As part of ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series, One Night in Vegas offers boxing and Mike Tyson fans more than just a conventional documentary on the exploits of “Iron Mike” both inside and outside the ring. Director Reggie Rock Bythewood instead pursues a narrative that blends Tyson’s personality and career arc with that of renowned rapper Tupac Shakur, who was fatally shot on the Las Vegas Strip following Tyson’s fight in 1996 with Bruce Seldon. Tupac not only attended the fight, but also recorded a special song for Mike’s ring entrance that night.
Bythewood’s film captures the surprising personal and professional convergence of Tyson and Tupac, with commentary from a group of friends and associates, both famous and unknown. Where it fails is in its inability to fathom the psychology of the confluence of boxing and rap that it tries so hard to convey, leaving the viewer with the feeling that while much has been investigated, little has been revealed.
“Mike is the champion of hip hop,” says celebrated rapper Nas near the beginning of the film, clearly still somewhat in awe of Tyson’s violent fighting style. (Interestingly, Tupac often looked down on Nas when he was alive.) This is not an empty statement. Born into poverty in the hellish Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a hotbed of hip-hop, Tyson’s rise mirrored the paths of so many successful rappers in the late 1980s, when rap music was becoming the aggressive genre. whose machismo would personify.
It seems entirely natural that boxing and rap will synergize, as there are obvious links between the sport and the art: both require their practitioners to draw a necessary amount of anger and fearlessness from their darkest personal wells in order to communicate with the greatest force. possible. , either with the fists or with the mouth, and without completely losing control. Boxing, as Tyson has always maintained, is an art.
Despite recently regaining the heavyweight championship with a brutal knockout of a terrified Frank Bruno, the post-Buster Douglas, post-prison Mike Tyson was no longer invincible. However, this did not mean that the illusion of his invincibility did not persist. Coming out of prison, Tyson looked more menacing than before, with an enhanced physique and a goatee that made him look older and colder, his growl now even more visceral from him. Before Seldon’s match, referee Richard Steele recalled how “as soon as I walked in [to Seldon’s room] I could feel the tension… I could see the nervousness.”
With only one loss in his career, Tyson’s reputation for ferocity hadn’t diminished, and Seldon’s tentative approach in the ring shows the power a reputation can have to render an opponent impotent. Tyson scored a first-round knockout after a series of seemingly innocuous punches that left Seldon dazed and unable to continue.
If one of the documentary’s shortcomings is its reliance on too many cameos and short interviews, its treatment of Seldon is commendable. With a face bearing the scars of a difficult life, the thoughtful former champion spends a lot of screen time, and the memories of him are some of the most compelling. While he is, in the end, an afterthought in boxing history, the integration of his narrative into those of Tyson and Tupac makes the story more complete, as disappointing as the fight was.
Where One Night in Vegas errs is in its reliance on too many voices, whose disjointed comments prevent the film from achieving coherence or even clear focus. For example, even though Dr. Eric Dyson says that Tupac and Tyson were “absolute mirrors of each other,” he provides little to make us understand what this is like, and his archetype-dependent comment is too much. reductive
While I disagree with Dyson’s view that the rapper and boxer shared completely symbiotic personalities, there was one vital similarity that should have been further investigated: how they were both ruined by their inability to regulate the very demon that made them. so awesome. Without the discipline that allowed for his rise, the post-Seldon Mike Tyson indulged in his own darkness, repeatedly embarrassing himself in and out of the ring. Tupac, emboldened by Suge Knight and the gangster spirit of Death Row Records, had already indulged his own death instinct for a long time, and his murder served as the terrifying culmination of a life and career taken in a different direction. dangerous. Both men were driven by forces that required restraint and restraint, but the very energies that made their success possible overcame them.
One Night in Vegas remains a worthy film for those interested in the cultural interplay between sports and music. At times, the documentary overtly forces the link and the impassioned segments of spoken poetry are little more than awkward, but a logical connection can be made between Tyson and Tupac through their friendship and how each represented a particularly bellicose form of warfare. black culture.
Tupac’s death is an indictment of the macho rap medium bravado he came to personify, born on the street, marketed on records, then fatally reasserted in real life through his murder. Tyson’s post-Seldon downfall was instigated by his submission to the hostile and empty principles cherished by this culture. Who can forget his absurd press conference before the Lennox Lewis fight where, after allegedly biting Lewis, an unsteady and insecure Tyson yelled racial epithets at a white reporter while calling himself “the ultimate”?
Boxers and rappers need discipline as the necessary counterweight to their aggression and selfishness, a lesson Tupac apparently forgot. It’s hard to know if Tyson ever realized this, given his often unreliable commentary on him. That he is still alive today, and has reinvented himself, is perhaps his greatest victory.
—Eliot McCormick
