"'Mike Tyson laid bare.' This ran along with an oral history of Mike Tyson as told by the people close to him at different phases of his professional and private life. The only thing the art director requested was that we not do a painting of his face. I was relieved, because so many great portraits already existed and this particular article covered a lot of ground, was very detailed and almost post mortem in its tone. So a more interpretive approach to the illustration was definitely called for. Even at the height of his success, Tyson's chaotic personal life seemed to overshadow anything he might have done in the ring. His fights were notoriously short (only a few made it past the fifth round) and, within boxing, there was nobody more imposing. But once he left the relative safety of the ring, he found himself vulnerable to every lousy thing the universe had to offer. There was no grand finale—discredited in the ring, convicted of rape, severely out of shape, Tyson stopped making money, and one by one the people around him left him as he always was—alone."