by Mike Tyson
People said I thought I was gonna get beaten, so I did the biting routine. That’s bullshit. If that was the case, I would have done that in the first fight. In any fight anybody ever saw me lose, I took my beating like a man, I never sat down. No one could ever call me a dog. I was angry, I was mad, I lost my composure. I bit Evander Holyfield’s ear because at that moment I was enraged, and I didn’t care about fighting no more by the Marquis of Queensberry rules.
But there was no escaping the story. Sports Illustrated put it on the cover under the huge headline “MADMAN!” President Clinton said that he had been “horrified.” They were making jokes about it on Letterman and Leno. I was nominated for Sportsman of the Ear. They said it was a good fight for Pay Per Chew. The press called for a lifetime ban. I was called “dirty,” “disgusting,” “repellent,” “bestial,” “loathsome,” “vile,” and “cannibalistic.” But I didn’t care about any of that. I already felt that things were stacked against me anyway.
Part of the problem was that people were responding to images, not reality. If you watched a tape of the fight you’d see that Holyfield was clearly fighting a dirty fight, but he had the good-guy image. He was the one who strolled to the ring singing gospel songs. It didn’t make huge headlines when he was later implicated in a steroid ring out of Mobile, Alabama.
The crazy part was, there were a lot of people out there who were defending what I had done. I got a lot of love from the overseas press. Tony Sewell, an English writer, published an article called “Why Iron Mike Was Right to Take an Earful.” He wrote, “As the world rises in moral indignation and demands that Tyson be banned for going berserk, I smell a distinct waft of hypocrisy. Tyson was a gladiator who broke the rules. The real savages are the audience who now want to feed him to the lions.”
I reached the darkest place that’s in each and every human being – the place where you say, “Oh, this is fucked, I shouldn’t do this, but this is who I am.” After a few days, I went out and there would be crowds of people applauding me for biting that guy. Everybody thought it was cool.
“Yeah, champ, I’d bite that motherfucker too,” they’d scream.
I felt much better when people were condemning me for biting that ear than when they praised me for it.
Shortly after the fight, the lawsuits rolled in. One guy started a class action suit to get his ticket money refunded. Another woman who was serving drinks at a temporary bar in the arena said she was injured when a security guard threw her over a table when the riots broke out. All of those suits were dismissed.
Holyfield’s wife was also threatening to sue Crocodile. During the fight, Crocodile was screaming out instructions and exhortations to me.
“Bite, bite, Mike!” he yelled.
But she didn’t know that when you say “bite” it just means to fight harder.
Don was worried about me being banned for life, so he convinced me to do some damage control. He hired Sig Rogich, my great public relations specialist, to write a statement that I read that following Monday at a press conference at the MGM Grand.
“I snapped. Saturday night was the worst night of my professional career. I’m here today to apologize, to ask the people who expected more from Mike Tyson to forgive me for snapping in the ring and for doing something I have never done before and will never do again.” I apologized to Holyfield and then continued to read the words that were written for me. “I thought I might lose because of the severity of the cut above my eye and I just snapped. I can only say that I’m just thirty-one years old, in the prime of my career, and I have made it this far because I had no other way. I grew up in the streets, I fought my way out and I’ll not go back again. I learned the hard way from the past, because I didn’t have the luxury of schools or people to help me at a time when I needed it the most, and I expect punishment and would pay the price like a man. I reached out to the medical professionals for help to tell me why I did what I did, and I will have that help, now I will attempt to train not just my body, but my mind too.”
I was reciting those words, but I wasn’t buying into them. I felt shitty and embarrassed for saying all that because it wasn’t what was in my heart at the time. I was just going through the motions. I knew that they would hold it against me anyway and frankly, I really didn’t care if I got suspended. I was in New York buying a Ferrari when the Nevada State Athletic Commission met to decide my fate. I was represented by Oscar Goodman, who would go on to become the most famous mayor in Las Vegas history. Writers had been calling for a lifetime ban. Oscar put up a good defense, but in the end, those commissioners wanted some more blood. On July ninth, they called me a “discredit to boxing” and fined me 10 percent of my purse, which was $3 million, and then suspended me for at least a year. I really felt betrayed after all the money I’d made for that city. Nobody else even approached the revenue I brought into Vegas.
It was another Tyson Rule. A fine and suspension like that was unprecedented in organized sports. In 1977, Kermit Washington of the Lakers fractured the Houston Rockets’ Rudy Tomjanovich’s jaw and skull during a game. He almost killed Rudy and he ended Rudy’s career with that punch, but he was only fined $10,000 and suspended for sixty days. A hockey player named Dale Hunter viciously cross-checked Pierre Turgeon from behind after Turgeon stole the puck from him and scored a goal that put the game away. The hit effectively ended Turgeon’s play-offs that year. Hunter only got a twenty-one game suspension and lost $150,000 in salary. But even better, in the famous ice hockey Summit Series of 1972 between Russia and Canada, Bobby Clarke took his stick and gave Valeri Kharlamov, the Russian’s best player, a vicious two-hander to the ankle. Kharlamov’s ankle was broken and the Canadians went on to win the series. Clarke wasn’t even fined or suspended. He became a Canadian hero.
“I don’t know what I was thinking at all. It was an awful thing to do,” he’d say later. “But it sure felt good.”
I know that Evander knew that feeling too. When he was eighteen, he was competing in the semifinals of the Georgia Golden Gloves, fighting this guy named Jakey Winters. Winters dropped Holyfield with a left hook to the body and a left to the head. Holyfield got up, dazed and in danger of getting knocked out. So he clinched Winters, spit out his mouthpiece and took a bite out of his shoulder, drawing blood. Winters pulled back in pain and screamed. And then the bell rang. The referee took a point away from Holyfield and the fight continued. Winters won a unanimous decision. The only consequence Holyfield faced from his bite was a bruised ego and a unanimous decision against him.
I tried to stay out of the spotlight during my suspension from boxing. At first I was hardly seen out in public. One reason for that was that I spent a lot of time indoors at strip clubs. Whenever I’d meet a new girl, I’d take her to a strip club on the first date. It got so bad that Latondia had to bring the checks I needed to sign to the club and I’d autograph them while a girl was dancing on a pole ten feet away from me. I was really living a fantasy life.
In October of 1997, that Mitch Green lawsuit finally came to judgment. Mitch was suing me for $3 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages. I was scared that my image had deteriorated so much that I’d be on the hook big-time with the jury, so I almost offered Mitch a quarter of a million dollars to settle the suit. Thank God I didn’t. The jury ruled that I was provoked into the fight. They awarded him $100,000 but found him 55 percent responsible for the injuries, so I only had to pay him $45,000.
But I was running real low on cash. Even though I had made about $114 million from 1995 to 1997, I had spent almost all of that, plus I had a tax bill of $10 million due. I had about $6 million left and Don offered to advance me $4 million to take care of the taxes. But I wanted to use that money to set up trusts for all my kids. So I didn’t pay the taxes and gave the money to the children. In retrospect that was a stupid decision but I was arrogant at the time. So arrogant that I thought I could get high, drink all night, and then drive home to Connecticut from New York doing
130 miles per hour on my motorcycle.
The ironic part was that I was only going 10 miles per hour when I crashed my bike. Just minutes earlier, the police had pulled me and some of my motorcycle friends over because we were speeding, and I didn’t even have a license or anything but they let us go with a warning. We kept heading to my house but I kept dozing off and I slowed down to a crawl. I nodded out for a second and when I woke up, I saw my friend right in front of me. I didn’t want to hit him and fuck him up, so I slammed on my brakes and went flying over the handlebars.
Latondia was working out of the Connecticut house during my suspension and she got a call from the highway patrol that I had been in a motorcycle accident and had refused medical help. I was so messed up that a lady pulled over and wanted to take me to the hospital but I had her drive me home instead. When I got home, I just wanted to go to sleep I was so out of it. But Latondia had called Monica and Monica jumped on the first flight from Maryland, but in the meantime she urged Latondia not to let me fall asleep under any circumstances. My ribs were killing me and I couldn’t even talk without gasping for air because I had punctured one of my lungs but I didn’t realize that then.
I kept trying to nod off, but all I heard was, “Don’t go to sleep, Mike.” Eventually Farid and Latondia got me into a hot tub to soak because I was in so much pain, but that didn’t even help. We finally drove to the hospital emergency room. I had a broken rib, a broken shoulder, and a punctured lung. The nurses were amazed that I hadn’t broken my legs because the fall had shredded my pants. I was overweight then. I really believe that the excess weight had cushioned some of the fall. They filled me up with morphine and I kept ringing the bell for more. I threw up and all this pasty white shit came out of my lungs. But I did enjoy that morphine.
I started feeling better a few days later and I threw everyone out of the house. Monica, her mother, my daughter Rayna, Rory, my security, I just told everyone to leave. Farid and Latondia were getting ready to go when I called them back in and told them to stay. A few days later Latondia was in her office and I went in.
“Latondia, talk to Shawnee. I want you guys to get along and I want everybody to work together. Things are going to change. Are you with me?”
“Of course. You know I am,” she said.
I don’t think she took me too seriously, but I had been talking a lot recently to this woman named Shawnee Simms. Craig Boogie had found her and introduced me to her. Boogie was always surfing to find people who would bring deals to me. Shawnee was living in Atlanta and she was a fast talker who talked up a big game. She claimed she could bring in all these revenue streams for me, and she wanted to start a foundation to clean up my image and get the Shrivers and the Kennedys on board. I was up for anything that would bring in money because I was broke and didn’t see Don going out of his way to get me any deals.
I had a deal on the table with the WWF to make a WrestleMania appearance in March of 1998. So I invited Shawnee up to Connecticut for the meeting. We had been talking to her on the phone every day for weeks, but this was the first time that we had met her.
During the meeting, Shawnee put her hand on my shoulder. When we left the building, I took her aside.
“Don’t you ever fucking touch me in public again. Don’t touch me when I’m talking to businesspeople,” I said.
I got all Arnold Rothstein on her ass.
But Shawnee hung in there. Some of my friends had warned me about her from the beginning. They thought that Shawnee had picked their brains for information about me. They figured that Shawnee had just studied up on me and the boxing scene on the computer all day so she knew the names of all the players. They were convinced that Shawnee wasn’t a great businessperson; she just had a lot of game. But I was willing to give her a shot. She was always in my ear. “Mike, you should have some endorsements. You should be making sixty million a fight. Blah blah blah.”
On one of her trips up from Atlanta, I wound up sleeping with Shawnee. Not because I was attracted to her; I was just high. I don’t think she was trying to seduce me. We never slept together again. I was just a pig that one time.
My contract with the WWF was finalized at the end of December. Don King Productions would be paid my fee of $3.5 million for me being guest referee at the main event of WrestleMania XIV. I would also get 25 percent of the revenue from all pay-per-view buys in excess of six hundred thousand. That seemed good but I wasn’t happy with the deal Don had apparently done over the use of my image by the WWF. It seemed over-generous to Don, to say the least. And how the fuck did Don get to make money off my likeness anyway?
I turned to Jeff Wald, an entertainment industry friend of mine. I had met him through Don when I was getting myself away from Cayton. He had helped me in the Robin divorce and he was generally a cool guy. I respected Jeff because, like Don and I, he had come up from nothing. He told me that his father had died when he was a kid and his mother would beat his ass all the time.
I was in L.A. at the end of January with a lot of questions about how my business was being handled. So I had Shawnee call Jeff. It was 6:30 in the morning and she told Jeff that I was standing outside his home/office. Jeff was pissed because it was his birthday, but he let me in.
“Who owns my likeness?” I said as soon as we sat down.
I told him what I knew about Don’s deal over the use of my likeness. He thought that was outrageous so he got on the phone with Don.
“You can’t make that money off Mike’s image,” he told Don.
“Is Mike sitting there?” Don asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll give him the pictures, but you shouldn’t be meeting with Mike without me, motherfucker,” Don yelled.
He got off the phone and then I handed Jeff eight typewritten pages filled with the details of my most recent financial statement. Jeff started skimming the pages and he freaked out.
“Why are you being charged eight grand a week for the house you stay in during camp? And you’re getting charged thousands of dollars for towels. Who the fuck is your accountant?”
I was getting angry. Jeff told me to come back the next day when he had a chance to look over the documents thoroughly. I went back to my room at the Hotel Bel-Air.
After I had left Jeff’s house, King called Jeff and he threatened that he was going to fly out to L.A. Well, he did fly out to L.A. He came to the Hotel Bel-Air to beg me to come to my senses. I was getting into my limo outside the hotel when Don tried to squeeze in with me.
I kicked him in the head and he flew out of the car. Then I got out and stomped on him some more. I think I shocked all the people waiting for their cars.
“You want to meet, meet me over at Jeff Wald’s office,” I said and got into the car.
I was sitting in the conference room with Jeff and his partner Irving when Don showed up.
Jeff was all over Don from the beginning.
“Look at all this shit you did to him, man,” he said, holding the financials. “This isn’t right.”
“You mind your own business, Judas,” Don said. “You ate my food, you sat in the seats that I gave you …”
They screamed at each other for a little while and then Don took a conciliatory approach.
“Look, I’m going to fire Rory and John, and you and Irving can have their twenty percent,” Don said.
“Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “Mike is sitting right here. That’s his twenty percent. It’s his choice who is going to manage or not manage him. Besides, you’re giving us twenty percent of what? The guy has no license and you ain’t done shit to get it back. Fuck you!”
They started screaming at each other again. I was getting tired of all the words; I wanted action. So I grabbed a fork and I went after Don. Jeff threw all 5'6" of himself between us.
“Motherfuckers! Don’t you dare do this in my house!” he screamed. In the hallway, his secretary was freaking out and she ran right out of the house. Don left, and I’d had enough.
&nb
sp; “You guys take over this stuff,” I told Jeff and Irving. Jeff went right to work. He brought in an accountant who demanded all the files from my old accountant. Then he brought in John Branca and his law firm to go through all of my contracts. Branca was one of the top lawyers in the country.
Meanwhile, Don started blasting Jeff every chance he got. He was interviewed on Showtime during one of the fights and he told Jim Gray, “That Jeff Wald is a Judas and a racist.” Jeff was watching with his wife and she was not happy. The next time Jeff went to New York, he hired a big off-duty police lieutenant as his bodyguard.
On February second, I fired John Horne and Rory as my managers. Branca sent them a letter terminating their services. I loved Rory but I had no choice but to fire him along with John. The more we dug, the more we found out that I’d signed contracts that screwed me right and left. By then, I was almost numb from all this betrayal and all the drugs I was taking. Maybe it was better that I was numb. If I wasn’t, I just might have taken a gun and blown their fucking brains out. That’s what I might have done when I was younger. But I was happy that I didn’t have those guts by now.
On February fourth, Jeff Wald’s office released a formal statement from me.
At the present time, I have taken control of my own affairs both personal and business. I have hired new attorneys and accountants who report directly to me. I have formed Mike Tyson Enterprises and I am in the process of moving forward with my life. I appreciate the support I have always gotten from the American public and look forward to a bright new future with great anticipation.
At the present time, I am not answering any questions – but stay tuned.
The next day I was in New York at a press conference at the All Star Cafe to promote WrestleMania. All the reporters wanted to ask me about was my relationship with Don and John and Rory. I confirmed that I had fired John and Rory and that I was trying to extricate myself from Don. And then I extended an olive branch to Rory.
