Our story begins at Miami airport, as an odd-looking little man carries a silver attaché case off his flight from Port au Prince, Haiti. The man hands the briefcase to a man wearing thick glasses.
"It's for the man," he says. "The man in black."
Several days later, the world discovers that heavyweight champ Mike Tyson is going to marry TV star Robin Givens. Nobody connects the two events.
Nobody ties in the arrival of the same man on the same flight from Port au Prince two days before Givens divorces Tyson. Nobody says a word when the man steps off a flight in Tokyo the day before the Tyson-Buster Douglas fight. And no one saw him in O'Hare airport the day before the Miss Black America pageant in Chicago.
Nobody would have ever known, were it not for the slip-up while Tyson was training for his fight with Evander Holyfield. You see, our odd-looking little man switched planes in Miami and headed for Tyson's training center. But when he arrived in Tysonville, the man with the glasses wasn't there. Instead, there was a limousine driver waiting for him. The man and his briefcase were whisked away to a nearby hotel.
In a penthouse room atop the beautiful Tysonville Hilton, he was greeted by someone he had never expected to meet. The man was a horrific sight, with insane eyes and a huge tuft of white hair. And next to the crazy man was the champ himself... Holyfield. Holyfield had a shocked look on his face.
"You see, Evander, we've found your Haitian connection," Don King told him. "We know what you've been doing. And we won't report it to the police... if you give us control of the doll."
"What would you want with it?" Holyfield asked. "It can't be of any use to you!"
"You'd be surprised about what we can do," King said. He snapped his fingers, and two thugs ushered the mighty champ out of the room.
Then King opened the attaché case. Inside was a doll, about four inches high. It looked remarkably like Tyson, right down to the killer's eyes and dull expression. Next to it in the case were a small lock of Tyson's hair and a straight pin.
"Now," King said, laughing insanely, "we make some real money!"
And with that, he drove the pin into the doll. Miles away, Mike Tyson collapsed in pain. A training injury, the media was told. This year's Fight Of The Century was off, at least for awhile. The anticipation would make the fight money grow even more. They let the man with the attaché case return to Haiti.
But at the airport, our voodoo courier was intercepted by men working for Dan Duva, Holyfield's promoter. A week later, the man from Haiti was back in the states, this time with a new doll -- one of Don King. Not long after, he was making trips with Duva and Holyfield dolls for King, and more Tyson dolls for Duva. He was working both sides of the street.
Now, you may be asking yourself this question: why all the dolls? Can't voodoo dolls be used over and over again, like Three's Company plots?
Sure they can... most of the time. But only in certain areas. Sticking a doll in the leg or in the arm is really minor stuff -- the voodoo energy of the doll will remain strong for a long time.
But the boxing people are harsh on their dolls. Feeling pain in the extremities is nothing to boxing weasels, after all. No, the pugilistic folk tend to stick pins in people's heads, where body energy is the strongest. A pin in Tyson's head on beauty pageant night might make him do things he shouldn't do. A pin in his mouth might make him say something insensitive and irrelevant (i.e., "I love women. My mother is a woman.") at his arraignment. A pin in Duva's brain might make him want to reschedule the fight for a later date.
And oddly enough, a pin in Don King's head has no noticeable effect. Go figure.
But evidently there are just so many stupid things that you can make a person do... because with Tyson, they had to resort to giving him a physical injury. That's the tough thing about voodoo -- there's no real cure for the pain. There's no such thing as a voodoo cut man.
But back to our courier friend from Haiti. As it turns out, the way he became a public figure had nothing to do with boxing.
A Washington Post reporter discovered he had been hired by Clarence Thomas and several Republican senators to provide them with an Anita Hill doll. Upon delivery, he even showed them where to put the pin in order to damage her credibility.
It was during the interview with the Post reporter that the man revealed he had been working for both the Tyson and Holyfield camps. The man refused, however, to identify a third party that was also involved in buying Tyson voodoo dolls.
Robin Givens? No, the man said, she had lost interest when she discovered that sticking a Tyson doll with a pin wouldn't make her any more money.
All the man would say about the mysterious third party was that he was interested in seeing Tyson fight in prison. He figured it would be good press for prison entertainment.
My guess is that it's Johnny Cash. Though I suppose it could be James Brown.
Think this story is a bit far-fetched? Well, maybe so. But how else do you explain the situation in the sport of boxing today? Without the Voodoo theory, we can only be left with the judgment that all these people are idiots.
And that's not possible... is it?