REVIEW: MIKE TYSON’S UNDISPUTED TRUTH

march 29, 2013

I discovered Mike Tyson the year I discovered porn, think I was sixteen. It’s still clear as yesterday: moping incognito through the bookstore, three Penthouse Forum and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology stuffed down my jeans, and passing the magazine rack, fuzzed out in the periphery there’s this gap-tooth black kid raising a red boxing glove, and leaning closer, I scanned the byline: “Mike Tyson: the Next Great Heavyweight—And He’s Only 19.

Damn, just a few years older than me. So glancing over my shoulder, I slipped the Sports Illustrated in with my plunder, and beaming wide I strolled past the clerk. 

That night after reading the article I tore off the cover and tacked it to my bedroom wall. A few months earlier I’d been kicked out of high school and sent to a reform facility in downtown Vegas, so reading about this delinquent Tyson handcuffed and led across the grounds of the Tryon School for Boys, I’m nodding away, because here was this kid from the ghetto, thoroughly ensnared in the system, and six years later he’s on the cover of S.I., a millionaire. 

A lifetime later, or rather, a few weeks ago, I entered the Pantages Theater with Bas Rutten, Mixed Martial Arts legend and first ever UFC Heavyweight Champion. This time I smuggled in my pants a flask of whiskey and a camera, hoping to nurse my buzz and to nab a few shots. 

Settling in, Bas and I talked Tyson: the power, the speed, the raw aggression. Perhaps the last great Heavyweight boxer of our lifetimes, given boxing’s decline and the rise of MMA. Yeah, yeah, the Klitschoko brothers stand atop the Heavyweight mountain, holding every Heavyweight belt (WBA, IBF, WBO, IBO, WBC, IBF The Ring), neither having dropped a loss in nearly a decade— but outside Eastern Europe, really, who gives a shit? I never missed a single Tyson fight, yet I’ve suffered through maybe three rounds of Klitschoko boredom before switching the channel. 

It’s no secret: the Klitschokos possess zero flair. Sure, they dominate the ring, but outside, say for instance, at a press conference, can’t you just see Vitali covering Wladimir’s microphone and whispering, No, brother, we never swear, bad for public image— 

Fuck that. This is the fight game, not politics. Just look at Muhammad Ali, the undisputed Greatest for so many reasons. After defeating Sonny Liston and seizing the belts, Cassius Clay changed his name to honor his newfound Islam, and didn’t care if it thoroughly pissed off the white establishment, as three years later, after nine title defenses and attaining near myth-status in the public consciousness, he started barking about the Vietnam War: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Vong… they never called me nigger.” 

Sure, sounds courageous now, but imagine 1967, pre summer-of-love war protests, taking on the military industrial complex and civil rights at the same time. To most Americans this was madness. Career suicide. Indeed, the blowback came quick: titles stripped, boxing license suspended, arrested and found guilty of draft evasion. Bad for public image? For four years Ali wandered the desert, a penniless outcast, reduced to accepting handouts from rival Joe Frazier. 

It’s cliche, and rather boring to state that every generation needs a hero, that is until with 20/20 hindsight you analyze the times in which each hero served. Take the 60s: widespread social unrest, a generation rebelling against institutionalized bigotry and escalating war. Enter Ali and before it’s fashionable, he’s out front leading the charge. 

Now the 80s: rampant materialism, Wall Street run amok (S&L crisis), political fuckery (Iran Contra scandal); the national compass gone haywire. 

So just how the hell, I hear the whispering, are you proposing that Mike Tyson served as de facto spiritual leader for a generation? 

I’m getting there, I promise, but for now the lights in the Pantages dim. The crowd whistles and claps . Tyson crosses the stage. Bas stands, and from the other side my boy Jesse stands, so I follow. Eight years into retirement, the middle-aged champ, shoulders a bit narrower, the iconic mug a bit larger, looks happy, somehow in his element. 

Welcome to Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, the one-man show narrated by the man himself. Confession: backstage at UFC events I’ve met Mike several times, and it’s always the same: he’s quiet, humble, and I’m in silent awe, recalling the infinite potential described in that Sport’s Illustrated article. I manage a few nods, and after he leaves I berate myself for not telling him: Mike, you were such a hero to us all, especially after Cus D’Amato, your mentor and father-figure, died, and you still persevered and consolidated the belts, then you married that gold-digger Robin Givens and on national television she turned on you— 

Like the Kennedy assassination, from ’86 on Tyson’s triumphs and failures have served as personal/historical markers: the brutal first round KO of Michael Spinks... that disastrous Barbara Walters’ Interview... the from-nowhere loss to Buster Douglass... the dubious rape conviction and prison stint... the tribal facial tattoo... the chomping on Holyfield’s ear... his threatening to eat Lennox Lewis’ children... the Hangover... the tragic death of his young daughter... 

And that’s the script for the performance. No, Tyson isn’t a trained thespian. No, the simplistic slide-show isn’t Avatar. But like everything Tyson, his recounting is so raw, so real—at one point Tyson, recalling why he partnered with promoter Don King, who allegedly stole hundreds of millions from the fighter, shakes his head and laments: “I don’t know, sometimes it feels good when you’re being used.” 

The night I stole the Sports Illustrated magazine, back in my bedroom I read the article, tacked the cover to the wall, skimmed the Penthouse letters, rubbed one out, then started a book report on Hercules. Now you probably recall this ancient hero for accounts of his inhuman strength, but that’s not why the Romans worshipped him as a god. Sure, he killed the nine-headed hydra, and captured the Cretan boar, but they revered him for his defects; such as, in a fit of rage he killed six of his sons, and for decades sought redemption via the ‘twelve labors.’ 

What the Klitschokos don’t possess, and what most marketing gurus don’t get, but what Homer kenned better than any, is we love people not for their attributes, but for their defects. Those perfect Nike ads, they’re just gloss and hype. Breaking news: we all fuck up. Say dumb shit, do dumb shit. Trip and stumble face-first in the mud. 

And watching Mike recall his mistakes, shrug and admit his shame, I realized, a hero shows us what it means to be human, and like it or not, that means to fail. 

Mike is our Hercules.