zhang zhilei post882

On February 22, 2003, Mike Tyson, after the loss to Lennox Lewis the year prior, fought Clifford Etienne at the Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee. Tyson won the bout via first-round knockout. It would be the last time he would win a boxing match in his illustrious professional career. But the fight gained fame for a different reason.

His kayaking coach suggested boxing. Zhang didn’t know a little about boxing. He knew nothing. China Central Television only showed fights on Sunday mornings, and Zhang wasn’t watching. But there was something about the feeling of the gloves. The thwack of the heavy bag. “It just got me excited,” says Zhang. After two weeks of training, he sparred with a provincial champion. “I beat the crap out of him,” says Zhang. “He was bleeding all over his face. That was when I realized I was actually pretty good.”

“Some people from other countries and continents already want the show and we didn’t even have it yet,” he said. “So we have to see how it goes. I have to look at my wife to see how my schedule is, and I would like for it to come to New York. But we’re gonna get a test try site here.”

The latter competed against Tommy Fury in early 2023, losing against the half-brother of WBC heavyweight champion Tommy Fury via split decision. Before the fight in Saudi Arabia, Paul earned an easy $250,000. All he had to do was get a tattoo of the vodka brand Au Vodka.

“Today belongs to me,” Zhang said through a translator after punching the air and shouting, “Chinese power”. “… I’m 39 years old, but I’m disciplined. I train hard. Next step, I’m going for the title.”

As if Zhilei Zhang wasn’t already intimidating—as if being 6′ 6″ with Thanos-like fists didn’t make your knees rattle, as if back-to-back knockout wins last year over granite-chinned Brit Joe Joyce weren’t enough—on this particular mid-November afternoon, inside a nondescript gun range in northern New Jersey, Zhang has his fingers wrapped around a Sig Sauer P365 XL. Guns, Zhang insists, were never his thing. His trainer, Shaun George, introduced him to recreational shooting a few years ago; Kurt Li, his co-manager, translator and, it turned out, part-time range safety officer, showed him the ropes. The first time he pulled a trigger, his hands trembled.

He went on to describe himself as a “full-blown cokehead” in his memoir, and he confessed that, during his June 2000 matchup against Lou Savarese, he had used “blow” and “pot” beforehand. He also confessed to using cocaine before a televised press conference with his opponent Lennox Lewis in January 2002, which led to an onstage brawl between the rival camps. Tyson ended the press conference by repeatedly grabbing his, ahem, package and hurling violent threats at a member of the press.

Zhang continued to enjoy success with the straight left hand in the third and fourth rounds, as the condition of Joyce’s right eye worsened. Zhang rocked Joyce with a right hook in the fourth round and finished the round with two thudding left hands.

“There was no way that this seemed like a sustainable operation,” Smith says. “Somehow, against every odd, it turned the other way. I don’t think you could have ever predicted this one at all. He may be the biggest proof that you just never know in life.”

In the almost two decades since his last official fight (he fought an exhibition match against Roy Jones Jr. in 2020), Tyson has battled through deep financial despair, grappled with legal issues, struggled with a cocaine addiction, and suffered the tragic loss of his four-year-old daughter, Exodus, in 2009. But in that same period, Tyson has also become one of the more interesting and unexpected second-chance stories in recent American history—finding family, stability, and cultural acceptance in the process.

Bivol comes in and we’ve got a rapid exchange with Zinad landing a good right to the body as Bivol went up top and found air. Both men jabbing. Zinad’s is coming from his waist and he’s starting to split the guard a bit.

“It’s very disappointing. First couple of rounds he got it right and he was moving left. Then he went toe-to-toe and got caught. If he continued to do what he was doing past five or six rounds then it would have been interesting. He got caught with a really good shot.

They appeared to be in different weight classes Saturday, too, as Zhang outweighed Wilder by 68.2 pounds — at 282.8 compared with Wilder’s 214.6. There is no weight limit in boxing’s heavyweight division.

But Zhang still faces a wait to get to Usyk as the WBO’s No. 1 challenger. Usyk is expected to hold talks with Fury about a unification title fight, and IBF mandatory challenger Filip Hrgović is then next in line for a shot at Usyk.

When Tyson gets back in the ring to train with Cordeiro, who’s covered up to his neck in pads, what follows is a blizzard of left-right-left-right—over and over again. The power of Tyson’s punches reverberates throughout the warehouse. In the moment, whether he can still punch with bad intentions after all these years doesn’t feel like the right question. It’s more like, Did you hear that? The sound of silence has been replaced by the sound of violence.