Iron Mike Tyson says “Being a big man doesn’t really matter. It’s of no significance to knock someone out. The main point is the quickness in which you throw the punches and the leverage that you have and the shoulder snap.
The very object of knocking out an individual, is throwing a punch that he can’t see. When you throw punches and you keep his mind preoccupied with the body punches, and the other punches that go to the head are the knock out punches.”
Michael Gerard ‘Mike’ Tyson is an American former professional boxer. He held the undisputed world heavyweight championship and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles at 20 years, 4 months, and 22 days old.
Tyson won gold medals at the 1981 and 1982 Junior Olympic Games, defeating Joe Cortez in 1981 and beating Kelton Brown in 1982. Brown’s corner threw in the towel in the first round.
He holds the Junior Olympic record for quickest knockout (8 seconds). He won every bout at the Junior Olympic Games by knockout.
Tyson was often the target of bullying. To combat this, he began developing his own style of street fighting, which ultimately transitioned into criminal activity.
His gang, known as the Jolly Stompers, assigned him to clean out cash registers while older members held victims at gunpoint. He was only 11 years old at the time.
He frequently ran into trouble with police over his petty criminal activities, and by the age of 13, he had been arrested more than 30 times.
Tyson’s bad behavior landed him in the Tryon School for Boys, a reform school in upstate New York. At Tryon, Tyson met counselor Bob Stewart, who had been an amateur boxing champion.
Tyson wanted Stewart to teach him how to use his fists. Stewart reluctantly agreed, on the condition that Mike would stay out of trouble and work harder in school. Previously classified as learning disabled, Mike managed to raise his reading abilities to the seventh-grade level in a matter of months.
He also became determined to learn everything he could about boxing, often slipping out of bed after curfew to practice punches in the dark.
