by Mike Tyson
But I wasn’t ready to settle down with one woman. So besides the young ladies that I’d have casual sex with, I also started seeing Suzette Charles. Suzette was a runner-up to Miss America, who had stepped in and assumed the crown when Vanessa Williams had to give up her title when nude photographs of her were published in Penthouse magazine. Suzette was a very nice, mature girl, a few years older than me.
But what was I doing juggling all these women? I couldn’t imagine doing that today. Go to somebody’s house and by the time you get bored with them, you go to somebody else’s house to spend time. And then at the end of the night, after visiting two or three women, you go home and you call somebody else to spend the night with you. That’s a crazy lifestyle, but everyone I was around then was telling me it was normal, because I was hanging around celebrities who were doing the same thing as I was.
So in a short time I had gone from famine to feast with women. And then I added one more to the buffet. I met Robin Givens. I was in England in bed with this British chick and we had the television on in the background. They were showing Soul Train and I turned to look at the screen and there was this beautiful black girl on the show.
“Who’s that girl?” I asked the British chick.
She didn’t know, so I started watching closely and they said that the guest stars were the cast of Head of the Class. So I called my friend John Horne in L.A. and he called Robin’s agent and we set up a dinner in L.A. when I got back to the States. I went with my friend Rory Holloway, an old friend from Catskill. We met at Le Dome, a nice restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. I was always late then, I thought that everybody should wait for me, but I should have known things weren’t going to work when I walked into the restaurant and Robin was sitting there with her sister, her mother, and her publicist.
But I felt a strong sexual vibe from her, some sort of chemistry. She says that later that night the two of us were alone and that I fell asleep on her lap and drooled on her. I guess that’s the way to win a woman over, drool on her.
It struck me that her mother was a professional stage mom, investing in her daughter so that she could be, or at least marry, somebody big. I certainly didn’t want to put any money in her pocket, but to read Robin’s account of our time together is like reading the worst romance/horror novel imaginable. In her description of the first days we spent together in L.A., she talks about a time when her mother and her sister had to go to Japan, and Robin and I would be alone.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do or what this boy is all about, I don’t know who you are trying to hurt,” her mother told her. “Sometimes I believe it’s me, because you think I demand too much and other times I feel it’s you yourself, because of your word, you can’t live up to what I demand. But I do know one thing, when you play with fire, you’re going to get burned, and mark my words, some things are just too dangerous to play with.”
This shit sounds like a bad Lifetime movie. Robin went on:
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
“I’ve worked too hard to have you throw it away on some …”
“Mom, we’re just having fun. Don’t you think I deserve to have some fun?”
Ruth was acting like I was some freeloader trying to get my hands on some of that Head of the Class money, which couldn’t pay a month’s worth of my rent. The truth is they had nothing until I came on the scene. They were flat broke. They didn’t own anything. They were just one big illusion.
In her book, Robin implied that we hadn’t slept together, but I actually nailed her the first or second night when she came to my hotel. Instead she claimed that we strolled through the mall and played with puppies at pet shops for hours. Can you see me in a motherfucking mall, the heavyweight champ of the world? What the fuck am I doing in a mall?
The truth is I wasn’t petting puppies with her, I was introducing her to my friends the heroin dealers. One night a few months later, we were walking in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue and Forty-first Street and we passed by Bryant Park and I saw this dope dealer who I knew from Brownsville. I walked over to him and slapped him five and Robin was blown away that I knew this guy. I’m sure she was mortified to be around someone like that, she was so artificial. At that time, she just wasn’t comfortable being around normal everyday folk. But to me, the neighborhood heroin dealer was normal everyday people.
I had been out of action for over three months, the longest layoff in my career at that point. Action in the ring, that is. Now it was time to grab another belt. James “Bonecrusher” Smith was the WBA champion and I took him on in Vegas on March seventh.
I didn’t go into the fight at 100 percent. I was suffering from a pinched nerve in my neck that would haunt me for years, so I was in a bit of pain. But I walked into the ring like I owned that place. I thought that the ring was my home and it was where I lived and I was totally comfortable in its circumference. But I still wasn’t a seasoned fighter.
My ego was so out of whack then. I felt like John McEnroe. Fuck you, who cares? I had so much respect for him. He was a beast, and that was just how I felt. I felt entitled to anything concerning the boxing world, and if I wasn’t getting it, then you were going to hear from me.
I went into the ring first. When Bonecrusher came in and we faced off, I didn’t feel any threat at all. I knew I’d be too elusive and he wouldn’t be able to hit me. He was a good strong fighter. He knocked out a lot of guys, but it was difficult for him to get to me.
The fight began and by the second round, Bonecrusher’s strategy was obvious. He was going to hold me or backpedal away from me. The crowd started booing as early as the second round and at the end of that round, referee Mills Lane deducted a point from him for holding. I was happy that he was holding me because I was in such tremendous pain from my pinched nerve that it could have been an ugly night. I just couldn’t get comfortable and I kept twitching from the pain the whole fight. My equilibrium was all messed up. He pretty much gave me an easy night off. The only time he connected was about ten seconds before the fight was over. I won every round.
I was criticized after that Bonecrusher fight, but what could I have done? He just didn’t want to fight. When I was on the BBC shortly after the fight, I had to defend myself.
“We are all disappointed with the Bonecrusher fight and I guess you were too,” the host said.
“I was fighting a very strong man but he just didn’t come to fight. He held me so tight it was almost impossible for me to get loose. I couldn’t believe it. He was fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world; this is the time to go all out and expose yourself,” I said.
“We’re impressed with your dignity in and out of the ring, but once or twice at the Bonecrusher fight you let that slip a bit between rounds,” he said. He was referring to some scrums between the rounds.
“No, no, on the contrary. I was trying to pull him in to fight. I would have done anything. I would have tap-danced in the middle of the ring. I said, ‘Come on, fight.’ People were paying a thousand dollars for ringside tickets. You must entertain the public, give them their money’s worth.”
After the fight, I got a $750,000 advance from Nintendo to use my likeness for a boxing video game called Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! I was never a video game kid so that didn’t really excite me. I just wanted to fight, all that other stuff was foreign to me.
I started to feel alienated from everything with all this celebrity bullshit. And I had no one to talk with about it since Cus was gone. Alex Wallau interviewed me for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and I said, “I used to keep a lot of things inside and Cus and I would talk about them. Now when those things come up, I just keep them inside.” That’s a sign of getting ready to lose it, right there.
I was coy when he asked me about the girl situation but he wouldn’t let it go.
“Come on, you mean there aren’t a ton of girls after the heavyweight champ of the world?”
“They don’t want me, they want the cash. I look in the mirror
every day and I know I’m not Clark Gable. I wish I could find a girl who knew me when I was broke and thought I was a nice guy. Cus never told me it would be like this, he told me I’d make a lot of money and I’d have a lot of girls and I was going to be happy. But he never told me life would be like this.”
I was a misfit from Brownsville and all of a sudden I was getting all this adulation. It was crazy. And it was about to get crazier. I was falling in love with Robin. I remember the exact moment too.
We were walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood. Robin was teasing me about something and she hit me and took off. I ran after her and just as I was about to catch up to her, she made a quick lateral move, and I just kept on and I fell down and I literally slid across the street like I was sliding into home plate. There were cars coming but I was going so fast it looked like I was shot out of a slingshot. As my slide came to an end, I maneuvered myself into my best B-boy pose. I had on these really expensive clothes and they were completely shredded from that slide. I was so embarrassed but I kept the pose. I lay there talking to her for a few seconds as if nothing had just happened. Robin was standing there laughing. She thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Then I fell in love with her. Later I realized that this little incident was a metaphor for our whole relationship. She teased me, she made an elusive move, and I played right into her hands. It was chess and I was her pawn.
But how could I have expected to be sophisticated in these matters of the heart? Robin was my first real relationship, except for Naomi who, by the way, was pissed when she found out about Robin. Before that, it was just juggling a lot of girls I was fucking and telling a lot of lies. That’s why I don’t lie anymore – because I was so good at it. It’s probably also why I used to work so hard to degrade myself. I couldn’t take being the big fish and having everyone talk nice about me. That made me feel uncomfortable because of my low self-esteem. It got to be overbearing and I had to berate myself and cut myself down. Everybody was saying so many good things about me that it fucked my head up. Hey, let’s get some balance. It’s not like I was a fucking saint. I shot at people. My social skills consisted of putting a guy in a coma. If I did that, I might get a good pasta meal. That’s how Cus programmed me. Every time you fight and win, you get rewarded.
So maybe Robin was just what the doctor ordered. A manipulative shrew who could bring me to my knees. I was like a fucking trained puppy dog around her. “That’s okay, please, please, you can steal my money, but don’t take the pussy away, please, please.” Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t just about sex. I think I got off most on the intimacy. I don’t even think I was very good sexually then. I heard her once say that I was good in bed but I don’t agree. I was just a young guy in love. I had never had that feeling before.
I was back in the ring in May. My next opponent was Pinklon Thomas, who was a great fighter. We had a press conference before the fight. I was up on the stage and I saw Robin come in with some of her fellow actors from her sitcom and I was ecstatic. I was flossing, posing for pictures, just happy. Now, that was a departure for me because I was never happy at these press conferences, I always had that ugly look on my face. The press was confused.
“What happened to Tyson?” one of the reporters said. And then they turned around and saw Robin there and put two and two together.
“No wonder why he’s so happy,” somebody else said.
Once they said that, it was on. Pinklon came over to shake my hand and I went into Iron Mike mode. “Suck my dick,” I told him.
“Oh, you’re going to be like that? To hell with you,” he said.
“You dumb ignorant nigga. Don’t you know I’m a god? You should be on your knees sucking my dick right now for me giving you this opportunity to fight me,” I came back. Today I’m just so embarrassed that I ever said something like that to a grown man.
I was hoping that Robin didn’t hear that. Holy shit, the minute she came into that room, she had taken me off my square. There I was, jumping off the stage, going over to her and the cast in my cool hip nonthreatening black man persona.
“Hi, guys. How are you all doing?”
That’s the phony shit that Cus was talking about. So I had to go back and forth between my megalomaniac shit and my nonthreatening shit and it was confusing even me. It’s hard trying to be two motherfuckers at once in one place.
“You motherfucker, I’m going to kill you, nigga.” “So how are you doing, my love?”
I was defending my two belts that night, so I was psyched but I wasn’t overconfident. Pinklon was a former champion only beaten once by Trevor Berbick and that was a fluke. I got off good that night and almost knocked him out in the first round. But in the second, third, fourth, and fifth he was coming back. He probably won a few of those rounds. He had a masterful, hard jab, but he was just tap, tap, tapping, and getting points.
Between the fifth and sixth rounds, Kevin got on me in the corner.
“Are we going to fight or are we going to bullshit, huh? Fight or bullshit.”
I told Kevin that Thomas was getting tired right before the sixth round.
In the sixth I got off a devastating left hook that exploded on his chin, but he was such a disciplined and composed fighter that he acted like it didn’t faze him. But I had watched all the great fighters, Robinson, Marciano, I knew that if I hit you right, you’re hurt. I don’t care how much of a poker face you have on. So I just threw everything I had at him, maybe a fifteen-punch barrage, and I came up with that resounding knockout. He was knocked-out cold and once he fell onto the floor, he was so gutsy he tried to get up. But I saw the pain on his face and I knew he wouldn’t make it. That might have been the most vicious knockout of my career. It was like hitting the heavy bag, I wasn’t worried about anything incoming. Just think about how much character he exhibited. All that pain on his face and he’s still trying to get up. I thought, Damn. You want some more?
Even though I won the fight with a masterful knockout, I wasn’t pleased with my overall performance, and I began questioning the fights that Jimmy and Cayton were lining up for me. Cus wanted to work with me on certain things before he died. But these guys didn’t care, they just threw me in with anyone. Cus might have thought that the Pinklon match was too soon and he might have put me in with someone else. I didn’t look good that fight even though the knockout was resounding. Cus would have been angry with me. But I didn’t have that anymore. I didn’t have to worry about somebody ripping my fucking ass out in the dressing room if he didn’t like what I was doing. I didn’t have to listen to anybody. You know how easy it is to relax when you don’t have to give a fuck?
After the Thomas fight, I had more time to spend with Robin. We had sex, but it wasn’t passionate. She’s not the type to be sucking on your toes and all that shit. She’s pragmatic. But I just thought she was an adorable girl. Until she caught me cheating. I was constantly cheating on her and constantly getting caught. I wasn’t too suave. She’d see lipstick on the crotch of my sweatpants.
Then it was on.
“Fuck you. How could you do this? Aggghh,” she’d scream and charge me, throwing punches and trying to kick me in the balls. She was relentless. I’d get frustrated and I’d slap her and figure that would end things, but it didn’t. She’d fight back harder. She wasn’t a Brownsville girl, she was a suburban girl, but don’t underestimate her. She had been in a few fights. These moments reminded me of my mother’s dysfunctional relationships with men.
The truth is I was sick of fighting. I was sick of fighting with Robin and I was sick of fighting in the ring. The stress of being the world’s champ and having to prove myself over and over just got to me. I had been doing that shit since I was thirteen. And it wasn’t just the time I spent in the ring. Whether it was during a fight or in camp sparring, I had always fought guys who were more experienced than me. Normally when you see a champion sparring somebody or even fighting someone, he’s fighting somebody who is inferior to him who he can handle
with ease. But my sparring partners were constantly trying to hurt me. That was their instruction. If they didn’t do that, they’d be sent home. When you start training, you’re scared. You ain’t going to go out and play and party because you know you have to fight this guy and the last time he gave you a fucking headache. You’re not going to go outside to the bar around the corner and visit no girl. You’re going home, you go in the tub, you’re going to concentrate on how you are going to box this guy the next day. That was my life and I was tired of it.
I’ve always been a depressed kind of person, but this stress was just making it worse. I was moody all the time. I had to go right back into the ring the first day of August, so I had to start training with hardly a break. I got to camp in Vegas and I got homesick. I missed hanging out and partying in Albany with Rory and my other friends. It came to a head a little more than a month before the Tony Tucker fight. This was going to be the biggest fight of my career, the fight to unify all three titles.
I pulled Steve Lott aside one day in the gym.
“I’m going to retire,” I said.
The pressure was getting to me. Big clumps of my hair were falling out from alopecia, a nervous condition. I didn’t even care if I got a third belt. Robin wasn’t exactly an anchor of stability for me; we were always fighting and temporarily breaking up. I was stressed out just from walking down the street. Guys would come up to me and say that they had bet their lives on me and I had to win or else they’d lose their house and their wife would leave them. I didn’t want to let those people down.
I guess I just never thought I was good enough for the job. I was too insecure to be that dominant person. Between fights I was going to these really bucket-of-blood places, in the middle of Bumfuck, Florida, and I’m strutting in there and all these motherfuckers got their guns up. And I’m talking shit and starting fights. I’ve got all these diamonds on me, they should have beaten my ass and robbed me. They could have killed my fucking ass. Praise be to Allah that these people never killed me. You could put me in any city in any country and I’d gravitate to the darkest cesspool. Sometimes I’d go alone with no security. But I never got shot, never got stuck up. I always felt safest when I was in the hood. People would always ask me, “Mike, you ain’t scared down there?” I’d say, “Shit, I’m scared on the Vegas strip.” I was just so at home there. I’d see a lady and her kids out late at night in the freezing cold and it reminded me of my mother and me.
