Thinking about the whole quote-unquote issue from the other day, I’m brought back to what I think is the most crystalline example of the sportswriter-and-by-extension-general-public thinking he’s smarter than the athlete, Mike Tyson. Make no mistake about it, Mike was destructive, both to himself and to those around him. Certainly, I don’t think there can be any argument that he did stupid things. Whether he was personally stupid is certainly debatable. However, one caricature of Mike that doesn’t actually stick upon close examination is that he was linguistically stupid. Mike used words effectively. Many times people tried to clown Mike, like he was that over-vocabulistic fool on In Living Color, but that wasn’t the case at all. Let’s check out some of these quotes, looking at both the syntax and the semantics.

“One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died. I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard.”

Seriously. What’s wrong with that? Not the part about knocking out the garbage man, but the linguistics of it? Perfectly fine. A ‘titantic’ right hand? A little unconventinal, maybe, but it makes sense. But the phrase, ‘convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard?’ While it’s certainly politically incorrect, it’s linguistically correct, and moreover quite picturesque.

On to the next pair.

“How dare these boxers challenge me with their primitive skills? It makes me angry. They’re just as good as dead.”

“My power is discombobulatingly devastating I could feel is muscle tissues collapse under my force. It’s ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.”

Again, while the word choice may seem amusing, especially the quasi word, ‘discombobulatingly,’ technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with what he said. The only thing is that we get it via writers, who, because they don’t take what Tyson says seriously, couch it within the text in such a way that it makes the reader take it less-seriously as well. That tendency is a tragedy, though, because over the years, Tyson has said some fairly profound things.

I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: She only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn’t pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it’s crushing emotionally and personally.

But that one’s pretty straightforward. Let’s talk about this next one a little bit. Today we’re gonna handle it on the linguistic tip, but sooner than later, we’re gonna talk about the actual content.

The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person and everyone’s not true with themselves. All of these people who are heroes, these guys who have been lily white and clean all their lives, if they went through what I went through, they would commit suicide. They don’t have the heart that I have. I’ve lived places they can’t defecate in.

Now why is it people think Mike Tyson can’t speak? Why is it that we have this impression that he’s an idiot linguistically? Because looking at the quotes I’ve presented so far, I can’t see it. I see some unorthodox vocabulary, but nothing that’s particularly wrong. The words may not be the most correct choices, but they work effectively. But I can’t front. I have the perfect quote that explains it.

I guess I’m gonna fade into Bolivian.

Hardy-har-har, right? Bolivian? What the heck is he talkin about? He must be reeealllly stoopit!! Only thing is, while it looks funny in print, Bolivian is a simple interpolation away from ‘oblivion,’ which would make perfect sense. And if you consider that he was just finishing a fight in which he had gotten demolished, I don’t think it should be all that surprising that he mispronounced a four-syllable word. Like nobody else ever stumbles over words, even when they haven’t been beaten about the head.

Is Mike Tyson crazy? Maybe. He certainly didn’t make the best choices with his money (although I’d have a hard time believing that a certain promoter didn’t have anything to do with that). He also didn’t make good choices in terms of his behavior. Linguistically, though? He was on point.

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