Two weeks ago, Mike Tyson and his expanding belly presented an award at the 6th Annual Video Game Awards in California. The appearance was newsworthy because Tyson is horribly fat. It also gave us reason to relive one of the greatest video games of our generation.

Growing up in the 80’s, Mike Tyson was an icon.  He blasted onto the boxing scene with thunderous knockout after thunderous knockout.  His right hand made a fool of “champions” Michael Spinks and Larry Holmes. Tyson was mean, he was young and he was devastating inside the ring.

Then one night in Japan, Buster Douglas ruined it all.  He did what no one thought could happen when he floored Iron Mike. Since that day, Tyson has gone to jail for rape, gnawed on Evander Holyfield’s ear, tattooed the side of his head and then watched as Lennox Lewis repeatedly did the same.

Since the days of Iron Mike are long gone, we take a look back at a time when Tyson’s dominance was at its pinnacle.  It was a time when only one person was widely regarded as being badder than Tyson himself…video game Mike Tyson.

Setup

For those of you who might not remember the Nintendo classic, the main player is an up and coming fighter named Little Mac.  Mac was roughly 3 feet tall, a tactical mastermind who was believed to be the first professional prizefighter to box while wearing a tank top.

He was trained by Doc, an overweight black man who had a passion for bike riding in the city.  He was a complete rip off of Duke, the trainer made famous by his association with Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa, only Doc didn’t have the motivational speaking prowess of Duke.  Not one time did I hear Doc scream, “You see that Mac, Glass Joe is not a machine, he’s a MAN!”

The Path to Tyson

Glass Joe
Like every fighter, Mac had to start at the bottom of the barrel.  Up first was the fighter who was so gawky he made Manute Bol look like Sugar Ray Robinson.  It was Glass Joe.  Joe carried a record of 1-99 with the one win presumably coming against a blind, armless fellow.

Joe was pretty much the worst opponent in video game history.  Only once in my life did I witness someone lose to him and that honor goes to my Dad.  Needless to say, it marked the end of his illustrious video game career.

The lesson was- if you lose to Glass Joe, hang up your controller.

Von Kaiser
The second bout of young Mac’s career pitted him against the evil German nazi, Von Kaiser.  Much like Mac, Kaiser scoffed at traditional boxing attire, bypassing trunks in favor of pants in the ring.  His spandex leg wear was accompanied by a curly cued mustache, reminiscent of the great Iron Sheik.  While most fighters went to the corner in between rounds to get water and strategy,  Kaiser went for mustache wax.  Unfortunately, his stiff jab and Rollie Fingers facial hair wasn’t enough to compete with the jumping hooks of Little Mac.

Piston Honda- Minor Circuit Champion
This large headed Japanese brawler made a habit of speaking in Japanese clichés in his corner.  In what could only be deemed an intimidation tactic, Honda frequently screamed “Kamikaze! Sushi! Nippon! Bonzai!” at his opponent before the fight.  Not exactly “I must break you,” but I suppose it carries with it a certain level of fear when it is coming out of the mouth of a man with an abnormally large cranium.

Honda had a habit of flicking his eyebrows before unleashing a flurry of punches, making it easy to defend and providing ample opportunities to counter.  A little concentration and the Minor Circuit belt was easily attained.

Training Montage
To prepare for life in the Major Circuit, Mac jogs through the city behind Doc and his 10-speed.  Giving more ammo to the critics who felt that he was a shade on the girly side to be competing at this level, Mac chose to jog while wearing hot pink from head-to-toe.  Little did we know he was just preparing for his next opponent.

Don Flamenco
After handling Honda, Mac graduated up to the Major Circuit and was greeted by the first gay fighter in the game.  Flamenco was an Italian featherweight who danced into the ring carrying a rose in his mouth and a mullet on his head.

I never understood how Flamenco made it out of the Minor Circuit, seeing as though he nothing was more than a flamboyant Glass Joe.  It takes little time to dispose of the prancing Don.

King Hippo
In a huge contrast to the frail and flimsy Flamenco, King Hippo was an obese monster that would just as soon rip off Mac’s arm, dip it in ranch dressing and eat it like a chicken strip.  Hippo was a cross between Sloth Fratelli and George “the Animal” Steele, a massive, somewhat retarded beast that lacked the skills to stick with the polished Mac.

Good thing about Hippo is that when you finally knocked him down, his fat ass wasn’t about to get up.

Great Tiger
To this point, the Major Circuit consisted of the stereotypical skinny guy and the stereotypical fat guy.  Great Tiger represented the stereotypical foreign guy.  The creators of the game took every known stereotype of Indians/Middle Easterners and applied it to Tiger.  He wore a turban into the ring and the jewel on his forehead blinked before he went into his magical flurry of haymakers.  If you looked close enough, you could see him in the corners reading the Koran and plotting ways to take out America.

He posed a mild threat with the disappearing uppercuts, but a few well-timed ducks and Mac was on his way to the Major Circuit Title match.

Bald Bull

It took 6 bouts, but with Bald Bull, Mac finally gets a quality opponent.  Bull was an intimidating character.  He’d look at you from across the ring with his bald head, thick Eastern European mustache and crazed eyes.

In the end, Bald Bull turned out to be much like Chong Li in Bloodsport.  If you didn’t pay attention, he’d crush you, step on your cranium and steal your Harley Davidson headband.  If you were perceptive like Frank Dux in the Kumite, you’d know that both Chong Li and Bald Bull were weak in the gut.  A little practice and one learned to stop the charge before it started with a shot to Bull’s sweet spot and with that you were the Major Circuit champion.

Training Montage 2
Little Mac is still running with Doc leading him on his ten-speed.  Obviously, Doc didn’t want to mess with the training methods that got his man this far.  It is an unconfirmed rumor that Doc was really just riding his bike to Long John Silvers and had no idea that Mac was behind him the whole time.

Piston Honda
Somehow while Mac was busy tearing up Hippos, Tigers and Bulls, Piston Honda leaped into the World Circuit.  Apparently his Japanese verbal taunts were enough to get him a shot at the big time.

Bonzai or no Bonzai, he still sucked.

Soda Popinski
With a quick disposal of Honda, Mac met up with arguably the most stereotypical and probably most popular character of the game.  Soda Pop was the Russian entry into this parade of nations, who hated Americans and slammed bottles of “soda pop” in between rounds.  Even naive children realized that his “soda” was the same kind of “soda” your crazy uncle had the night he was drooling on himself and puking into the sink at the family reunion.

Soda had a vicious uppercut that he threw from the floor.  If it connected, it was lights out and the next thing you know you are in the locker room watching Doc mainline bacon grease. Dodge the uppercuts and Soda was easy to handle.  I mean, have you ever tried boxing while intoxicated?  I’m surprised he could stand up after draining all of that soda in the corner.

Bald Bull
Another Bull proved to have the same weakness.  He was a bit quicker and his charge was a bit more explosive, but the gut was still weak and the eyebrows still unruly.

Don Flamenco
God only knows what the game programmers were thinking when they decided to put this goon back into the World Circuit.  Obviously they had run out of stereotypes and figured it might be nice to see if they could rattle Mac by shirking intimidation in favor of flamboyance.  Maybe Mac had a soft spot for mulleted homosexual Italian boxers who offered roses to their opponents.

Fortunately Mac was unaffected.  I think that Doc was a bit smitten with the Don, but with his disposal you were ready to take on the final triumvirate for the title.

Mr. Sandman
Personally, I think that Sandman was the baddest of the bunch.  At the blink of an eye, Sandman would fire off three or four ruthless uppercuts, hard enough to knock the tank top off of Little Mac.  He was the Freddy Krueger of the boxing ring, threatening to invade your dreams to beat the crap out of you.

There wasn’t much flashy about Sandman.  He was just tough.  It took months to get by Sandman when I first took on the game.  He was the first real challenge after the drunken stupor that was Soda Popinski.

Super Macho Man
The top dog of the World Circuit, Macho Man was the Hollywood playboy.  He was the Hector Camacho of video games.  He was everything that Sandman wasn’t, all flash and cockiness wrapped in a package that looked like Brian Dennehy with a skullet.  Super Macho Man was the kind of guy that was having his way with groupies in the locker room before the big fight.  His lack of concentration was balanced by his “Super Punch”, a twisting roundhouse that whizzed towards Mac’s head like a helicopter blade.

After Sandman, I was expecting so much more from Macho Man.  He was the gatekeeper to the cyber world’s toughest man and he really didn’t pose that much of a problem.  It was like fighting Jessie “The Body” Ventura, only it was the Jessie Ventura who always wore a feather boa and ran out of the ring when challenged, not the Jessie Ventura that strapped a mini gun to his back and took on an invisible alien that hunted humans for fun.

Mike Tyson
After facing a gauntlet of characters designed to wear you down, intimidate you and just generally freak you out, you finally get to step into the ring with the man himself.  At the time, he was the toughest man on earth.  People weren’t even able to fathom someone going between the ropes with him and leaving on their feet, much less knocking him out.

And here you were, a sub-5 foot boxer with a cheap tank top, and fat slob for a trainer.  What chance did you have? I got the hell beat out of me every time I stepped up to bat against Iron Mike.  He hit me so hard, I could feel it through the controller (and this was way before that was because of technology.)  He’d knock me on my ass and then stare at me with that stupid, gap-toothed grin that was so perfectly depicted on the game.

There were a lot of kids who beat him.  I even witnessed it a couple of times. But has there ever been a more revered final character in a video game?  If there was I can’t think of it.

He was more of a legend in video form than in real life. And now he's just a really fat crazy guy.

Iron Mike's Real Legacy was written by Josh Bacott.  When he was a kid he was a little frightened by King Hippo. E-mail him at josh@joesportsfan.com