Boxing, the most dangerous sport there is. A reflection of our society. The sport of the lowest level of the social scale, of prisoners. They didn't choose boxing, boxing chose them. It was the only chance for revenge. Their American dream mode. A do or die option. Modern gladiators, they fight for their lives, for their families. Boxing is the drama of life. One minute to sign a million dollar contract, one minute to die. You can’t call a time-out.
Running around for three minutes avoiding someone who wants to hit you is tremendously tiring. 90% of boxers suffer from brain injuries. Boxing is the only sport in the world that does not care about the safety of its practitioners. This still makes it pure but also difficult to accept today.
Muhammad Alì
Immense champion. Technical, brave, taking punches very well, charismatic, light, fast and lethal. Ali was all this. He was epic, he seemed to be dead and always rose again. In a very hard sport, which marked him physically and gave him a second part of life of great suffering.
He was quite simply the greatest in boxing, perhaps together with Tyson, but he has gone beyond his sport. There was a time when Ali was the most recognized man in the world. He was a symbol, a larger than life figure. Born in the period when every black man woke up in the morning having as his first thought: "I am a black man and even today I will be judged badly," he was the revolution. He had a big mouth and people were following him.
Muhammad Ali: genealogy of the myth that tried to change America. On January 17, 1942 Muhammad Ali was born, a man, a boxer who became an icon inside and outside the ring. A transversal character who involved in his battles politics, religion and social struggle. We tell you about the birth of the Myth.
In October 1954, agent Joe Martin was listening to the complaint of a long-limbed, twelve-year-old boy whose bicycle had just been stolen, an old red and white Schwinn.
While the boy, struggling to hold back his tears, described the theft of his only good on this earth, Joe looked at him with paternal tenderness.
“If you don't want your bicycle stolen anymore, he said, you have to come to my gym to learn boxing.”
The big eyes widened, but the boy didn't cry.
Two months later that skin and bone boy would win his first youth match, thus beginning the career of the most beloved champion in the history of modern boxing.
Muhammad Ali: "my name is not Cassius Clay." By Luigi Panella
Presented at the Biografilm in Bologna and on Sky Arte on June 21, Antoine Fuqua's documentary 'What's my name - Muhammad Ali the man out and in the ring' reconstructs, thanks to unpublished material, the extraordinary parable of the boxer starting from that fundamental choice to change his name.
On a couple of occasions, Muhammad Ali has probably mixed some perfidy with the extraordinary boxing class. It was when he faced and beat Ernie Terrell and Oscar Bonavena. Those two had called him Cassius Clay with provocative insistence, the 'slave' name from which he did not feel represented in supporting the battles for civil rights.
In “What's my name - Muhammad Ali”, Antoine Fuqua reconstructs the parable of the most famous sportsman of all time. Fuqua uses a society in constant turmoil as a stage, leaving the role of absolute protagonist to Ali, of whom you can also listen to unpublished recordings.
A career that began at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and which is described match after match, sentence after sentence. Not only sporting but also linguistic performances, word games that have made Ali an ante litteram rapper.
The rise, the world title conquered against the bad bear Sonny Liston amid a thousand provocations and controversies, the conversion to Islam, the proximity to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the refusal of the war in Vietnam. The heavyweight world champion who refuses to serve the homeland: half America opposes him. Including the strong powers: the sender of an investigative document about him makes your wrists tremble, it says Edgar Hoover, the powerful head of the FBI.
Muhammad Ali, the refusal of the Vietnam war: “I got nothing against them Viet Cong. They never called me nigger.”
Ali is deprived of the title but it is also the moment when the boxer becomes an icon, a way of being, of thinking.
On university campuses crowds of students flock to listen and support him. The disqualification lasts three years, the return is very hard. The Madison Square Garden in New York, on March 8, 1971, on the occasion of the first meeting of the legendary trilogy with Joe Frazier, is a cross-section of American society. Nobody wants to miss it, many things strike you, including an unlikely headdress sported by Aretha Franklin. Fuqua also focuses on the fragility of the champion, whose vision of the world sometimes does not contemplate the left hook of the opponents. Years earlier with that blow Sir Henri Cooper had knocked him out, but he got up and won. With Frazier he gets up but does not win. The title escapes him, he will have to wait for the battle in the jungle of Kinshasa to take it back against George Foreman. When the match takes place in the then Zaire, Ali is already a planetary character: a charmer of crowds, a landlord in the countless talk shows in which he participates.
Muhammad Ali in Atlanta 1996 thrilled the world: he was the last torch bearer.
First actor of a theater in which everyone seems to be playing a role suited to him: from the historical manager Angelo Dundee to a perfect sidekick of his shows such as Drew Bundini Brown (the cut man, the corner man of the wounds), to the famous ABC commentator Howard Cosell, often mocked by Ali about the authenticity of his hair. The decline in the ring, which materializes definitively in the defeat against the former sparring partner Larry Holmes, is secondary to the charisma of the man. President Carter sends him to Africa to support the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, but other presidents also compete to show up in his company. From Reagan and Clinton, the latter moved to tears when 'The Greatest', beaten by Parkinson's disease, lights trembling the Olympic brazier in Atlanta. When this happens Cassius Marcellus Clay is only a memory, now there is only Muhammad Ali.
That flight that links Muhammad Ali and Gilles Villeneuve. The American boxer and the Canadian driver were born within a day of each other. They have almost nothing in common. Yet on a plane... By Fabio Tavelli, 17 January 2020.
So far away (but not even that much: between Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebéc and Louisville, Kentucky, there are 1.500 kilometers, little more than between Milan and Palermo), so close (January 17, 1942 the American, January 18, 1950 the Canadian). Gilles Villeneuve and Muhammad Ali have almost nothing in common. Destiny brought them closer by just one small day on the calendar, even though 8 years later. One has won everything, the other "only" six races. One survived himself by going beyond his time making himself ugly at the sunset of his journey, the other left towards legend, leaving the pleasure of the iris to his son.
Why together? For a flight.
Ali, but at the time he was still Cassius, received from his coach the news of the call for the 1960 Rome Olympics. “When does the train leave for Rome?", the boy asked without considering the possibility of allowing others to take him to the sky. Having better clarified his knowledge of geography, Cassius claimed to travel with a parachute on him, confident that the steel bird would sink into Atlantic waters. And, since at 18 he hadn't kissed a girl yet, asked to be allowed to travel next to a woman. Before the, for him, inevitable crash he would have won a passionate kiss from her to die with his heart in peace. Gilles, on the other hand, loved flights. Of course not as a passenger. When he met Enzo Ferrari for the first time he obtained his blessing in Fiorano, despite an unspeakable series of nose-to-tail and track exits just set foot in the car that Lauda had abandoned as World Champion two races from the end (1977). Confident that the Old Man would have sent him back to Canada on a rail, the mechanics of Maranello instead received a peremptory order to arrange the seat for the (small) measurements of the little guy and to send the accessory to Canada, where the GP would take place the following Sunday. "I'll take it," said Gilles who would come back to Canada (his home). He showed up at the airport gate embracing the seat and, to the legitimate grievances of the Alitalia employees ("please give it to us and we will put it in the hold with the suitcases"), he opposed a clear refusal. "This travels with me, if you break it I can't drive the Ferrari on Sunday in the Grand Prix," he said without considering a negative answer. Feverish consultations, inevitable phone calls to Maranello (Gilles was not exactly popular at the time and he didn’t think about the “you-don't-know-who-I-am”) and finally the go-ahead.
He embraced his seat, as Cassius did with his parachute.
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016, was an American professional boxer, activist and philanthropist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century and as one of the greatest boxers of all time.
Ali was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and began training as an amateur boxer at age 12. At 18, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics and turned professional later that year. He converted to Islam and became a Muslim after 1961 and eventually took the name Muhammad Ali. He won the world heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston in a major upset at age 22 in 1964. In 1966, he refused to be drafted into the military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. He was arrested, found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his boxing titles. He appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction in 1971, but he had not fought for nearly four years and lost a period of peak performance as an athlete. His actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation and he was a high-profile figure of racial pride for African Americans during the civil rights movement. As a Muslim, Ali was initially affiliated with Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI). He later disavowed the NOI, adhering to Sunni Islam and supporting racial integration like his former mentor Malcolm X.
Ali was a leading heavyweight boxer of the 20th century and remains the only three-time lineal champion of that division. His joint records of beating 21 boxers for the world heavyweight title and winning 14 unified title bouts stood for 35 years. He was involved in several historic boxing matches and feuds, most notably his fights with Joe Frazier, such as the Thrilla in Manila and his fight with George Foreman known as The Rumble in the Jungle which has been called "arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century" and was watched by a record estimated television audience of 1 billion viewers worldwide, becoming the world's most-watched live television broadcast at the time. Ali thrived in the spotlight at a time when many fighters let their managers do the talking and he was often provocative and outlandish. He was famous for trash-talking and often free-styled with rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry, anticipating elements of hip hop.
Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and focused on religion and charity. In 1984, he made public his diagnosis of Parkinson's syndrome, which some reports attribute to boxing-related injuries, though he and his specialist physicians disputed this. He remained an active public figure globally but, in his later years, made increasingly limited public appearances as his condition worsened and he was cared for by his family.
Muhammad Alì quotes
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't.”
“Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you're going to be right.”
“Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.”
“No one knows what to say in a losers locker room.”
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
“I won’t miss boxing, boxing will miss me.”
Mike Tyson
He is not really the person you would like to meet in a dark alley. Or to whom you fuck the woman (Brad Pitt docet). If Ali had a clean face, Tyson that of an ex-convict and a facial expression that made you shiver. He had no technique but the power was monstrous. Probably the best fighter ever. From a very young age he was a destroyer. His series of punches made the opponent fly away and the result was always a quick knockout. Being in a ring with Tyson was something few people hoped for. It was a slaughter. With Muhammad Ali sometimes you couldn’t see the punch, with him it was seen and felt. The matches did not last long. Tyson's first round was a sentence. After a few seconds you got knocked down and, if you’d get right back up and restart the fight it was a real execution, one or two very strong punches that made you fly out of the ring. And this also with opponents much taller and bigger than him. An unstoppable force of nature.
He was feared and avoided. Some opponents deliberately lost some matches not to meet Tyson in the next stage because it would have forced them to have physical injuries.
But Mike, in his desperate search for love, suffered a lot of ups and downs and was not really protected by the people who surrounded him.
'I've never been able to handle it.' Tyson admits he struggled with being a fighter...
“I don’t like to be a big star, I don’t like that kind of life,” he also said.
Rudy Gonzalez, Mike’s chauffeur, the one who was a first hand observer of his sex life said: “with Tyson women were always around, always trying to get into the car to be with him, throwing themselves into his arms and Tyson would react like any man would.”
In the end of the day Mike’s career is a graphic reflection of who he was and what he wanted. He wanted to self-destruct.
All of this is certainly true but people's memory is short: they have to remember that Mike Tyson was 35 years old with 31 knockouts, 19 in the first round. Therefore he should be considered the biggest heavyweight in history.
The beginning of Mike Tyson's career was guided perfectly. At the time of Cus D’Amato, his beloved mentor and trainer, Mike was perfectly trained and promoted and was getting two fights per month. Back then team Tyson was a perfect team for boxing. And Cus was saying he was still alive probably because of Tyson. During his last visit at Cus’s deathbed, Mike told him: “I’m not going to do it without you.” And Cus replied: “if you don’t fight, you’ll realize that people can come back from the grave, because I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your life. The world has to see you, Mike. You’re going to be champ of the world, the greatest out there.” When Cus died of pneumonia no one was sure Mike could continue and Jim Jacobs, who had replaced Cus in Mike's heart, told him: “win the title for Cus.” Jackobswill in turn die when Tyson will be only 21 and will be replaced by Don King, a money addicted promoter. Years from 1985 to 1988 will be always registered in history as an undisputed and undefeated victory of character. When Mike became a world champion, one year after Cus’s death, all his team started to wear a T-shirt with Cus and Mike on every fight. Cus D’Amato was the man who took care for poor boys from the street, who gave them home and hope, the creator of real Mike Tyson. “If you have a friend, a real friend, somebody who will stand by you all the time if anything happens and you can trust in him, it is worth more than money,” D’Amato said. And about Mike he added: “I can’t see him lose.” And Mike, in turn, reciprocated about Cus: “I’d do whatever for him, because I wanted to make him happy. There was no power that could have separated me from him. I would kill anybody who wanted to try it.”“My mentor, friend and general. Because of you my life has reached heights I could never have imagined. Without you I don’t know where I would be today. My gratitude to you is immeasurable. As long as I am breathing your legacy will continue to live.” From the moment in which Don King fired Kevin Rooney, Mike's other historic coach at the time of Cus, the technical level of his boxing began to fall steadily and inexorably and never again did Tyson show in a fight the same level of training he had before.
Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson, born June 30, 1966, is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005. He reigned as the undisputed world heavyweight champion and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win a heavyweight title, at 20 years, four months and 22 days old. He won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, 12 of them in the first round. He won the WBC title in 1986 after stopping Trevor Berbick in the second round and added the WBA and IBF titles after defeating James Smith and Tony Tucker in 1987. This made Tyson the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles and the only heavyweight to successively unify them.
Tyson became the lineal champion in 1988 when he knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds of the first round. He successfully defended his titles nine times, which included victories over Larry Holmes and Frank Bruno. In 1990, he lost the titles to underdog Buster Douglas, who knocked him out in the tenth round. Attempting to regain the titles, Tyson defeated Donovan Ruddock twice in 1991, but pulled out of a fight with then-undisputed heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield (who had defeated Douglas later in 1990) due to a rib injury.
In 1992, Tyson was convicted of rape and sentenced to six years in prison; he was released on parole after serving three years. After his release in 1995, he engaged in a series of comeback fights. He won the WBC and WBA titles in 1996, after stopping Frank Bruno and Bruce Seldon. With his defeat of Bruno, Tyson joined Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to have regained a heavyweight championship after having lost it. After being stripped of the WBC title in the same year, Tyson lost the WBA title to Evander Holyfield by an eleventh round stoppage. Their 1997 rematch ended when Tyson was disqualified for biting Holyfield's ears.
In 2002, Tyson fought for the world heavyweight title again at the age of 35, losing by knockout to Lennox Lewis. Mike retired from professional boxing in 2006, after being knocked out in consecutive matches against journeymenDanny Williams and Kevin McBride. He declared bankruptcy in 2003, despite having received over $30 million for several of his fights and $300 million during his career. At the time, the media reported that he had approximately $23 million of debt.
Tyson was considered one of the most brutal and hardest hitters in the sport. He had 58 fights in total, winning 50 of those, including 44 by knockout. He was known for his ferocious and intimidating boxing style as well as his controversial behavior inside and outside the ring. Nicknamed "Iron Mike" and "Kid Dynamite" in his early career and later known as "The Baddest Man on the Planet", he is considered one of the best heavyweights of all time.
He currently ranks n°1 in the ESPN.com list of "The Hardest Hitters in Heavyweight History". Sky Sports described him as "perhaps the most ferocious fighter to step into a professional ring".
Mike Tyson is a Ferrari F1 fan and attended a recent German G.P.
Mike Tyson’s incredible story of when he knocked out a garbage man for throwing his pigeon away. By Sean Gallagher, 19th April 2020.
If you mess around with ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’ you do so at your own peril, as one garbage man famously found out. Tyson had a very difficult upbringing and, aside from boxing, his love for pigeons also gave him a sense of perspective and peace. So, when the boxing icon witnessed the said bin man dumping a crate with his favourite pigeon who had just died into the trash, all hell broke loose. And, naturally, Tyson floored him with a ‘titanic right hand’. Recalling the incident, Mike said: “one morning I woke up and found my favourite pigeon, Julius, had died. I was devastated and was going to use his crate as my stickball bat to honour him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand! He was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard.”
Mike Tyson once crashed a Ferrari through a store window. By Suse Forreston, September 6, 2019.
Although he’s most recognized for his boxing talents, his name has been on the front page of several newspapers for other reasons that have nothing to do with his athletic ability.
Throughout his life, Tyson has been arrested almost as many times as he has won a boxing match. He has a pretty long criminal rap sheet that covers everything from juvenile misdemeanors to serious felonies. One time, Mike was even arrested for crashing his Ferrari through a store window. As he looks back on the incident now, he actually recalls it as one of his “favourite arrest stories.”
So, how is it that a guy whose entire career revolved around being precise and accurate could have possibly crashed an expensive car into the side of a building?
A few years ago, Tyson appeared on a YouTube talk show called “The Diego Show” and had a hilarious sit-down interview with a puppet named Diego. Halfway through the interview, Diego asked Tyson about his favourite arrest.
He thought about the question for a second, then replied: “my favorite arrest, I would have to say, is when I, um, bought an um, Ferrari and I didn’t know how to drive it and it was idling or something… and it just went through the window.”
When Diego seemed a bit confused, Tyson was quick to clear up the fact that, because his car went through the store window, he was arrested for property damages.
Many fans were shocked to hear that Tyson had ever wrecked his Ferrari. However, he had actually briefly recounted the story to Us Weekly back in 2014, when he had said that he had accidentally backed his Ferrari into a convenience store because he did not realize that he had put the car in reverse.
We don’t know for sure which year or model of Ferrari that Tyson had crashed into the store. But, according to “Car Keys,” he has owned three different Ferraris in his lifetime: a 1995 F50, a 456 GT Spyder and a Testarossa.
Mike bought two Ferrari models as a package deal. Back in 1995, he began to really cement his status among the most elite athletes on the planet. One of his favourite things to splurge on at the time was new luxury sport rides. He bought both the rare Ferrari 456 Spyder along with the memorable Ferrari F50.
The 456 was a popular vehicle choice back in the 90s and into the 2000s.
Ferrari created lots of units, with over 3.000 produced. Mike was one of the more popular owners of the car.
The GT Spyder was the last special production 456 produced as a convertible, with a limited number rolled out of the factory – two of these were built by Pininfarina especially for the Sultan of Brunei and one for Tyson.
Mike Tyson Ferrari 456 Spyder Koenig Specialwas made by Koenig for him in the early 1990s.
Mike Tyson’s Ferrari F50 got sold for nearly $4 million.March 23, 2017.
As super-rare Ferraris go, the F50 has been subject to some unfair scrutiny.
The market for these cars seems to be shifting though, as collectors make amends with the fact that the success of its forebear, the astounding F40, forced the F50 to live up to an impossible standard.
That makes the timing of this particular example exceptional. Being a part of Tyson’s personal collection during his storied boxing career would increase the value of any car. That this one is a range-topping red Ferrari sporting a 4.7-liter V12 from a F1 car elevates the expected price to a lofty $3.87m. And was for sale at auction March 11th.
RM Auctions offered the car at an event during the Amelia Island Concours. Aside from its celebrity owner, there’s a great deal to like about this red stallion. Evidently Tyson didn’t find much time to hit the road in the 90s hypercar, because the odometer reads a very low 5,700 miles, only 800 of which have been added since Mike initially sold the car. Extremely well cared for by both Tyson and the second owner in Georgia, the car is reported never to have been driven hard. It received a thorough going-over during its stay in the south, which included a new rear seal, electronics upgrades, tires, lighting and new oil and water pumps.
If you like analog cars, the F50 is a tough package to beat even by today’s standards. Its compact V12 produces 520 brake horsepower and is channeled through a manual six-speed transmission, a feature modern Ferraris of this ilk have done away with in favor of more advanced dual-clutch paddle-shift arrangements.
As far as performance goes, a 0-60 sprint of 3.8 seconds and 200 mph top speed are compelling arguments that this middle-aged supercar is still very relevant today. Plus, you’ll be hard-pressed to find too many naturally aspirated 8,600 rpm high-compression V12s rolling off the production line in the years to come thanks to modern emissions standards. Even Ferrari says their 812 Superfast will be the last.
The F50s suspension was ahead of its time as well, thanks to a horizontally mounted, F1-style pushrod suspension arrangement that relies on adaptive electronic dampers to customize the ride for your speed and road condition. At a feathery 2250 lbs. there can be no doubting its responsive handling behavior. Even the engine itself is a load-bearing part of the chassis and the body is, of course, made of carbon fiber.
The winning bid wasn’t a cheap one, the car sold for a near $4 million, according to “James Edition”.
Ferrari Testarossa
The boisterous boxer liked to live the fast life.
To protect Tyson from being held personally responsible for any accident that was likely to occur, his team set up a corporation with only one asset: the champion's cars.
Mike Tyson’s tiger… The boxer decided a Ferrari wasn’t enough.
Aside from the cars, Tyson also bought three Bengal tigers worth around £48.000 each and reportedly spent even more on keeping and feeding them!
Esteemed boxing photographer Chris Farina visited Tyson's mansion in 1995 and, recalling his first sight of the animals, he said: "he pulls the tiger out of the cage and I’m moving back. He starts walking with this tiger up the hill and I’m shooting all these pictures.
The tiger is dragging Mike. He doesn’t’ have the tiger, the tiger is dragging him!"
50 years of Tyson, a wild life outside and inside the ring. By Luigi Panella, 29 June 2016.
Half a century of one of the most controversial boxers in history. From difficult childhood to the ascent, the throne of the world of heavyweight at just twenty years old. Then the prison for rape, the sport fall, the timid attempt at rebirth after having squandered an immense fortune.
The man who could not win. The man who could not lose. The man who didn't know how to love. Mike Tyson, on June 30, turns 50. In his career he has been the protagonist of many versions of himself, as if he were a prisoner of a bubble, an infinite interpretation of films to mark a tormented existence, ups and downs of one of the most controversial characters in the history of boxing. Fifty years, the right age to draw a straight line and take stock but also in this, as in the ring, the ex-Brooklyn boy has been ahead of his time with his 'one man shows'. On stage, he tells himself, in reality he performs a self-analysis, with that intimidated teenager's voice that clashes with the character. When you hear him, Marlon Brando comes to mind, singing in 'Bulli e Pupe': a light tone inserted in a context dominated by anxiety. Yes, there is success, money, fame, so you think of a modern Cinderella. However, when after many years you try to knock on that enchanted castle, there is always someone who answers you "no, Cinderella no longer lives here." A wild life, carved by fate. Tyson never knows his father, the mother does what she can for him and his siblings, but the collapse comes inexorably. It manifests itself in the poverty that exiles them to hell. Brownsville is the classic place where you wouldn't send the worst enemy. Tyson grows up living with alcohol, drugs, shootings, sex, violence. The only ray of sunshine is the love for pigeons, in which he finds that tenderness that he cannot seek elsewhere (and here Marlon Brando returns, he also was raising them in 'Fronte del Porto'). Lorna Smith, the mother, does nothing but get drunk and fight furiously with her men, to one of them after a quarrel she knocks over a pot of boiling water. The street is a merciless gym: fights in which obviously Tyson excels, thefts of all kinds, relationships with the scum of the scum. A life in which there are two possibilities: either you end up killed or you go to jail. That's fine for Tyson, because it is precisely in prison that he knows boxing. It is in that phase that Prince Charming arrives. For heaven's sake, no spangles and promises, but an old man with no hair who knows a lot about boxing.
His name is Cus D'Amato and he is the only person that Tyson fears and respects. Mike grows up with him, lives in his home, fights and makes his way into the “chimneys”, places on the limit of the underground, so called because the blanket produced by smokers almost obscures the ring. But the master also dies and it is yet another tragedy. But Tyson is now walking with his legs. Twenty-seven wins, 25 of which before the limit: terrible knockouts, he cannot win like any other boxer, it is clear that he wants to inflict suffering, to make his opponents atone for unspeakable sins. In any case, he is ready to become the youngest world champion in the history of the heavyweight. It is November 22, 1986. Trevor Berbick is the champion, five years earlier in the Bahamas he was the last to measure himself against the now pale copy of Muhammad Ali. He appears in the ring with black socks that cover his knee, an unconscious as well as useless need to protect himself. Tyson's left hook has no mercy: in the second round Berbick goes down, tries to get up but his is a macabre ballet: dancing on legs that no longer exist, he has not yet realized that that blow also took his soul away. He will die twenty years later, stabbed by his nephew.
Tyson is on the roof of the world at the age of 20. Yes, maybe he's the new Cinderella. But no, it is ephemeral and excessive glory for those who do not understand, cannot understand the value of things. The meeting with the sulphurous organizer Don King (who, although organized Ali-Foreman in Zaire, ignores the word scruple), rivers of money, alcohol, drugs, expensive cars of all kinds, diamonds, garden tigers. When he declares bankrupt the sum wasted will be quantifiable in 500 million dollars. Everything goes out of control, even in private life. He marries Robin Givens, a TV series starlet who grubs a good slice of his assets. Once he returns home and surprises her in bed with Brad Pitt, still unknown to the general public: to hear Tyson, the expression of terror painted on the face of the actor is superior to any interpretation. The boxer is dominated by the unstoppable desire for sex. He has it without limits, with a host of Japanese waitresses. He is in Tokyo for what seems like a formality, but he incredibly loses the title. Who beats him is James Buster Douglas, who in the ring defeats the tragedies of life (he has separated from his wife, has just lost his mother) but does not deal with the incoming demons. Halter contracts make him earn infinitely less than his unexpected fame would allow him, then depression, obesity, alcoholism, even a diabetic coma. His moral integrity saves him, he will come out of the tunnel teaching young people.
For Tyson, the loss of the title is nothing compared to the rape story. Desirée Washinghton is in Indianapolis to participate in a beauty contest, accepting the invitation to the boxer's room will prove fatal. The man who didn't know how to love. ''Mommy, relax, don't fight'': according to the girl, this is what Tyson tells her while he uses her violence in a disturbing representation of the Oedipus complex. He always denies everything, but the judges recognize him guilty. It is the abyss of the prison, followed by that of the ring. Once he got out of jail, Tyson regained the world title by beating Frank Bruno, but Evander Holyfield arrived and dethroned him. The Alabama boxer is strong, he will fight almost up to fifty years, it is said to support a football team with a number of children with their mothers... However, there is a revenge and this is where Tyson doesn’t know how to lose, he rejects the rules, society, everything. He bites off a piece of the opponent's ear, attracting world shame upon himself. It is the end, indeed not. There is one last chance. One of the many matches of the century against Lennox Lewis. Tyson, in the long antechamber of the match, gives the worst of himself: "I want his heart, I want to eat his children." Then in the ring it’s the defeat. A few more attempts followed, until the sad ending against Kevin McBride, one that the early Tyson would have beaten with his hands tied behind his back. The ferocity of his gaze would have sufficed (as it happened against the terrified Michael Spinks).
Mike Tyson, 50 years old. In the years after his retirement he had to endure another family drama, the death of his 4-year-old daughter in a tragic game. He lives with his third wife, often talks about himself and always does it without hesitation. Even with most of the people who crossed paths with him, life was not tender. "No, Cinderella no longer lives here."
Mike Tyson: "don't remember me like a monster, I want to be an Eddie Murphy style comedian." By Emanuela Audisio, 31 October 2017.
You were a ruthless boxer and in jail for rape. Now you tell in a book and in theaters the life torn from mistakes: "my children will never understand the despair."
Monsters that no longer wolf down are pathetic. Those who file their nails are unpresentable. Those who cut them, surprise. Especially if their name is Mike Tyson, if they have stolen, beaten, raped. And they are "a bad mortal sin," as Jake La Motta was saying, one who did not make discounts to himself, also because as a child on the street he hit with an ice pick. There is no need to remember who Mike Tyson was, the Evil of society, the Force in the ring. A savage, a ruthless boxer. One who had fun breaking your face, smashing your skull, letting your nose bone enter your brain, eating your ear and meeting you at the morgue. "To you, corpse of a nigger."
An Alcatraz one and in fact he ended up in jail for rape, one who didn't think he was going to be 40 years old. Not nice, not cool at all, in the ring he went dressed in black, without socks. An executioner who didn't want to waste time. Now he looks like chloroform. He recycled himself, from animal to person. The usual little voice, slightly woody body, lethargic gestures. There are the signs of what he has been, the Maori tattoos on half of the face, you can see something of what he tries to be. A decent husband and father. The marriage (the third) with Kiki Spicer, nine years younger than him, works. Mike resumed his show in Las Vegas. He performs in the city of the massacre. He is no longer the baddest man on the planet. The retired Stephen Paddock, a Mr. Nobody, killed 59 people from a hotel window. Tyson not even one in the end. His literary rehabilitation after “True” (2013) passes through “L'arte della guerra” (The art of war) and Larry Sloman, the biographer who has also dealt with Houdini and Bob Dylan.
Mike, you denied yourself: you are 51 years old.
"Yeah, I always said I wasn't going to be in my forties. All my friends in Brownsville are already dead, shot or drugged. I started drinking gin when I was nine, then I continued with vodka and got gonorrhea from a woman who died of AIDS. I didn't have too many expectations. When I said I was going to lie down on Sonny Liston's grave to feel the breath of death it was true. Sonny hadn't smiled more than three times in his life. I felt empty, I didn't give a damn about people or even the chinchilla dressing gown, the ruby crown and the diamond necklace that Don King had given me. The only music I had in my head was a funeral march. Other than Iron Mike."
But now what?
"I tell myself. At the theater and in a new book. I want to become an entertainer, a stage animal, the new Eddie Murphy, one who amuses, who is in the showbiz. The idea came to me when I saw Chazz Palminteri acting in " A Bronx tale". Just be the carrion that scares."
Are you serious?
"Yes. I was a beast, a jerk, a trained gorilla, a poor drunkard, an arrogant psychopath, the youngest world champion of the heavyweight, but I don't want to be remembered for that. And on February 11th of '90 in Tokyo I wouldn't have lost the title against Buster Douglas if I hadn't done the aerobic exercise I practiced then: fucking all the hotel maids. That was a time when I had to kick women out."
Do not overdo it. How do you want to be remembered?
"Like a funny guy, not like a monster. Since Barbra Streisand, who I went to applaud, is a funny girl. I want to be a comedian, not the roles of the tough and shady guy, I don't want to intimidate the others anymore. I'm back on stage at the MGM in Las Vegas where I play a monologue and tell the story of my life. I like that feeling when people can't take their eyes off me."
Tyson goes to Broadway.
"Even to Hollywood. Jamie Foxx will play me, directed by Martin Scorsese. I have detoxed myself from alcohol and cocaine, I no longer drink, I have eight children, four boys and three girls, because unfortunately Exodus died strangled by a rope at 4 years in 2009. I try to be a father, a financial support for everyone: the oldest Mikey Lorna is 27 and the youngest, Morocco, 6. If necessary, I also accompany the boys to school. Milan, the penultimate, plays good tennis, better than me, even if it's not really my sport, I go to tournaments with her, I introduced her to Serena Williams. Look at me, judge me for what I am now, not just for the bullshit I did when I wanted to put it in that place to the whole world. Resisting 120 hours of recordings with Larry "Ratso" Sloman was not easy. And after you tell certain things, you don't want to find always that person in front of you, going back to the discussion from where you left off. You cannot do this."
Why?
"Why? My mother was a prostitute. It is one thing to allude, another is to admit it. You think it's been a while, that it doesn't hurt, but it does. When she died I didn't even have the money to buy her the coffin. Returning from his funeral, I went to rob houses. It is that I did not have certain awarenesses. I was a little insecure, fat and dirty thug, not Clark Gable. I went to a bar and got drunk, that's what I did after winning the world title. I got excited and then I threw myself down, I went back to my Brooklyn, to Amboy street, a dump, drinking and smoking weed on the sidewalk and everyone, surprised, to say: that can't be Mike, what are you doing here?"
And what were you doing?
"I was a mouse returning to the sewer. Home, as E.T. says. I had to learn to be comfortable in the discomfort. I came from an immense despair, my children will never understand it, they do not have the pressure to be successful that I had and that destroyed me. The art of war is that of survival. When I was 15 years old I went to Woodstock, I entered to a fortune teller reading tarot cards, he said to me: you will light up the world for a short time, but you will have a lot of trouble. I had low self-esteem and a stratospheric ego."
The book talks about your relationship with Cus D'Amato.
"It's dedicated to him. He was to me a father, that I didn't have, not only a coach. And he also adopted me. Cus faced my inferiority complex by telling me that I was superior to all the others, but the thing got a little bit out of hand, I offended a lot of people, arrogance and malice entered my blood. Cus lived of conflicts, but this didn't favor me. It is my wife Kiki who helped me to stop the cycle. We went to a show and everyone was looking at me, she said: they love you. I replied: I expect them to love me. She looked at me with the air of someone who thinks: am I married to this shit? And there I understood that I had to stop and exercise humility. Do you love me? Thanks, friend. So I'm glad that pilots renamed “the Tyson route” the approach to Las Vegas airport, because it passed over my old house. But boxing does not live of this and it was not even a subject of Cus."
Are you critical?
"I owe everything to the meeting with this old Italian gentleman, convinced that I was special and that filled my head with dreams of glory. But sport works on your insecurities, it makes you jump over them, it doesn't fill them. I was 13 years old, he saw me doing three rounds in a musty gym and he understood that I had the stuff, even if everyone told him I was a brat and in addition too low. Cus told me that I was a god, but he didn't let me boast about it. He was controlling me, he had me under his thumb, he exalted me and then he beat my pride. Together we dreamed of having money and buying villas and that everyone would look at us with his mouth open. Instead he died in ‘85 at 77 years before seeing me champion. In the hospital he started to cry, not for me, but for his woman, Camille, who he left without marriage and without security. I had never seen him like that. Cus never showed emotions, even when Joe Louis died he hadn’t paid tears. He wanted me like this: tough, insensitive, threatening."
You're saying you followed a script.
"Well I was excited to be a rabid dog. Cus had led to the world title Floyd Patterson and José Torres, he had trained the deaf, excellent boxers because they develop a keen sight, he had fought the mafia, Frankie Carbo, the IBC. If he had told me that I could fly, I would have believed him. But he was a suspicious guy and addicted to control up to paranoia. He said that people had to die of a heart attack when they saw me, that I had to break my opponent's arms and ribs, that I had to intimidate. He was watching the fight between two cockroaches and then he explained to me: you have seen, it is using the jab. But if I would have had him I would not have ended up betrayed and off-road. He exaggerated, but he understood me."
Enough to save you.
"When I divorced for the second time, I found myself with more than a hundred million dollars of debt, after having squandered three hundred. In 2003 I declared bankruptcy, I was broke but I found a financial income of 250 thousand dollars that Cus with his last 500 dollars had set up before he died: "in case the boy doesn't make it." I burst into tears, I had ruined my life, he had foreseen it and he was taking care of me from the grave. This gave me hope, it got me on my feet again."
He also made you hypnotize.
"Yes, Cus believed in extracorporeal experiences, in self-control, in self-suggestion as an aid to healing, he followed the teachings of the French pharmacist Émile Coué, therefore he papered the walls of the gym with phrases that empowered the ego: do not give up, go ahead, do what you can't stand to do but do it as if you liked it. I never lost the discipline, I also trained with my wrists in plaster for an accident. And in fact due to the stress I lost my hair, I have an injury to the sciatic nerve, pain in the arms and legs."
Boxing today.
"No, for heaven's sake. Who knows them? I represent the tradition, the boxers of the past. That I studied. The ring was my food. I grew up looking at the videos: Johnson, Dempsey, Robinson, Louis, Liston, Ali. I never allowed people to forget them and every time I copied a punch I attributed the right paternity. Today nobody studies anymore. Which boxer went out with Dickens, which with George Bernard Shaw, which with Hemingway? I know it. Norman Mailer, Gay Talese and Howard Cosell came to the gym to talk to Cus."
Are you still vegan?
"No, but for a while I tried. Changes of course don't always succeed. But if my children caress me, I appreciate it. It's a good feeling, even if I pretend that nothing happens. I'm a really useless old monster."
Mike Tyson quotes
“Everyone says “I wish I was in your shoes…”, the hundreds of people that wish they were in my shoes don’t know the tenth of it. If they were in my shoes they would cry like a baby.”
“I’m sorry I let everybody down, I’m fighting just to pay my bills. I don’t have the stomach for this anymore… I don’t have the desire for it. I feel bad for the people… I wish they could get their money back.”
“You can’t be disturbed by anything. There’s no emotion involved. You can’t feel sorrow, you can’t feel pity, there’s nothing you feel. The job has to be done.”
“I’ll fight anybody my trainer puts me in with because I’m confident I can beat any fighter in the world. If anybody can see I’m almost a master at evading punches coming at me.”
“My power is discombobulating devastating. I could feel his muscle tissues collapse under my force. It’s ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.”
“Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.”
At the age of 53 Tyson, in a great 104 kg shape, decided to return to fight in a charity match. Questionable decision that we do not comment. We just wish him luck. Yes, good luck Mike.
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