BOXING: Johnny Watterson looks on as the Irish public shower Iron Mike Tyson with hugs, kisses and warmth
A fight fan in the Burlington Hotel on Sunday night paid €16,600 for a replica WBC World Champion belt signed by Mike Tyson. A replica Northern Ireland jersey signed by George Best and described as "obviously a very rare piece indeed" fetched €2,600. In the room there was a lot of love going around. Love for Tyson. Love from Tyson. Mike, tonight possibly "The Goodest Man on the Planet", loved former Ireland champion Joe Egan. He loved the Irish people. Boxing's heart of darkness loved Egan's mum over in Ringsend, where he had spent Mother's Day after arm wrestling children in Crumlin Children's Hospital.
There was also a lot of forgiving going on. That was more of a one-way street and Tyson, who has challenged many people's capacity in that arena, held them all in the cup of his hand. Thirty six tables of 10 at €200 a head, or €400 if you valued going into conclave with Mike in an ante-room beside the main hotel ballroom for a private picture, was exactly how much they valued and forgave.
Around Tyson swilled a little cyclone of fussy minders as he moved around the hotel generating chaos from order by just the crossing of a corridor. If there was a door to walk through with a dozen bodyguards sweeping the public into tight balls of manageable units, then Mike would do it. Even Páidí Ó Sé in a Milky Bar-coloured suit caught some collateral shoving, some blocked doors. No amount of "yerras" could get the Kerry legend past the wall of black suits.
But most came to gawk and listen and to reinforce their view that Tyson has paid his debt, that rape and three years in prison is exactly that. Crime and punishment. His risible history and his ability to turn an occasionally detestable past into a cash cow was not an issue in the Burlington as the 39-year-old Scrap Iron Mike rolled up to MC Jimmy Magee, pulled up a bar stool and told him his dream.
"Maybe if I could find a real nice lady and marry her. Someone who would put up with all my bullshit. I'm a mess, man. I'm a mess," said Tyson. "But not tonight."
An audience with Mike Tyson glossed over a few of his old non-PC philosophies. "The best punch I ever landed was on my former wife," is one such gem from a string of "Tysonisms". Instead Tyson, approximately €400 million down on his luck, gave out some advice.
"You have to have the right people around you. It's a cruel world. But there are also beautiful people. But you have got to get them to respect you. That's more important than love," he said.
"This is a serious career. This is not a tough man's sport. You have to like a certain lifestyle. It's not how tough or talented you are, it's your lifestyle. The training, the running, the sparring, then more running and more training. You are going to get obliterated in front of people, get knocked out but never lose sight of your dreams."
Steve Collins, who shored up the celebrity count with Irish champions Bernard Dunne and Jim Rock, was called to the top table for a declaration of his love for Mike.
"Mike Tyson is a lovely, genuine man," said the man who put Millstreet on the map. "He's an animal, a killing machine in the ring and the opposite outside it."
That would be, we deduced, a human, lovin' machine.
The audience was mostly male, most in black ties. Gerry Hutch (aka The Monk), who is the owner and driver of the only stretch Hummer in town, also blessed the love-in with his presence.
Tyson had done the stand-up Q&A in Britain before arriving in Ireland. Tomorrow he travels to China for a series of exhibitions and more talks for cash. His former sparring partner Egan may be pencilled into those plans if he can get fit enough.
But there was no mention of fighting again, no probing Tyson about really fighting again. When an Irish pro called Kevin McBride beats you, you know your number has been called.
Tyson, the youngest-ever heavyweight world champion at 20 years and five months, now likes his pigeons, the actor Kirk Douglas and "any music the ladies like".
Up there on stage with Jimmy Magee, talking about his life and his flaws was no serious gamble for the fighter. No one pays this sort of money to heckle.
Nor were there protests outside the hotel; no women's groups to say a convicted rapist, who has shown little public remorse, should not be put on a pedestal and hero-worshipped. There was nothing in Dublin on Sunday night other than goodwill for a lucid and articulate Tyson and a yearning to touch him, to get a photograph.
The 13 bodyguards fronting him during the interview were in position to keep hard-looking middle-aged and young men away from drowning the ex-con in hugs, kisses and warmth and not to shield the public from his hair-trigger temper. They arrived to look at and hear the boxer, study that arresting Maori tattoo that wraps around his left brow, to stare at his feral eyes.
"These guys make me out to be a better guy than I am," he said with a sweeping move of his arm across the floor. And then, not for the first time on the night, he took refuge in self-effacement. "I get drunk. I'm just a mess sometimes," he repeated. "I'm just a mess."
