Then And Now

Heavyweight boxer Mitch “Blood” Green is best remembered for going the distance with Mike Tyson in 1986, and tussling with the former champ two years later in Harlem. This is a reprint of my 2004 encounter with Green in a New York City subway station. (There are minor edits to the original article.)

A few nights ago I was waiting for a downtown 3 train at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue when I saw a man I thought I knew. I don’t mean personally, but in that way the media brings people up-close and makes their lives a part of our own. 

He was over six feet, dark-skinned, and the scar tissue around his eyes told of his occupation. His clothes, a black polo shirt and jeans, were shabby, offering only a hint at the physique that sustained him in the ring. White nondescript sneakers made his feet appear surprisingly small, given his height. A blue baseball cap cocked to the side contained the wilds of a jheri curl. Jheri curl? Had it been that long? The mid-eighties flickered into view when I first saw him at work, clinch and hold a young lion named Tyson, all the while his bridge-work was being scattered. 

“You look familiar,” I said. 

After getting comfortable on a bench, he looked at me with weary, sensitive eyes.  I could see in them a child looking for love. 

“What’s your name?” I prodded.

He answered slowly. “Mitch ‘Blood’ Green.”

We shook hands. His gaze was deep, taking me in.

“I’m fucked up right now,” he slurred. 

With hands swollen from booze as much as the heavy bag, he pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. He asked me something that was smothered by the wail of an uptown train. 

“What was it like fighting Tyson?” I asked once the racket cleared. 

“Mike wasn’t shit. Still ain’t.”

“Yeah, he’s broke,” I added. 

Mitch looked at me with doubt. “They cheated me, King and Tyson.” He paused to fumble with the cards. “You got five dollars?”

He pulled out a quarter and made it disappear. I pretended to be impressed that I didn’t see him palming it. 

“I’ll give you a buck for your autograph,” I offered, handing him a pen and paper.

“I need five,” he said, splaying the fingers of his right hand. 

He signed my paper.

“I was a champ. Look it up on my website,” he added.

I gave him some change.

“I don’t wanna take your last,” he said earnestly.

“It’s okay, I’m straight,” I paused. “You could have fought Lennox Lewis, Holyfield, Bowe.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, as a downtown train screamed to a stop. 

He wobbled to his feet and gave me a pound, holding me tight with those eyes. Underneath tough city streets I saw some heart, and pain, lots of that.

On the train I watched him a few seats away run his card game. Passengers laughed at the stoned man, the bum, beaten by the real game – life – that also played tricks on Tyson. 

I thought about how things had changed for the two men in the nearly twenty years since they fought. Back then a young prospect was going up, up, and a fighter struggling to survive had his moment, albeit brief. 

But time doesn’t wait, and today these two former foes have more in common than they could ever know. 

9-16-04

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