On February 11, 1990, the undefeated, heavily favored Mike Tyson was knocked out by Buster Douglas in a stunning upset. In this song, Killers frontman Brandon Flowers uses the bout as a metaphor for a fallen hero. Just as Tyson seemed invincible to him, Flowers is all-powerful in the eyes of his three boys, ages 9, 7 and 6. To them, he's Mike Tyson, and he doesn't want to get knocked out.
Fun fact about that Tyson/Douglas fight: It was the first one since he became champ that he broke tradition by not getting a call from Joan Jett, who was his good-luck charm.
The subject matter of a fallen hero was something that Brandon Flowers had wanted to tackle for a long time. He told Q magazine: "I don't know why but I think about it all the time and I finally tried to tackle it in a song, what it meant to have this hero of mine get torn down, and then everything that happened after that. This guy lived in Las Vegas and he was Iron Mike Tyson and it was so exciting and I watched the joy my mum and dad got out of watching him knock people out. It had some kind of effect on me because I think about it all the time."
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