How does one stand before such a man like that of Goliath? Does he grab his sling and three smooth stones or does he turn and run in fear? The Goliath’s of the world are giants among men, six foot nine monsters that destroy everything in their path. Goliath, himself, was likely a darling to his Philistine compatriots. One modern man that has that Goliath mantra and is beloved by many is that of Mike Tyson.
An underdog in his own right, Mike Tyson crafted his skills to become the ultimate killer. At a very young age, it was apparent Tyson was adept in the fine art of violence. He destroyed everyone in his path. A target was put on his back as the baddest man on the planet. The entire heavyweight division wanted a part of that and many got exactly what they wanted. Body after body lie in his wake and only fifty six men have had the “pleasure,” if we can call it such a thing.
What was it like to face Mike Tyson? What was it like to step in the ring with a man known to be so destructive? Who are these people that were crazy enough to do so? Today, we are talking with four of those men. Jose Ribalta, Peter McNeeley, Lou Savarse and Frank Bruno all stepped in the ring with “Iron” Mike at various points of his career. They tell their story.
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Jose Ribalta: “He plans the way he’s gonna fight you, and he stays with the plan.”
Jose Ribalta fought Mike Tyson in 1986. On his way to the iconic Michael Spinks fight and only 20 years of age, Mike Tyson had torn through 25 opponents with only two decisions. The rest: eliminated. Ribalta took on one of the best versions of Mike Tyson to ever walk the planet.
The two threw down at Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City. The fight was expected to be a quick night. Instead, Tyson found himself in front of an opponent that wouldn’t go away. After ten hard rounds with Ribalta, Tyson finally put the Cuban away. Ribalta remembers how tough Tyson was to simply hit.
“Mike Tyson, he was a very difficult fight. He’s very strong, the strength that he has, and his bobbing and weaving, he’s not really an easy target to hit.”
Jose Ribalta and his coach, Dave Clark, planned to hit the body. Ribalta believed in himself and attributes that resolve to the reason why he gave Tyson such a hard fight. He and his coach hammered home the body work and watching the fight showed just that.
“I believed in myself, because back then, to fight a person like Mike Tyson, you had to know who you are, you had to believe in yourself to even think about getting in the ring with Mike Tyson. Because he was a strong guy, and he came in there to win, to knock you out. I was hitting him with the body shots, when I went back to my corner, I said, ‘Dave [Clark], I’m hitting him with body shots, he’s not reacting.’ And then my trainer said, ‘Jose, just keep doing it.’ Dave Clark said, ‘Just keep doing it. He will feel it.’ So then I kept doing it, and like I said, it was a hard fight. And he said I was one of the hardest fights he ever had.”
The preparation for the fight was drilling down the game plan to get to Tyson’s body. The pivot was to stay off the center line and the body shot was to slow Tyson down.
“My coach and me, when we practiced for the fight, we were doing pivoting and pivoting, punch and pivot. And that’s what I was doing basically the whole fight.”
Despite being successful in hitting the body, Jose Ribalta says that he wasn’t sure if his body punching was working. But after the fight and Mike Tyson’s comments, he was vindicated in that approach.
“I was telling my trainer, ‘I had good shots, he didn’t react to it. I’m not really hurting him.’ But then, after the fight, he said he was in so much pain from the body shots that I gave him, it was the most pain he had after a fight. I said, ‘Wow, I really did hurt him.’”
Ribalta goes on and says that the shots he hit Tyson with were solid. His ability to take a punch really set him apart in Jose Ribalta’s mind.
“He took some pretty good shots. He has a pretty good chin. He’s a pretty good fighter. I was hitting him with good shots and all, and he reacts to it by staying on his feet.”
Though he was only 20 and not yet a champion, people knew what Mike Tyson was about. After many first round knockouts, Tyson was on people’s radar as a potential threat to the heavyweight throne. Ribalta’s friends weren’t so optimistic about his chances.
“Alot of people were saying that Ribalta is expected to get knocked out in one or two rounds, three at the most. That’s what they were saying. I had two or three arguments and discussions with some friends. They were like, ‘He’s gonna knock you out,’ and I said ‘No, he’s not gonna knock me out. He’s got to show me. We’re gonna fight hard.’ And people were saying to me, ‘He’s gonna knock you out in two or three rounds.’ So, when he knocked me down, I said, ‘Uh-uh, I gotta get back up.’”
It was those words from his friends and cohorts that motivated Jose Ribalta to get up not once, not twice, but three times.
“He knocked me down in the second round. And I got back up and I said, ‘No, he ain’t gonna knock me out,’ and I got back up. Because what motivated me was what the people were saying before the fight. That motivated me to get back up quick. I got back up quick in the second round. And then, in the eighth round, I did the same thing. And in the 10th round I did the same thing.”
According to Jose Ribalta, Mike Tyson’s best attribute was his ability to stick with a game plan. Tyson didn’t fight to what his opponent brought. Instead, he fought with what gifts he had.
“Like I said, he was a very strong guy. He goes in with a fight plan, and he’s consistent, he’s very consistent in what he does. He plans the way he’s gonna fight you, and he stays with the plan he came out to do.“
In 2014, Mike Tyson did an interview with Ring Magazine. In that interview he was asked the hardest chin and strongest fighter he’s faced. His answer was Jose Ribalta. In that interview, he said the following:
I hit Jose Ribalta with everything, and he took everything and kept coming back for more.
Jose Ribalta stood toe to toe with me. He was very strong in the clinches.
Mike Tyson to Ring Magazine
In his autobiography Undisputed Truth, Tyson said of Ribalta, “Ribalta was a game fighter who actually engaged me. I felt nauseous from all Ribalta’s body blows, even hours after the fight. I never felt that much general pain again.”
That was a lifetime’s worth of compliment from Jose Ribalta. Mike Tyson is seen as invincible. In a sport that is often seen as a competition of the toughest, Tyson is often thought of the top of that heap. To be called the toughest by the toughest is a badge of honor Jose Ribalta carries to this day.
“He said I was the strongest fighter he ever fought. To me, I did put that energy in that fight, because I was training for three weeks, me and my trainer Dave Clark. God bless him, he passed away. He said, ‘Jose, we’re gonna work on our pivot.’ And that’s basically what I did in the fight. Mike Tyson said he had so much body pain, because every time I hit him in the body, it was a pivot. Boom-boom-boom. That’s basically one thing that I remember my coach saying: ‘Make sure you pivot.’ When I was sparring with other guys, he was saying, ‘Make sure you pivot.’ And that’s what I was doing. I was pivoting my way towards Mike Tyson’s body. That’s why he said after the fight that he’s never been in so much pain before. I made sure I pivoted and that the punches went to his body.”
Peter McNeeley: “Nothing but class and respect from the champ.”
“August 19th, 1995,” McNeeley said with a hint of pride in his voice. This was just after Mike Tyson was released from his four year prison sentence. “We’re talking May 10th, May 12th, we signed the contract in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand,” McNeeley remembered. “That’s where our fight was with Mike Tyson. The day we signed the contract, we’re both on opposite sides of the sage. Don King brings us to the middle where he was. We both sign a piece of paper and Mike looks at me, sticks his hand out and says, ‘Good luck.’ I respected that.”
Peter McNeeley was a long and tall fighter. He shared the ring with Tyson in his first fight after being released from his four year prison sentence. Marketed as “He’s back!” Tyson’s return was highly anticipated.
After losing the title to Buster Douglas, the title would go on to change hands to Evander Holyfield, who would fight and beat George Foreman and Larry Holmes. Holyfield lost to Riddick Bowe and then was won back shortly by Holyfield. Holyfield lost to Michael Moorer, who was coached by Tyson’s former coach Teddy Atlas. Moorer lost to Foreman. Foreman was stripped for not fighting Tony Tucker. The heavyweight division was the Wild West while Tyson was incarcerated and he looked to jump right back into the chaotic fray. The jumping off point went through McNeeley.
On the day of the fight, McNeeley came out firing hot. Shortly after the ring of the initial bell, Tyson caught and dropped McNeeley. Many scratched their heads at McNeeley’s plan. But with Tyson’s four year layoff and McNeeley’s body of work, he justifies it.
“People still ask me to that question often. ‘What was your game plan? Why did you do what you did.’ Listen, it’s not a secret that I had 25 first round knockouts. That’s just how I do it.”
When he and Tyson fought in 1995, “Iron” Mike’s mythos had already been cemented. Peter McNeeley recalls watching Tyson in high school and college.
“I was watching Mike Tyson when I was in high school. Even then, in college, before I even had my first amateur fight. I can remember like it was yesterday, going home from college to see Tyson versus Douglas.”
With the giant that is Mike Tyson standing before you, both physically and metaphorically, a mindset is among the most important. Luckily for McNeeley, his coach, Vinnie Vecchione, made a point to remind McNeeley that he was just in another fight.
“Vinnie said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get it in your head. It’s just another fight, Peter.’ Like I said, the best thing that ever happened to my career was Vinnie to approach me to spar with Paul Poirier.”
Circling back to the fight, McNeeley went on to talk about the first knockdown. The action of the fight was over in only 89 seconds. Peter McNeeley says that he believes that Tyson made it a point to get him out of there before his return was spoiled.
“That first knockdown a lot of people thought was a miss. But actually he did catch me with a great straight right. I was off balance, I went down and got back up again. Then the final one, which I went right back at him again in the middle of the lane, I went right back at Mike again. I knew for a fact that he was thinking in his head, ‘I’ve got to get this crazy kid out of here because he might catch me or headbutt me, or whatever.’ And he did.”
He continues to point out some of the nuances of the final knockdown that sent him crashing to the floor. His brother worked hard to get all of the footage from ESPN and finally figured out what was going on during the fight. With the area he was in, the pre-internet days, this type of tape stuff was harder to come by.
“My brother called up ESPN and asked if they could get me the film of every close up angle. I still got it today, it’s on DVD. The point I’m trying to make is when Mike Tyson actually got me with a right and an uppercut. He was in a southpaw stance. It took me about a week to figure that one out. Back then it was a VHS tape,” said McNeeley laughing.
Before we hung up the phone, as I was ending the conversation, Peter McNeeley stopped me for one more thing he had to say, perhaps the most important part of our conversation. Mike Tyson is seen as a giant but Peter McNeeley explains that he is more than just a robotic terminator. After McNeeley’s wife passed last year, nearly 20 years after their 89 seconds of chaos, Tyson made it a point to call McNeeley to express his condolences.
“I’ve talked to Mike Tyson a few times over the last 29 years. My only wife died, the only wife I ever had in my life, together for nine years, married for seven. After she died a year ago this June, Mike Tyson called me a few times. He was west coast time and I’m here in Massachusetts. So I didn’t realize it. I go to bed at 11:30, midnight, and shut the phone off. The next day when I turn it back on, I saw the missed calls. Then he texted me. He had heard my wife died. This was less than three days after she died. The wake and the funeral hadn’t even happened yet. So I called him back and he immediately answered. ‘What’s up, brother? I’m so sorry for your loss.’”
Putting it succinctly, Peter McNeeley closed with, “That’s nothing but class and respect from the champ.”
Lou Savarese: “There’s guys that are powerful and there’s guys that are quick. He’s quick and powerful.”
Our next boxer is Lou Savarese. Savarese tallied up a a 46-7 record with 38 knockouts. I’m addition to Tyson, he shared the ring with Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Buster Mathis Jr, and Buster Douglas. He was the IBA World Heavyweight champion in 1998.
The Houston native took on Mike Tyson on June 24th, 2000. The fight lasted only 38 seconds but wasn’t without controversy and memorable moments.
Savarese went into detail on the difficulty for simply preparing for Mike Tyson. With Savarese being 6’5” and Tyson clocking in at 5’10”, Savarese had to find someone shorter and quick and powerful.
“You have to guys to emulate Tyson, obviously. The hard thing with Tyson is he’s strong but he’s also very fast. You have to get guys like him and that’s hard to come by. So we had guys, short, stocky guys. You know, I’m taller. That was the big thing was getting guys to emulate Tyson. That’s important. We had a good camp. The fight didn’t go the way I wanted, obviously.”
Savarese and his team went out and got Lionel Butler, a 5’10” heavyweight with 24 knockouts to his name.
“We got guys like Lionel Butler. You know, Tyson’s extremely quick and powerful. That’s what makes him so special. But you try to do your best. You obviously get guys that are the physical size of him too. You don’t want slower, tall guys when you’re fighting Tyson.”
The fight with Tyson didn’t last too long; Savarese lasted only 38 seconds. With a leaping left hook reminiscent of Joe Frazier, Savarese was put down in the first exchange. He got up, beating the count, and the onslaught continued.
“He caught me with a good shot. He got my temple and I was off balance. I got back up pretty quickly. I’ve been hurt a lot. We thought he stopped the fight because he hit the referee. We didn’t know they were going to stop the fight, we were really surprised really.”
Tyson kept fighting after referee John Coyle had tried to separate the two to call the fight. Coyle hit the floor and Tyson kept coming. The scene was chaotic as the corners stepped in but Tyson soon realized the fight was over. In his book, Undisputed Truth, Mike Tyson admitted that he was on cocaine during this fight.
[Tyson] said that he was high before taking to the ring for a match against Lou Savarese in Glasgow in June 2000—and came up with an ingenious method to prevent detection by the sport’s official testers.
Confessing he had taken “blow” and “pot” before the bout, he said: “I had to use my whizzer, which was a fake penis where you put in someone’s clean urine to pass your drug test.
Mike Tyson in Undisputed Truth
“He just kept going,” said Lou Savarese. “Not to be sour grapes, but he went on to admit he was snorting coke before the fight. I told him once, I said, I’m joking about this, but I said ‘Either we both do coke, or we both fight clean.’ We had a good laugh. I saw him about a year ago and he seems to be doing real good.”
Once again, we have someone saying they were happy to see Mike Tyson years after the fight, which is a common theme we’ve seen. Despite the “bad blood,” which was mostly theatrics, Tyson’s past opponents look fondly at him.
Leading up to the fight, Lou Savarese didn’t let the mind games and trash talk get to him. “It was just the typical stuff. He had a pretty big entourage with him and those guys talk a lot of trash.”
Finishing things off, Lou Savarese talks about what makes Mike Tyson special as a fighter. While it’s easy to point to his physical gifts like his speed and strength, Savarese reminds people that he put in the time in the film room which he believes is a big part of the mythos of “Iron” Mike.
“There’s guys that are powerful and there’s guys that are quick. He’s quick and powerful. Foreman was so strong but he was slow at starting. Tyson was just so quick. That’s what made him special. And he’s a student of the game, a lot of people don’t realize that. They saw Tyson getting in trouble. But before when he was with Cus, he was really training hard and he was a student of the game and he knew a lot about other boxers.”
It was after this fight that Tyson delivered his post fight speech calling out the champion Lennox Lewis.
Francois Botha: “You can feel the wind behind you when he punches and misses.”
Coming off of his disqualification to Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson was given a fifteen month suspension of his boxing license for biting the ear of Evander Holyfield not once, but twice. He was booked to face Francois Botha, a former IBF heavyweight champion.
Francois Botha is the most unique fighter we will talk to today. As mentioned, he won the IBF Heavyweight Championship against Axel Schultz in 1995. Botha has competed at the highest levels in combat sports. He’s faced Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Michael Moorer, and Wladimir Klitschko in boxing. He has wins over Peter Aerts and Jerome Le Banner in K-1 as a kickboxer. To top it all off, Botha has also fought Yoshihito Akiyama in mixed martial arts. He’s as game as they come.
The lead up to Tyson vs. Botha was nothing short of dramatic. Before the two fought, Tyson upped the ante. Coming off the controversial ear bite and suspension, Mike Tyson picked up where he left off in the media.
Francois Botha recalled a point in time where he was called in to spar Mike Tyson, which he refused. He knew that their day was coming and wanted to wait for that time that he stepped in the ring with Tyson.
“They came to me and told me that Mike wanted to spar. I said, ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ They said, ‘No, why?’ And I told them that once Mike spars me he will never fight me. That’s what happened in training camp.”
Once the fight was signed, Tyson made the rounds. He caught some heat for comments made about Botha before the fight. On UPN9/WWOR New York with Russ Salzberg, Tyson said he was going to “kill that mother f***er.” Salzberg called Tyson out on the language used on television. “You have a problem, turn off your station,” said Tyson to the objection.
When the fight began, Botha took the charge. Landing the better shots in round one, “The White Buffalo” won the first round, as well as rounds three and four. Botha talked about the power coming back his way and the velocity at which Tyson’s punches coming his way.
“My goal was to make him miss, which I did very well, make him miss and counter. He’s got the power, that’s one thing about Mike, he’s got tremendous power. Even with the punches he missed, you could feel the wind go behind the punch. He does pack a heavy, heavy punch.”
As good as the fight was going, Botha was ultimately finished in round five with a picture perfect right hook that sent him to the floor. There weren’t any nerves for Botha during the fight because of the adrenaline. But when it comes to the punch, Botha admits it couldn’t have been placed any more precise.
“I could handle it because your adrenaline is pumping. I was very excited. The one shot that he landed, I think Tiger Woods couldn’t even golf better.”
Digressing a bit, Francois Botha says the in-ring talk was going back and forth both ways. With Botha winning the fight, he made sure to let Mike Tyson know that he was in control.
“I was talking to him constantly. Right in the beginning I told him, after a couple of rounds, I told him, ‘Mike, you’re losing.’ I said, ‘You’re losing this fight. Look at everybody that’s looking at you.’ We kept talking a lot of smack. I can’t remember everything but I remember some of the words he’s telling me. He said, ‘White boy, I’m right here. I’m right here.’ It was exciting for while it lasted. The score cards, I was so far ahead, my gameplan was after five round I’d grab him, we probably should have taken another round.”
As for the comments made by Mike Tyson before the fight, thinking Botha was going to die, that was all understood as part of the business. He and Botha were on good terms. Francois Botha understands just that and talks about how the two have interacted since.
“Me and him never had bad blood. A year after we fought, I was in Vegas and I just felt somebody grab me and picked me up, and it was Mike. We never spent time together. Probably because he’s so massive when he’s around. We never could actually be alone together.”
Fighting a fighter like Tyson, one of boxing’s heaviest hitters, can be mentally taxing. Mentally preparing is one thing that a lot of fighters over look. And with the mind games played by Tyson, like punching a hole in the wall before he fought Michael Spinks, that is just as important as preparing for the fight itself.
“I think most of Mike Tyson’s opponents lost their fights even before they got into the ring. Frank Bruno is one. His eyes are like he saw a ghost. I was ready, I did a lot of meditating, and that’s a big part in my career is my meditating, my prayers. I was ready. I was ready to take it to him. I’m one hundred when I go to the ring.”
Circling back, Botha talks about the speed of Mike Tyson, despite him seeming slower when the two fought in 1999 as said by the announcers. Botha believes it’s that speed that gives him the famed power Tyson possesses.
“Like I said, you can feel the wind behind you when he punches and misses. His speed gives him the power.”
The legend of Mike Tyson
50 wins with 44 knockouts. The most fearsome fighter in the modern day. Knockouts and a highlight reel that rivals any, Mike Tyson has transcended the sport of boxing and become a pop culture phenomenon. An underdog and out of a broken home, Tyson fought his way to impossible heights. He was the heavyweight champion of the world, the baddest man on the planet. A giant. Goliath.
He was not perfect, neither in and out of the ring. But that’s what makes Mike Tyson a human, like everyone else. He makes mistakes. He has good days and bad.
What stuck out to me most throughout these four interviews is the comments made about Tyson after the fights. Mike Tyson was very clear what he wanted to do to his opponents: total annihilation. But outside the ring, he was a man.
He called Jose Ribalta the toughest fighter he ever fought. Peter McNeeley received a condolences phone call from Tyson upon the passing of his wife. He and Lou Savarese both laughed about their past mistakes years later. He and Francois Botha also shared a moment.
It seems that regardless of what was said by Mike Tyson before a fight, he always made sure to make amends afterwards. He was on good terms. Everyone was happy to see him. That’s Mike Tyson’s mark on the world. That’s the giant which they faced.
