“THAT man hit me so hard with a left hook, it felt like my head and my brain was on fire. I can’t even explain it. It messed up all the vertebrae in my neck, so after he hit me with it, I couldn’t turn my head back round. I been hit hard by some of the best, but I never been hit like that. That was unbelievable. It took me six months before I got my neck back right and my head facing forward.”
Alfonzo Ratliff’s vivid description of facing a young Mike Tyson 38 years ago goes a long way towards explaining his tactics on the night, which were decried by the commentators who mocked him for “running”.
His counter: “I don’t hang on other people’s opinions about me because – would you have got in the ring with Mike Tyson back then? Or even now?
“You know what, though? It’s not me being cocky or anything like that, but if I had two good hands, Mike Tyson wouldn’t have beat me.”
That’s not the typical excuse of a sore loser blaming a defeat on an injury. Ratliff have two good hands – still doesn’t, and never did throughout his entire boxing career. It’s something nobody noticed while he was wearing boxing gloves, but it’s the first thing I
