Vincent Kessler / Reuters

A graduate course in psychology might not be enough to fully grasp the complexity of Mike Tyson, a man who raced back and forth between sweetheart and thug for his entire career, making every stop in between, writes columnist Michael Ventre.

Tyson’s detractors will chuckle, because they’ll insist a thug is a thug is a thug, and all the post-career analysis is just so much revisionist blather. And it’s possible they could be right. A study of Tyson may represent a thousand points of insight, or it could be that the kid who was once shrewd enough to help fool and rob unsuspecting victims grew up to con the world into thinking there are more layers to him than there are.

Yet in the film, ugliness has a major role, and Tyson speaks candidly about it. There was the rape conviction; the tussles with Don King over money; the partying and the womanizing; the sadistic, profanity-laced press conference rant; the myriad brushes with the law. It’s hard to say he’s conning us when the wounds of his life are right there, openly festering.

Whether Tyson was a great fighter is open to debate. To me, he was a fighter with great potential, great moments and great accomplishments: He became the youngest heavyweight champ ever at the age of 20 (defeating Trevor Berbick in 1986), and he became the first to own all three major heavyweight title belts — the WBA, WBC and the IBF — at the same time.

But I can’t get my mind off the fact that, after D’Amato died in 1985, Tyson lost the only anchor he ever had in life. That affected the path of his boxing career. Obviously, he went on to worldwide fame and amassed a casino vault full of cash. But imagine how good he would have been as a technician and sweet scientist if Cus had lived a lot longer to guide his career and incorporate the pulverizing punching power into a consistent and disciplined boxing way of life. Imagine if someone, anyone, had successfully filled the void left by Cus and steered Tyson away from his haywire behavior.

Then again, if that were the case, he probably wouldn’t have been the Tyson we love, and loathe, and scrutinize, and criticize, and rhapsodize about, and wonder what will become of him after divorce and bankruptcy and purging and reflection.

“I think what he says at the end is a very good summary, a terse summary of his fate: ‘The past is history, the future is a mystery,’” Toback said. “Nothing would surprise him. Nothing would surprise anyone who knows him.”

Tyson is no longer the champ. But if you go to Las Vegas, or Atlantic City, or any of the cities where he fought, people remember the buzz in the air wherever he went, and how boxing is just not the same without it.

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