Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography

by Mike Tyson

  So now I had two belts and tons of money and I should have been a happy camper. But that was not who I was. I was always a depressed, wretched person. I’d been on medication since I was a kid and I was probably still getting medicated after I got out of jail. But then I began to self-medicate. I’d been dying to smoke pot the whole time I was in jail, but I didn’t dare do it because they’d do random piss tests. But now I had the quack doctor, Dr. Smedi, and I knew he’d make sure my piss was clean.

  I even began to do coke again. It was right after the Seldon fight and I was with a friend who had some and I told him to give me the bag. Out of the blue. That’s what addicts do. I hadn’t done those kinds of drugs in fifteen years and, boom, it just snapped right back.

  I know that good Muslims didn’t smoke weed or snort coke or drink champagne but I was going through an awful lot of shit. I’m sure Allah knew that my shit was just overwhelming and that I wasn’t strong enough then to deal with it.

  Because of some bullshit lawsuit by Lennox Lewis, I had to relinquish my WBC belt right after the Seldon fight. Lewis was the mandatory challenger, but I wanted to unify the titles. So now I just had the WBA belt and my next opponent was Evander Holyfield.

  If I would’ve fought Holyfield in 1991 when I was supposed to fight him originally, I would have knocked him out. He knows that, everybody in his camp knows that. The best thing that ever happened to him was that I went to prison. That’s when I lost all my timing. I couldn’t be the tough eight-round fighter I had been. I told everybody that I wasn’t ready to fight major-league fights, but Don was pushing me and I wanted the money. I was being greedy, so I took the fight.

  Holyfield hadn’t looked very good in his fights leading up to ours. He lost a couple of them but at least he was active. I watched him fight Bobby Czyz, a puffed-up light heavyweight and Czyz beat the shit out of him before he lost in the tenth round, so I didn’t really train all that much for the first fight with Holyfield. I looked at some of his fights, but I didn’t really have any particular strategy going into my fights at that time, usually it was just go in and hit them. The odds opened up at 25–1 in my favor.

  Later I found out that Crocodile was getting reports from slick guys around who were supposed to know the boxing game. Holyfield had been training in the mountains for seventeen weeks like a dog, but Croc was hearing some bullshit disinformation that he wasn’t even in shape.

  “Mike, you’re gonna kill this guy,” he kept telling me.

  Holyfield and I go back a long way. We were both together at the Junior Olympics and we were always friendly with each other. He was always on my side, rooting for me while I was fighting, and vice versa. He got a lot of bad breaks in the amateurs. He lost some fights that he should have won, and then they screwed him big-time in the Olympics. When we were younger, we never thought we would ever fight and make that much money together later on.

  Actually, that’s why I was fighting. My heart wasn’t into boxing but I needed the money. There was no fun in getting into the ring for me anymore. Once I left prison, the fun really died. That’s why I had a guy like Crocodile around me then. He was a good guy and he always motivated me, got me psyched to fight. He was also a training nut and I needed somebody like that pushing me then.

  The first fight started well enough. I landed a good body shot on him in the first round and he screamed. I was thinking that I was going to win. But from the second round on, I really blacked out. I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but during the second fight, I finally realized he had been using his head to butt me senseless. From the second round of that first fight on, I was fighting on pure instinct; I didn’t remember anything. In the sixth round, one of his head butts opened up a cut. The next round I was almost knocked out by a butt. In the tenth round, he connected with twenty-three power punches, and I never felt a thing, I only heard the sound of them whooshing around my head. I was only staying up because of adrenaline. When I’d go back to my corner between rounds, I didn’t hear a fucking thing my trainers were saying to me. I don’t remember going into the ring, or getting up to fight; I just remember being there. After the fight was over, I was still so out of it that I asked my cornermen which round I knocked Holyfield out in.

  In the dressing room afterwards, Crocodile was enraged.

  “Look at your head, Mike,” he told me. I had six knots as big as a fist all over my head from Holyfield’s head butts.

  I wanted to fight Holyfield right again, I was so mad. I was really sore and beat-up, but I started training the next night.

  I was angry that I lost my title, but I never looked back at fights or was, like, “Aw, fuck it.” It just happened and I would start my day over. Losing is very traumatic for some people. Floyd Patterson would put on fake beards and wear dark glasses when he went out in public after he lost his title. When Foreman lost to Ali and then to Jimmy Young, the press asked him what it was like to lose and he said, “It’s like being in a deep dark nothing, like out at sea, with nothing over your head or under your feet, just nothing, nothing but nothing. A horrible smell came with it, a smell I hadn’t forgotten, a smell of sorrow. You multiply every sad thought you ever had it wouldn’t come close to this and then I looked around and I was dead. That was it. I thought of everything I worked for, I hadn’t said good-bye to my mother, my children, all the money I hid in safe-deposit boxes, you know how paper burns when you touch it, it just crumbles. That was my life. I looked back and I saw it crumble, like I’d fallen for a big joke.”

  I never had a reaction like that. I know who I am, I know I’m a man. A guy like Holyfield based his whole existence around boxing, that’s why he continued to fight for so long. I was raised with Cus D’Amato. He’d always say that boxing is not your life, it’s what you do for a living; it’s what you do to make a life, but it is not your life. He said, “Losing, winning, never take it personal.” Every time I lost, I just dealt with it, because it never became my life. That’s what I was taught.

  By that time, Monica was pregnant with our second child. I was getting a lot of shit from the Imam in my Vegas mosque about the fact that we hadn’t gotten married yet. The truth was I hardly saw Monica and the kids. I was in training and when I wasn’t in training I was seeing one of my multiple girlfriends. In fact, the day that I proposed to Monica, Hope had been staying with us, since she was going to school in D.C., and I dropped her off at her school and then went to hit some new girl I had been seeing in D.C.

  Hope was ragging on me about getting a prenup. I probably should have, but I was an impulsive smuck. Monica and I would fight all the time. Of course, a lot of the time it was over my cheating.

  I had Brother Siddeeq fly to Maryland and he performed the ceremony and then he brought the papers to a local D.C. Imam who could certify them. Being married didn’t change anything with Monica. I was still seeing my girls on the side and now I had to go into training for the second Holyfield fight.

  When I began to get ready for our rematch, I told the press that I had had a bad night but that I would fight Holyfield like I knocked him out the first time. I got that attitude from the Mexican fighters. When you fight an American fighter and knock him out, invariably the next time you fight, their fighting is tentative. But with a Mexican fighter, even if you knocked him out the first time, he’s going to fight the next fight like he knocked you out. Those guys don’t feel intimidated. They come back uninhibited and just go for it.

  I made some changes for the second fight though. My old roommate Jay Bright had been my trainer but I replaced him with Richie Giachetti. Firing Jay was easy. He was family and family is always the first to go. I trained twice as hard for the second fight.

  Three days before the fight, there was some controversy over the referee. Mitch Halpern was supposed to ref the fight again, but he had been drunk as a skunk during the first Holyfield fight. As soon as I went out for the instructions and he went to touch my glove, I smelled it. His eyes were red. I’m an addict, I could tell r
ight away. No referee would have let me take that kind of punishment that Holyfield was giving me, but he let me take it all the way to the eleventh round because he was so drunk and out of it.

  Some people in my camp tried to get Halpern off the second fight. I don’t know much about it, I never objected to anybody. My job was to fight and not worry about the referee or the timekeeper. But John Horne went before the commission and said that Halpern was too lenient in allowing Holyfield to hold me and butt me.

  “If it wasn’t for Mike Tyson you wouldn’t be here,” he told the commissioners.

  That was smart. The commission voted 4–1 to retain Halpern. But after the issue was raised, Halpern took himself off the fight. Holyfield’s camp had gotten Joe Cortez and Richard Steele, two referees that they thought might favor me, excluded from the fight, so the commission wound up using Mills Lane. Mills Lane was a former district attorney and district judge who had been quoted extensively saying that I was a “vicious criminal” who shouldn’t be allowed to box. How could I possibly get a fair shake when the ref was saying stuff like that against me? What I didn’t know at the time of the second Holyfield fight was that Lane and Holyfield had a close relationship. Holyfield’s own trainer, Tommy Brooks, was quoted as saying that Mills Lane “cried tears” the night Holyfield lost to Riddick Bowe. Ha! Ha! I didn’t know that Mills was in love with Evander!

  Holyfield and I were originally supposed to fight for the second time on May 3, 1997, but I got head-butted in training and the fight was postponed to June twenty-eighth. I was the challenger, so I had to enter the ring first. On my walk in we played a song by Tupac. People think that I would use gangster rap to solidify my image, but that wasn’t the case. I was just listening to good music going in.

  The fight started and I was feeling pretty good. I was confident, my body felt good, my movement was fluid. I was pretty elusive, moving around, not throwing anything big, just boxing. Then Holyfield butted me again. It was obvious to anyone watching that Holyfield’s tactic was to wait for me to throw a punch and then burrow in with his head. So the head butts were no accidents, they were a strategy.

  It got worse in the second round. I started winging some punches at Holyfield and he dove in again and, boom! A big gash opened up over my eye. I immediately turned to Mills Lane.

  “He butted me!”

  Lane didn’t even say anything, but he ruled it an accident.

  Now Holyfield started looking at the cut on top of my eye. He was charging at me with his head. He was taller than me, so what was his head doing underneath my head? I was getting frustrated.

  When the third round began, I was furious. I was so anxious to start fighting that I left the corner without my mouthpiece, but Richie called me back and put it in. We started the round and I hit Holyfield with a couple of hard punches. The crowd started going crazy. They could feel that the fight had really shifted. And that’s when he butted me again. I started feeling weary, like I was blacking out a little, but my anger and adrenaline jolted me back. I just wanted to kill him. Anybody watching could see that the head butts were so overt. I was furious, I was an undisciplined soldier and I lost my composure. So I bit him in the ear.

  People think that I spit my mouthpiece out to bite him, but I didn’t. From that point on, I don’t remember too much because I was so enraged. When I looked at the tape, I must have spit the piece of his earlobe on the canvas because I was pointing to it. It was, like, “Yeah, you take that.” They actually found that piece after the fight and tried to sew it back on but it didn’t take.

  Holyfield leapt up in the air in pain and then he turned to go to his corner, but I followed him and pushed him from behind. I wanted to kick him right in his groin, but I just pushed him. It was a street fight now. The doctor took a look at him and allowed him to continue and then Mills Lane took two points away from me, but in my mind, it didn’t matter. They were all against me anyway. So the fight resumed and he butted me again. And the ref, of course, did nothing. So we clinched and I bit him again on the other ear, but we kept on fighting till the end of the round.

  Then all hell broke loose. Holyfield’s corner complained to Mills Lane that I had bitten him again and Lane stopped the fight. I was too enraged to even hear the ring announcer say, “Referee Mills Lane has disqualified Mike Tyson for biting Evander Holyfield on both of his ears.” Holyfield was in his corner. He didn’t want any part of this shit, but I was still trying to get a hand on him. I wanted to destroy everything and everybody in his corner. People were pulling me and blocking me and he was standing in his corner, huddled up. Everyone was protecting him. He looked frightened. I was still trying to get at him. I had fifty people on me and I was still fighting the cops. Oh lord! They should have tased me. I vote for being tased that night.

  Somehow they got me out of the ring. On the way back to the dressing room, someone tossed a full bottle of water at me and someone else gave me the finger. I climbed over the railing and tried to get at them, but my cornermen pulled me back. Then more people were throwing their sodas and beers on us. Anthony Pitts’s $2,500 tailor-made suit was ruined.

  Mills Lane was interviewed in the ring and he claimed that all the butting Holyfield had done was accidental. Holyfield was interviewed and he praised Mills Lane.

  “I’m grateful we have a referee like Mills Lane to see the situation that this thing is intentioned.”

  I was still going crazy in the dressing room. I had my gloves on and I was punching the walls. John Horne went out to talk to Jim Gray, the Showtime announcer.

  “All I know is that Mike got a cut over his eye three inches long and Evander got a little nip on his ear that don’t mean nothing. He jumped around like a little bitch. The head-butting was going on so long. Come on, one head butt may be accidental, fifteen is not,” John said.

  I barely remember being interviewed after the fight. My face was a grotesque mask, all cut up and swollen. I looked like a monster. Jim Gray caught up to me outside my dressing room as I was leaving.

  “The head butt in the second round, which opened the gash in your eye, tell us about that firstly,” he said.

  “He butted me in the first round, but then he butted me again in the second round, then as soon as he butted me I watched him, he had held me and he looked right at me, and I saw him and he kept going, trying to butt me again. He kept going down and coming up and then he charged into me. And no one warned him, no one took any points from him. What am I to do? This is my career. I can’t continue getting butted like that. I’ve got children to raise and this guy keeps butting me, trying to cut me and get me stopped on cuts. I’ve got to retaliate.”

  “Now, immediately you stopped fighting right there and you turned to Mills Lane and you said what, and as a result of which he did nothing, but what did you say to Mills right at that time?”

  “I don’t remember, I told him that he butted me. I know I complained about being butted and we complained about it the first fight. Listen, Holyfield is not the tough warrior everyone says he is. He got a little nick on his ear and he quit. I got one eye, he’s not impaired, he’s got ears, I got one, if he takes one, I got another one. I’m ready to fight. He didn’t want to fight. I’m ready to fight him right now.”

  “Mills Lane stopped the fight, it wasn’t Holyfield who stopped the fight,” Jim said.

  “Oh, he didn’t want to fight …”

  “Mills said he stopped the fight. You bit him, was that a retaliation for the eye, when you bit him in his ear?”

  “Regardless of what I did, he’s been butting me for two fights,” I said.

  “But you’ve got to address it, Mike.”

  “I did address it! I addressed it in the ring!”

  “Why did you do that though, Mike, I mean was that the proper response?”

  I was getting exasperated.

  “Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me!” I screamed. “I’ve got to go home and my kids are going to be scared of me, look at me, man!”r />
  Then I stormed off. We drove straight to my house where all the women were waiting. For some reason, none of the wives had gone to the fight, they just watched it on TV.

  There were angry protestors outside my gates. People were blowing their horns and screaming, “Fixed fight!” and “Move out of the neighborhood!” and someone even threw a fish head onto my property. They kept it up until some of my security guys shot some BBs in their direction.

  A doctor came and stitched up my cut. Then I started pacing around the dining room.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” I said. I was regretful but reluctantly regretful. I was an undisciplined soldier.

  “My fans are going to hate me,” I worried.

  Monica was very understanding and comforting. She told me that everybody makes mistakes. After a while, I smoked some weed and drank some liquor and went to sleep.

  Back at the MGM Grand, people were fighting one another in the casino, being sent to the hospital. Gaming tables were knocked over and people were grabbing the chips. They had to close it down. And then they looked at the surveillance videos and tracked down and arrested the people who stole the chips. It was mayhem.

  The next day I was feeling really down. I had no idea that what had happened would become such an international incident. My whole life’s been like that. I say or do something I think is small but the whole world thinks it’s big. I didn’t think that people would use my reaction to define my career. Maybe I should have thought about how things will affect me in posterity, but that’s not the way I think.