateur boxing matches and was admitted to the 1982 Junior Olympic Games. Although it was the case that Tyson only won a silver medal, according to the 2009 documentary Tyson became a phenomenon after he scored the fastest knockout in an Olympic bout at approximately 8 seconds. It was upon this foundation that Tyson made his professional debut in 1985 where according to Cyber Boxing Zone (2010) Tyson won twenty-six of his first twenty-eight bouts by either knockout or technical knockout, most of which ended in the first round.

The man became a powerhouse the likes of which the boxing community had not seen for a long time and quickly became known to most athletics fans across the world. However, this career which brought great heights ended up hitting rock bottom. Tyson stood accused of sexually and physically abusing his wife Robin Givens during his marriage in the late eighties. After the divorce Tyson was accused and convicted of raping a young woman in Indiana and according to Berkow (1995) served three years of a ten-year sentence.

After this point, Tyson tried to regain his career by staging a comeback that culminated in two major bouts with Evander Holyfield during which Tyson bit off a chunk of Holyfield's ear. As pop cultural consumers, I think it is natural that we are fascinated with the rise and fall of celebrity. It is the case that during the height of his career, Mike Tyson was an unstoppable force and a near perfect boxing machine. However, in his personal life, he brought about a type of ruin that the man self-described in the 2009 documentary about his life as being “A tragedy”.

As with many pop-cultural phenomenon’s, we tend to view. As far as my analysis is concerned, very few people remember Tyson for his boxing career anymore and simply focus on his failed personal life which is a trend we have seen spread across many different pop-cultural fields. Mike Tyson remains such a pop Icon well over a decade after his last serious bouts simply because by the force of his personality he remains such an interesting figure. A soft-spoken man, with tattoos over his face, that says remarkably inappropriate comments, who had a trainwreck life but was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.