LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mike Tyson: Trevor Berbick
built 256 days ago
[I]t was that a mere 20 months after his debut, and a year after D'Amato died, 20-year-old Mike Tyson was challenging Trevor Berbick for Berbick's WBC championship. The 34-year old Berbick had beaten three previous world champions (he had been Muhammad Ali's last opponent), but was still a 4-1 underdog when he faced Tyson at the Hilton Center, Las Vegas.
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Mike Tyson became a professional boxer in 1985 and won a heavyweight title from Trevor Berbick in 1986. He was the youngest man to win a heavyweight title belt. He became recognized as the undisputed champion when he beat Michael Spinks in 1988. He lost his title to Buster Douglas in 1990.
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Called "Iron Mike" by his fans, Tyson has a childlike voice and a disarmingly cute, cartoonesque lisp, but he always fought with great skill and a stubborn refusal to lose. As a boy Tyson was often arrested, and after being nabbed for purse-snatching at age 12, he was sent to an upstate juvenile reformatory, where he was taught boxing. At age 16, he was expelled from high school. Tyson fought his first professional fight at age 18, winning by knock-out in the first round. He fought for the World Boxing Council (WBC) championship a year and a half later, defeating Trevor Berbick to win the title in 1986. At 19, Tyson was the youngest man ever to hold this title.
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Tyson himself has spoken of the phenomenon of Mike Tyson in gladiatorial terms: the warrior's vow to fight to the death if necessary precludes and makes irrelevant all merely personal motives, all conventional rationalizations for what he does. Boxing is his life, his vocation; his calling. The Roman boast of munera sine missione in the gladiatorial games—no mercy shown—would be perfectly logical to him. And so mesmerizing has the young boxer become in his scant eighteen months as a professional, his appearance in the ring tonight in Las Vegas, his mere physical presence, captivates the crowd's attention to the degree that the entrance of reigning WBC champion Trevor Berbick goes virtually unnoticed. Even the blazoning recorded music is abruptly and mysteriously silenced.
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Trevor Berbick