TEST DRIVE
THE TYSON OF TLBs
Handling the Hidromek
Alpha TLB makes me long
for the good old days of real
heavyweights, writes
Leon Louw.
W
hen twenty-year old Mike
Tyson climbed through the
ropes at the Hilton Hotel in Las
Vegas, Nevada on 22 November 1986,
he exuded self-confidence. There was
nothing fancy about Tyson. He didn’t look
like the traditional American heavyweight
boxer, he didn’t wear a fancy robe, or
even socks, or underwear for that matter.
Yet, the crowd loved Tyson because he
was relentless. His peek-a-boo style and
superior reflexes and power made him a
boxer to marvel at. After round one on
that famous night, there was no doubt
that Tyson was the Alpha male in the
ring. His more refined opponent, Trevor
Berbick, walked into wave upon wave of
power punches, delivered by two massive
gloves driven by a barrel of a chest and
ballooning biceps.
Berbick succumbed in the second-
round after a technical knockout and
Tyson became world champion. The fight,
billed ‘Judgement Day’, gave credence
to the belief that any machine, in this
case Tyson, with superior strength, and
slightly bigger appendages (in Tyson’s
case a bulging chest and upper arms),
has the upper hand, especially when it
gets down-and-dirty. But there are others
who believe that bells and whistles,
superior intelligence and slick footwork
does the trick.
Muhammed Ali, for example, floated
like a butterfly and stung like a bee, and
he did it in style. Tyson lacked the style
(and the intelligence, some would say) but
he could mix it up with the best, and the
dirtiest, and he was at his most fearsome
when the going got tough. Then Tyson
14
NOVEMBER 2019
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