“…my defense is impregnable. And I’m just ferocious.”

It’s been a long week.

Normally when things are amiss, I turn to Hip-Hop to clear my head. Fifteen-thousand thoughts running at once – I need money. I need a job. I need to graduate. I need to clean. I need to do laundry. I need to call him. I need those shoes. I need money. – can be exhausting. But for some reason, my playlist just wasn’t doing the trick today.

It’s in these times that I turn to Mike Tyson.

This video is perhaps one of the greatest sources of simple-minded joy. The quotes are many and the impressions birthed from them are priceless. And what of his interview with the female reporter where he said he only speaks to women he “fornicates with?” It makes me uncomfortable just to be female. Still though…hilarious. And Punch Out?!? I often have extensive conversations about the game from my elementary school days – up-down, up-down, left-right, left-right, B-A, B-A, select, start, anyone?

Strange, though, that he’s become a punch line. There’s a piece of every sports fan from the ‘90s that holds fast to the argument Mike could make a comeback. It’s a narrowing belief with time, but an inkling nevertheless. He was king…

Now on SI.com, I read that Mike is offering his guidance to England’s scatterbrained former soccer star, Paul Gascoigne. I don’t know about seeking council from Iron Mike, but I do know he started fighting on the streets as a boy when a neighborhood kid killed his pet pigeon. Knocked the kid unconscious with one hit – BOW! – and that’s therapy of some sort.

With my tough times aplenty, I remind myself Mike has always had it rougher and more inexplicably than me and my little issues. There’s no accounting for the ear-biting, children-eating, face-tattooing, impetuous, impregnable, ferocious, man. His life, like Michael Jackson’s, has been shaped at the hands of our leisure. I’d call it tragic, but the whole beating Robin Givens, rape allegation, saying he won’t talk to women he hasn’t fornicated with, thing really gets under my skin.

I’ll just let him do what he does best – make me smile.

And I thank him for that.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson

Previously Posted — “In Retrospect, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out…”