Face tattoo

5. Jose Torres "Fire & Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson"
Mike Tyson clearly never beat Robin Givens because if he did, her skull would be detached from her body and that has not yet happened.

My friend and I tend to talk about Mike Tyson when we've been drinking and we have a computer in front of us and it's 3am and we're out of cigarettes and all that's left to drink is vermouth and scotch that's been missing a cap for weeks. We'll watch clips of Mike Tyson destroy people in the ring and then read his Wikipedia page. We'll laugh and end up watching cartoons til 5am. Apparantly our talks wasn't enough to quench my Tyson interest so I picked up the recently deceased Jose Torres biography. I'm glad I did.

The book doesn't get to the downward spiral of Tyson's career. It doesn't even get to the 90s. It may be better this way. We get to see Tyson grow up from the projects of Brooklyn to an ideallic country house in northern New York to hotel rooms in Vegas that make him claustrophobic. We get to see Tyson nurtered by a caring old timer on his way out. We get to see Tyson lose his bearings when that old timer passes away. It's a sad story. It's a quick read. It's a good book.

I don't think someone without a small interest in Tyson could enjoy this book. It's not nearly scandalous enough for those just interested in the celebrity of Tyson. It's for the casual boxing fan that may want to know how this phenom was able to become the most dominant boxer of the 1980s.