He took third place at the 2007 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Chicago, thus qualifying for boxing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won a silver medal. His fight was the last event of the 2008 Olympics. His coaches were disappointed he missed the publicity that would have accompanied the final gold medal for China. Despite that, he attracted a lot of attention by being the first Asian to win an Olympic medal in the unlimited weight class. At the 2012 Olympics, he was defeated on points in the quarterfinal by Anthony Joshua, the future unified heavyweight world champion.
A few minutes later in round three, Joyce was dropped face first for the full count of ten by Zhilei Zhang. The grim observation, the way he walked with his eyes as blank as rock on the way to the ring, was right.
Michael Gerard Tyson was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 30, 1966 to Loma Tyson and Jimmy Kirk-patrick. Kirkpatrick left the family when his son was two years old. As a youth Tyson joined a street gang at a very early age and was in trouble with the law many times before he was 12 years old. After an arrest for armed robbery he was sent to the Tyron School in 1978, a correction center for juveniles in upstate New York. It was there that his life changed direction. The school’s physical education teacher saw potential in the young man and introduced him to legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato, who lived near the facility at the time. Tyson thrived under the new structure and discipline in his life. Tyson moved in with D’Amato and when the boxer’s mother died when he was 16. D’Amato became his legal guardian. Tyson was sent back to the Tyron school for a time after he was threatened with a gun by his then-trainer Teddy Atlas. The trainer had heard that Tyson sexually abused a 12-year-old girl and was trying to frighten him. Tyson made stunning progress as an amateur and decided to try out for the Olympic team at the age of 17. After failing to make the 1984 Olympic team, D’Amato decided that it was time for his fighter to turn professional.
The American former boxer Mike Tyson has four tattoos of note. Three—at least two of them prison tattoos —are portraits of men he respects: tennis player Arthur Ashe, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, and Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong. The fourth, a face tattoo influenced by the Māori style tā moko, was designed and inked by S. Victor Whitmill in 2003. Tyson associates it with the Māori being warriors and has called it his “warrior tattoo”, a name that has also been used in the news media.
What followed was a mix of success (11 straight wins from September 2016 to November ’20) and setbacks (a draw against Jerry Forrest in ’21, a narrow-decision defeat to Filip Hrgović site in yahoo.com ’22). Last April, Zhang was tapped to face Joyce. It was a showcase fight for Joyce, the ’16 Olympic silver medalist who was next in line for a title shot and considered un-knock-out-able. Considered. Zhang, an 11-to-1 underdog, battered Joyce over six rounds until the referee mercifully stopped the fight. In the rematch five months later—a bout Zhang admonished Joyce’s handlers not to take—he needed just three rounds to put Joyce on the canvas.
When did Mike Tyson get his tattoo and showed it to the public for the first time, it elicited a wide range of reactions. Some praised the boldness and uniqueness of the design, while others criticized it as unconventional or even controversial.
Some tā moko artists differed, seeing it not as appropriative of moko but rather a hybrid of several tattoo styles; Rangi Kipa saw no Māori elements at all. The perspective of those like Te Awekotuku highlights the conflict between Māori conception of moko—which reflect a person’s genealogy—as collective property and the Anglo-American view of copyright as belonging to a single person. While Warner Bros. initially said they would investigate whether the tattoo was a derivative of any Māori works, there was no further discussion of the matter prior to the case settling.
Zhang protecting up front and Parker looking for a power punch. Lead jab from Parker misses. Zhang lands well on the inside. Zhang is GASSED, but once again Parker can’t seem to cash in. This will be an interesting trio of scores from the judges.
“I can fight any one of those guys, but do they want to fight me?,” Zhang, a rare heavyweight lefty, muses through interpreter Kurt Li. “This is one of the major problems out there, maybe because I’m an underdog, I don’t have a name yet. And what if they lose?”
Meaning: The boxer went under the needle in the year 2003 by the tattoo artist, Victor Whitmill. The tribal tattoo is inked on the left side of Tyson’s face. This unique design stirred some commotions like lawsuit and trials when ‘The Hangover’ movie doctor’s character ‘Stu Price’ depicted a temporary tribal tattoo with the same design as Tyson’s tattoo on his face.
“I like this fight a lot, two giant heavyweights in a situation where a loss could be the end any hopes of getting to the top of the division. I think Wilder has to be in desperation mode here. He’s only won a single bout since 2019 and he’ll be 39-years-old in just a couple of months. He has had an incredible career, but I don’t like what I saw in his last bout with Joseph Parker. The legs just were not present and neither was any killer instinct on Deontay’s part. Although Zhang lost his previous bout as well, also to Joseph Parker, I think even at 41-years of age he has a lot of fight left in him. I think he overwhelms the Bronze Bomber en route to a stoppage win halfway through the bout.”
