The Long Round

'The Long Round' chronicles the lives of those who faced 'Iron' Mike Tyson when he dominated the heavyweight scene during the 1980s.

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In the late 1980s heavyweight boxing was ruled by one man - Mike Tyson. No one could touch him, it seemed, but nonetheless a generation of fighters tried. From 1986 to 1989, Mitch Green, Reggie Gross, Marvis Frazier, Pinklon Thomas, Tony Tucker and Carl Williams all attempted to bring Tyson to his knees. They all failed. Everyone knows the story of Tyson's decline and fall - the manchild who seemed poised to become one of the greatest boxers in history is now a disgraced relic - but what happened to the men he defeated during his irrepressible prime? In The Long Round, Dominic Calder-Smith talks to these men nearly twenty years on - the Baptist minister, the drugs counsellor, the security guard at Ground Zero, the convicted assassin and many of their contemporaries - tracing their lives from their upbringings and years of promise to their encounters with Tyson and the present day. The Long Round explores, openly and honestly, the pain they felt in defeat and their subsequent search for self-respect, their problems with drugs and relationships, their legal woes and financial mismanagements.