Former heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson announces “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,” a one-man show on Broadway. “Fighting to me is what theory was to Einstein or words were to Hemingway or notes were to Beethoven.” — Mike Tyson
On June 27, 1988, a 21-year-old Mike Tyson made in excess of 21 million dollars for 91 seconds of work. It took him just over 14 seconds to pull in more money than Michael Jordan, in his prime, made for an entire season of work that year. But maybe you never cared much about sports or athletes and preferred art instead. So maybe you’ll accept Warhol’s advice and measure the worth of an artwork by what you can get for it. At Tyson’s pay rate that night, after another round or so (227 seconds to be exact by my calculations), the work of art he displayed in the ring would’ve earned as much as Vincent van Gogh’s efforts on a canvas when Irises became the most expensive work of art in the world just several months before, selling for $53.9 million.
“Mike Tyson remains that rarest of all commodities. Instead of the human being sold as superhero, Tyson is the superhero who is selling himself as a human being.” — Wallace Matthews
Source: “Sparring with Mike Tyson,” by Brian Jonathan Butler, in Atlantic Online, August 9
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
