Mike Celizic

You’ve probably already heard and repeated a lot of Mike Tyson jokes by now, and there will be more to come. But you won’t hear any here. Not now.

He wants to move on with a life that’s been long on controversy and crime and short on dignity and good works. He says he might do some missionary work. It doesn’t seem like the most obvious second career for a man who has spent as much time as he has on the police blotter, but who knows, he might be sincere.

Tyson deserves a chance to try it without our making fun of the effort. And it would be wonderful if he could find something that could give him the satisfaction and peace he never found in 20 years in the ring. It would be grand if even this man who sinned so egregiously could find redemption.

Tyson’s finished. He got beaten up by a man named Kevin McBride. To pile on and beat him up  more is pointless.

The man commanded the heavyweight division and most of boxing for 20 years. Long after he lost his titles, and even longer after he lost his skills, he continued to be his sport’s biggest star, for reasons that weren’t always wholesome.

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And if sports are entertainment and diversion, Tyson was great at that job. He commanded our attention, demanded that we care about what he did, even if it was only to excoriate his behavior.

That behavior was often reprehensible. He was convicted of rape, a heinous crime. He served his sentence. He came out and went back to jail, guilty of assault. He somehow managed to earn $400 million dollars and end up $35 million in the hole.

We never tired of it, his every outrage only adding to his fame — and infamy.

You sometimes had the feeling Tyson said the things he did and behaved as he did because he felt that was what he was supposed to do. He accepted that everybody assumed he was a bad guy, so he acted the bad guy.

Tyson doesn’t have to act anymore. He doesn’t have to be outrageous. He doesn’t have to sell tickets or generate headlines.

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But he does have to live the rest of his life. It’s clear that he would like to be a good guy. It’s not clear that he knows how.

That doesn’t mean Tyson shouldn’t be allowed to try. The least we can do for all the diversion and entertainment he’s give us is to wish him well in finding something in life with meaning, something that isn’t about conspicuous consumption and bad manners and outright thuggery.

Whatever debts he had to society are paid. The debt to the IRS isn’t going away, but all he can do is pay what he can. He can’t be expected to continue to get beaten up to pay it off.

Whatever Tyson does, I hope he does go somewhere where he doesn’t have to pretend, doesn’t have to live up to — or down to — an image, doesn’t have to do anything other than find meaning in his life and try to make up for all the harm he’s done.