The comings and goings of Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson is the youngest world champion in heavyweight history and will be one of the oldest fighters to return to fighting if, as he recently announced, he steps into the ring close to his 54th birthday and 15 years after his retirement. Born in Brooklyn, New York on June 30, 1966, he has been training for some time, as shown in a video he posted on his social networks, in which he finally looks at the camera and says, "I'm back.

The footage shows Tyson in good physical condition, weighing about the same as his time as a world champion, with quick movements, fierce punches, and a killer look, just as he won the World Boxing Council (WBC) crown on November 22, 1986, against Jamaica's Trevor Berbick when he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old. In addition to the video and the sentence with which he ends it, Tyson wrote at the foot of the publication that "everything is possible when you are cunning. Train smartly. Recover with cunning."

According to what he said after the global impact of the news that he wants to return to the business world, Tyson would do it with solidarity and charity, as a way of contributing to the socio-economic crisis that the planet has been experiencing since last March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Almost immediately after the video was released, Australian boxing promoter Brian Amatruda contacted Tyson and offered him a fight in front of 34-year-old New Zealand rugby star Bill Williams, who is 1.94 meters tall and weighs 108 kilos, and is twice world champion with the All Blacks.

Called "the Lionel Messi or the Roger Federer" of rugby, Williams has also been a professional boxer and his record in the ring indicates that between 2009 and 2015 he made 7 fights and won them all. "There is no one to help you in the ring, so your mental strength must be impressive," he said at the time. And about the possibility of facing Tyson, he said, "If it's for a good cause, I'd love to get in the ring with him".

Although Amatruda reportedly offered Tyson $3 million to fight Williams, the former world heavyweight champion dismissed that possibility. "It would be an insult to boxing to fight a rugby player. If I go back, it's to fight a real boxer," Tyson would have responded, as quoted by the British Daily Mail. The man he would accept is American Evander Holyfield, now 57, who snatched Tyson's crown in 1996 and lost a piece of his ear to a savage bite by the Brooklyn fighter in the rematch a year later. This episode is even more famous than the two fights.

The truth is that there is already a poster on social networks promoting the Tyson-Holyfield fight, scheduled for July 11 in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. "Holyfield was a great champion. He had everything: chin, heart, determination, and work ethic. He threw good punches with both hands," said Tyson, who lost both memorable fights to the Alabama fighter.

For now, Tyson's return is only a possibility that raises incredible expectations. He is a legend of boxing and the sport who has been the subject of gender violence scandals outside the ring and his well-known addiction to marijuana. But he's the youngest heavyweight champion in the world, the one who put up 11 defenders and also girded the sashes of the World Boxing Association (WBA) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO), the one who knocked out eight opponents within a minute and whose jab had an impact force equivalent to 750 kilos.

His return to activity after the withdrawal is not the first case in professional sport in Latin America. From Muhammad Ali to Earvin 'Magic' Johnson in the United States, a constellation of idols across Central and South America and the Caribbean has already succumbed to the nostalgia of glory.