Heck, if you're a boomer, you probably even remember when "meme" wasn't a meme.
But being a big professional boxing fan for more than forty years now (I actually got see a boxing card live about 25 years ago, that was a very cool experience) this boomer has no problem remembering when Mike Tyson was one of those athletes whose fame transcended the sport he participated in. When he was every bit as recognizable as Manning, Mahomes, and Ohtani are today. When you think about the current state of boxing- with circus acts like Jake Paul taking up as much or even more media space as any of the actual champions (I bet more people can recognize Paul, who has yet to fight an actual boxer who isn't a joke or elderly,* than can recognize Alexander Usyk, the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world,) it's pretty remarkable that there was a time when the face of the heavyweight champion was almost universally known and when films about a heavyweight champion regularly dominated the box office. How times have changed.
And how the mighty have fallen. In the mid-1980s, Mike Tyson was making fun, lighthearted commercials for Pepsi. In the mid-2020s, he's pitching something called "Dr. Squatch" in commercials that can only be made weirder if you watch them without sound (which I did, on big screens at my gym. I had no idea what I was looking at, except that Mike Tyson was acting like he's acted at least since Lennox Lewis made him look like a bald punching bag back at the dawn of this century- a clown, or a cartoon character, or both.
*Paul's last joke opponent? Mike Tyson. Of course.
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