IT says a lot about the social importance of boxing that monuments are being unveiled around the world in honor of the great boxers of the last over 100 years. The latest is a plaque commemorating the world heavyweight title fight between Tommy Burns and Jack Johnson. It stands on a footpath in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, Australia, near the former Sydney Stadium where the 1908 fight took place.

Johnson chased Burns around the world to get the fight. As a black man in the early 20th century, he fought his greatest battle outside the ring, fighting against widespread racism, making securing a shot at the biggest prize in sports a monumental one.

Jack followed Tommy to London, where the latter engaged in several subtle fights, defeating outclassed Brits Gunner Moir and Jack Palmer. Upon arrival, Johnson visited Arthur “Peggy” Bettinson at the National Sporting Club in Covent Garden, and Peggy offered to arrange a world title fight between him and Burns for a fee of $12,500. Burns, however, found the offer ridiculously low and demanded $30,000 to defend against Johnson.

After destroying Wexford’s Jem Roche in the Dublin round, Tommy went to Paris for a few fights and Jack followed him. After knocking out London’s Jewey Smith and Australia’s Bill Squires in the French capital, Burns was tempted to travel to Australia for a rematch with Squires and a fight with another Australian, Bill Lang.

Australian promoter Hugh D. (“Huge Deal”) McIntosh paid Burns handsomely for these two simple defenses and began collecting the $30,000 Tommy was asking for to fight Johnson. Already funded, McIntosh wrote to Johnson in London and offered him $5,000 to challenge Burns for the world crown in Sydney. Even though Jack didn’t like having to accept one-sixth of what the champion was going to receive, the opportunity was too good to pass up.

They met on Boxing Day 1908 in an open-air stadium originally built for the Burns-Squires fight. Twenty thousand fans sat inside the stadium, while about 30,000 stayed outside, climbing trees or telegraph poles to catch a glimpse of the action. The event wowed the world – it was the first time a black man had fought for the world heavyweight crown – but it turned out to be a complete mismatch. In fact, the 5-foot-10, 167-pound Burns had no chance of beating his infinitely more qualified 6-foot-1, 200-pound opponent.

After a prolonged, one-sided beating, Tommy was saved from further punishment when the police stopped the fight in the 14th round. Johnson was declared the winner and the first black world heavyweight boxing champion. Although initially conceived as a short-lived structure, Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay Stadium was later enlarged and covered. It remained an iconic boxing and entertainment venue until its demolition in 1970.

Ten thousand miles away, another plaque was erected in Pimlico, London, honoring Olympic boxing champion Harry Mallin. It is set at Peel House, where Mallin spent most of his working life as a policeman. Arguably the greatest amateur in British history, Harry left the sport with an undefeated record after over 300 fights. He won Olympic gold medals in 1920 and 1924 and five straight ABA titles (1919-23).

After leaving the ring, Harry remained involved with boxing. He managed the British boxing teams at the 1936 and 1952 Olympics and was a life vice-president of the ABA. He served in the Metropolitan Police for five years above normal retirement age, retiring in 1952 with the rank of sergeant-instructor. The Harry Mallin plaque was exhibited by English Heritage last year, but for some reason it seems to have slipped by unnoticed. It is a worthy addition to the growing list of memorials to British boxing heroes.

These are the most famed 91 seconds in all of boxing, which took place on this day, Monday, June 1988. 31 years ago on this very day, the peak and seemingly unbeatable Mike Tyson faced a man who, in the opinion of a handful of good judges, was the only remaining fighter capable of testing him; maybe even beat him.

The fight, dubbed “Once and For All,” took place at a swanky hotel owned by a certain Donald Trump, The Trump Plaza. Everyone who was anyone was there – Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Sylvester Stallone and Madonna, to name just a handful of the celebrities in attendance – and the fight was the biggest cash-in in sports history at the time. Unfortunately, those who expected a great fight were disappointed.

Two undefeated fighters who had legitimate claims to the heavyweight throne – Tyson won the WBC/WBA and IBF belts, and Spinks won the lineal title after angering Larry Holmes in 1985 – finally faced each other. Tyson, who was only 21 years ancient (he turned 22 three days after the fight), had a record of 34-0 (30), while the 31-year-old Spinks was perfect with a record of 31-0 (21). Despite these adequate qualifications, the fight turned out to be a huge mismatch/anticlimax.

Spinks, a fighter Tyson admired as a teenager while watching him on TV, seemed completely uninterested in the fight as he climbed the ropes in Atlantic City. Much has been written about Spinks’ apparent fear and even fear of what was about to happen to him. He froze and Tyson sensed that his secretiveness had reached another of his victims. Tyson, who had many distractions outside the ring – chief among them the mess of his marriage to Robin Gives – didn’t let any of them bother him; in fact, he used chaos as additional fuel for his fire. He really wanted to hurt Spinks, and everyone has probably read the story about how Tyson, quite literally, was punching holes in his dressing room wall when Spinks’ manager, Butch Lewis, came in to check his gloves before the fight could start.

The fight was over in the blink of an eye. Tyson was smoking when he left the house and after just a minute he sent his fighter a nasty body shot; Spinks is forced to kneel on the ropes. When he rose, the former delicate heavyweight king, who had made history by becoming the first delicate heavyweight ruler to climb to the top and win heavyweight gold, was free from his misery. A sizzling left-right combination to the head knocked Spinks down, almost through the ropes and out of the ring. Spinks tried to get up but was completely gone and was taken down in just 91 seconds.

Tyson barely celebrated, even though millions of his fans did. Spinks later claimed that he “came to fight like I said” but had absolutely nothing to bother Tyson with. As it turned out, this was Tyson’s last truly great performance. He peaked at the age of almost 22, and although he held the undisputed heavyweight title for almost two years, his skills were very slowly eroded; finally to the point where a huge outsider in James Douglas was able to knock him out in 1990.

But that night against Spinks, Tyson’s defeat seemed almost impossible. Tyson had achieved everything he set out to do when he turned professional less than three and a half years earlier.

A fight that was meant to highlight Mike Tyson his status as the uncrowned heavyweight champion of the world only highlighted the extent of his decline and, perhaps for the first time, increased the risk that he would now not be good enough to regain the title he had held for over three years.

His points from 12 rounds win Razor Ruddock looked impressive on the scoresheet; Judges Dalby Shirley and Art Lurie gave it a 114-108 lead, and Chuck Giampa increased it to 113-109, and that’s how I scored. But the statistics don’t even show the sudden and dramatic erosion of Tyson’s talent. It was a miserable, shapeless victory, and if Ruddock had realized before the halfway point how little he had left, it could easily have been a defeat.

Some in the near-total crowd in the outdoor arena of the Las Vegas Mirage hotel believed that Ruddock’s work in the second half of the fight, during which he repeatedly rocked Tyson (15st 6lb) with wide left hooks and right uppercuts, was enough to give him victory. However, few, if any, solemn observers would support this view.

The issue was not whether Tyson deserved to win, but whether he showed enough in doing so to indicate whether he could still beat Evander Holyfield, who holds three of the four versions of the world title that Tyson once unified.

This match is suddenly not as one-sided as it might seem after Holyfield’s tough points defeat to aged George Foreman a few months ago. There is now a real possibility that the champion’s precise and cultured punches will be enough to outweigh the raw power and aggression that unfortunately seems to be the only remnant of the powerful fighter that Tyson once was.

The controlled, escalating aggression that made him the most intimidating fighter of his time is but a memory. Where he used to tear through his opponent’s defense with an endless stream of hooks from a jumping crouch, now Tyson just charges in, all elbows and shoulders, and doesn’t start throwing punches until his head rests on his opponent’s shoulder.

This crouching, almost irresistible attack was once his own defense, but Tyson needs much more than necessary and desirable. Ruddock (17th) found him surprisingly simple to hit, sometimes holding his left arm fully extended as a scoop before turning it into a left hook to the side of the head.

It seemed that neither he could miss Tyson nor Tyson could miss him, and the result was a brutal, exuberant fight in which they tried to hit each other with powerful, single punches.

The little skill that could be seen came from Ruddock. Although analyzing shot statistics shows what a worthless exercise it is to compile them. According to statistics, Tyson landed 449 punches and landed 206, while Ruddock landed 124 of 246 attempts. This suggests a fight in which Tyson easily outworked and even outplayed his opponent (114 jabs thrown and 23 on target, with 49 thrown and 19 landed), but nothing could be further from the truth.

Tyson ignored the difficult evidence Ruddock presented to him when he later claimed that “I’m still the uncrowned champion.” Ruddock was not available for comment because he was taken to hospital for treatment of a broken jaw in two places and damage to his teeth, which is believed to be the cause of blood observable on his lower lip as he struggled with his mouth open from the start.

There was no shortage of courage in the Canadian-Jamaican’s performance. He got up from the floor twice (in the second and fourth rounds), as he did against Tyson in March, which in itself is further proof of how far the former champion has fallen. It is inconceivable that Tyson, who annihilated good fighters like Mike Spinks and Carl Williams in rounds, would fail to finish the man he knocked down twice.

Honestly, it seemed to me that the knockdowns were as much due to Ruddock’s penniless balance as Tyson’s punching power; each time his feet seemed to be in the wrong position, and each time he stood up almost immediately, looking more embarrassed than dazed.

But it was a terribly discouraging way to start a fight even against this half-strength version of Tyson, and it says a lot about Ruddock’s character that by the end of the sixth installment he realized he was dealing not with a monster but a mortal, got down to business seriously, and more than once had a real chance of winning.

Ruddock confirmed what Buster Douglas had already established during that dramatic fight in Tokyo 16 months ago: that any good pro of Ruddock’s size with a good left jab, a decent uppercut and a stubborn refusal to be intimidated could have a reasonable chance of success against a modified and downsized version of Iron Mike.

More than ever, one wonders what would have happened if Frank Bruno’s ambition had matched his courage and perseverance when he met Tyson in 1989.

Tyson’s penniless performance raises solemn doubts about his ability to dethrone Holyfield, but if Don King has his way, we won’t find out anytime soon. Instead, King is working on the match between Tyson and the 43-year-old Foreman on November 1 at the Mirage.

But this connection, if it occurs, can only tell us which of the two former champions has regressed further – and that should not be taken into account when discussing Mike Tyson, who turns 25 this week but appears to be wearing out.