When tracing the decline of boxer Mike Tyson, you could go all the way back to a troubled childhood, when he was reportedly arrested 52 times by the time he was 9 years old. Or you could go back exactly 20 years from today, when Tyson crashed his Bentley in lower Manhattan. That really looks to be the first domino to fall during a period in which Tyson became increasingly troubled and erratic. So he had a fender bender. So what? Well, here’s what the NY Times wrote about that accident:

In May, when Tyson sideswiped another car while driving his $180,000 Bentley in lower Manhattan, it was said that he had veered to avoid a cat. But Tyson later told confidants that he lost control when Givens, after discovering condoms in his jacket pocket, had begun hitting him.

In the interest of our newly developed “If it happened now” series, we can’t even imagine what that kind of passage would have done to the Interwebs had it been fresh right now as opposed to 20 years old. Just let it be known that it was perhaps the beginning of the end for Iron Mike. Or, check that, the beginning of the end until his recent comeback.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.