The day before Mike Tyson’s infamous rematch against Evander Holyfield in Las Vegas in June 1997, the heavyweight boxer picked up his paycheck at his promoter Don King’s office at the MGM Grand.
A grinning king took out a pen and wrote a check, which he presented to Tyson.
The sum? $ 30 million – all before the boxer even fought.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” King said to Tyson. “Now don’t cause any problems tonight, my brother. Just keep calm. “
In “Talking to Goats – The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard” (HarperCollins), sportscaster Jim Gray describes this moment and other amazing eyewitness accounts from Tyson, his friend of more than 35 years.
The moment Tyson left King’s office, the boxer jumped into his new $ 350,000 Lamborghini, turned it right into a parking barrier, and dented the fender, writes Gray.
Tyson was convinced the car was cursed and screamed that he needed no bad luck before his big fight. He jumped out of the car, threw the keys at a nearby security guard, and told him to keep it.
“Take that damn car,” Tyson shrieked. “Get that damn car away from me!”
Confused, the guard turned to King. But the promoter just shrugged.
“Ay brother, my husband gives you this car,” King replied. “Take it, have a good time.”
And with that, the security guard raced off in his new sports car.
More than an hour later, Gray was dining with King at The Palm when a messenger arrived saying it was an emergency.
King left the restaurant to find Tyson leaving Caesar’s Palace, where the boxer had reportedly just spent $ 800,000 at the Versace store.
“I remember buying purple shoes and yellow and orange scarves,” recalls Gray in the book. “When he got the stuff from the store, it was of no value. He did not care. He ordered King to take care of it. “
Between his shopping spree and giving up the sports car, Tyson had spent $ 1.15 million in less than 90 minutes.
“Give me the check back,” demanded King in a final attempt to save Tyson from himself. Tyson reluctantly followed.
Television journalist Gray met Mike Tyson at Matteo’s Los Angeles restaurant in the mid-1980s when the boxer was a teenager. Gray bumped into the boxer on the way to the bathroom, and Tyson recognized him from the television and sat down at his table and forged their friendship.
But as Gray writes, Tyson had a good time and everything that went with it: “Whether it was alcohol or women or more women, cars, clothes, jewelry and watches. They call it. He did not live a life of regret.
“Tyson lived his life on his terms, on a tightrope with no net.”
No party was too lavish for Tyson. After defeating Tony Tucker at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in 1987 to become the undisputed world heavyweight champion, the fighter entered his celebration wearing a blue cloak, scepter, and an ornate crown adorned with real gems. Then he settled down to enjoy a whole roast pork weighing down the buffet table.
“It felt like something out of the 18th century,” writes Gray.
It’s easy to see Tyson eventually spiraling out of control.
Raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, he had a hot childhood shaped by what he called “poverty and chaos”.
He never met his birth father, and his stepfather left the family too. Young Tyson ran into drug dealers and convicts and was arrested 38 times before he was 13 years old. He ended up in a juvenile detention center.
After his mother died at the age of 16, he was officially adopted by his first boxing coach, Cus D’Amato, who became Tyson’s legal guardian.
“It was boxing that saved him – and nearly destroyed him,” writes Gray.
Sometimes the boxer was his worst enemy. During the rematch with Holyfield at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, known as “The Sound and the Fury,” Tyson had been agitated by repeated head butts by his opponent, one of which left a large cut above his right eye. In retaliation, Tyson is known to bit Holyfield’s right ear, removing a lump of his rag in the process.
As a result, Tyson was permanently suspended from boxing and his license to fight was revoked, a decision that was overturned a year later.
Gray also witnessed Tyson holding a man by the ankles outside a third floor hotel window to argue about money (“Bitch, can you fly?” Tyson shouted as his victim dangled).
And he was on the other end of the mic when Tyson, who was hugely successful in 2000, told Gray he was going to rip out the heart of rival boxer Lennox Lewis and then eat his kids too.
Tyson even threatened to kill Gray and promoter Don King during an interview.
“I said why? ‘ He said King stole money from him and I just let him answer, ”writes Gray.
“And after that, when I asked him something else, he replied and then said, ‘Mr. Gray, I love you,” and he kissed my cheek.
“It was far more disturbing when he kissed me than when he threatened to kill me.”
When a 25-year-old Tyson was jailed for rape for six years at the peak of his boxing power in 1992, he wrote to Gray of the Indiana Youth Center saying he could be released much sooner if he confessed to the crime. But he would never do that, he wrote.
“I will never admit that I didn’t do anything,” the letter says.
After that sentence, Tyson wrote that he had done “four or five other things” that were “worse than what I am being accused of” and concluded that it was probably right that he was in jail anyway.
Gray kept the letter. When Tyson was released in 1995 after serving less than three years of his sentence, he got the first television interview with the boxer and asked him in the face, What was was it worse than rape that he did this?
“Mr. Gray,” Tyson replied matter-of-factly, “it is probably for best that I don’t answer this question on national television because I don’t know the statute of limitations.
“But what I wrote you is true.”
While in prison, Tyson bought the first of his three Bengali tigers, a 250 kg cat named Kenya, which cost him $ 71,000. He had spoken to his car dealer about buying a new vehicle, but the conversation turned to horses first and then wild animals. (Eventually Tyson had to give up Kenya because, as Tyson once explained, the cat “tore off someone’s arm”.)
Today he prefers to keep pigeons.
But Tyson is still fighting – and collecting the money.
The boxer returned to the ring last month for an exhibition match against Roy Jones Jr., 15 years after his last professional match. The 54-year-old appears to be in great shape, with a rock-hard six-pack and bicep-like boulders. Though the fight ended in a draw, more than 1.2 million people paid $ 50 to watch on television, grossing Tyson $ 7.5 million for just 16 minutes of work.
In February, he also opened Tyson Ranch, a 40-acre cannabis farm in California City in the Mojave Desert, 110 miles north of Los Angeles. As a dedicated weed fan, Tyson even admitted smoking the stuff before his fight with Jones Jr.
“Look, I can’t stop smoking,” he told reporters. “I just have to smoke … I smoke every day.”
It’s just the newest chapter in what Gray calls Tyson’s “roller coaster” of a lifetime. “He remains a complicated man, forever unpredictable,” he concludes in the book.
“Who knows what will happen next?”
– New York Post
.
