by Mike Tyson
I started these long walks when I was reading a book about Alexander the Great and his army. They were walking sixty miles a day back then so I just said, “Fuck this, I can do this.” I got to ten miles a day and my feet felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to them. I had great sneakers on too, New Balance, and they still felt like someone set them on fire. I did a little more reading and I found out that all these great warriors would do these marches high. The history of war is the history of drugs. Every great general and warrior from the beginning of time was high.
So I started incorporating weed and alcohol into my walking regimen. I was pissed off in general but walking high in over 100-degree heat took my bipolar shit to a new level. Liquor, the weed, and the heat didn’t go together. I’d be walking bare-chested with my shirt tied around my head. My pants were falling off because I had lost so much weight. The sun had fried me, so I was as black as tar. I looked like a crackhead. People would see me and they didn’t know if it was me or not. One guy came up to me for an autograph and, pow, I smacked him. I saw a girl I had slept with one time who worked at Versace. She was concerned about me.
“Mike, are you all right?” she asked me.
“Fuck you, bitch,” I yelled at her. “I hate your guts. I never liked you.”
The sun had really fried my brains, I was losing my mind.
I didn’t carry any money on me and I’d get so dehydrated that I’d stumble into stores and the guys in there gave me water. Sometimes the local news choppers would be overhead following me around like I was O.J. in the Bronco.
All this walking was driving my security crazy. They nicknamed me Gump after Forrest Gump. Anthony Pitts would try to follow me at a discrete distance, but sometimes I’d lose him. Sometimes I didn’t even know he was around. I’d walk over to Cheetahs from my gym and Anthony had the managers primed to call him when I got there. Then Anthony and my other guys would take turns sitting in the parking lot watching for me.
One time, I walked all the way over to my friend Mack’s barbershop from my house. It was a particularly hot day and I had a big bag of weed with me. I was hanging out with Mack at his house, but then he had to go pick up some clothes from the dry cleaner so I started walking home. I was so out of it that I was talking to myself. I got a few blocks when I saw Anthony following me in his Suburban. I was high and I just snapped. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I’d go through spurts like that. In my stoned paranoid mind, Anthony was spying on me. Why did he want to go everywhere I fucking went? It slipped my mind that I was paying him to do this.
So I turned down an alleyway that led to a police station. By the time Anthony followed me, I was complaining to the cops and pointing him out. Anthony got out of his truck.
“I’m hired to look after you and now you need to get in the truck,” Anthony said. “Come on, we’re going back home.”
“I’m not getting in,” I said. “This guy is bothering me. I want this man arrested. He’s been following me.” I was screaming, and all the time I had a huge bag of weed on me.
The cops then started questioning Anthony and I took off. I was a few blocks away but Anthony caught up with me again. I was so pissed off that I picked up a brick that was lying in the gutter and threw it right through the windshield of his Suburban. Shawnee sent him the money to replace his window the next day.
On August twenty-second I was fined $187,500 for accidentally hitting that ref in Glasgow. It was the largest fine in U.K. history. I looked at it as a value-added tax. Besides, I was getting ready to make $20 million fighting Andrew Golota, the Foul Pole. Golota, a huge gentleman of Polish descent, had the reputation of being the dirtiest fighter in boxing. He was ahead in two fights with Riddick Bowe when he was disqualified for repeated low blows. I had gone to the same special ed school as Bowe so I was really psyched to win a fight for him.
We held a press conference in L.A. on September fourteenth to hype the fight and I was my vintage self.
“I’m a convicted rapist! I’m an animal! I’m the stupidest person in boxing! I gotta get outta here or I’m gonna kill somebody,” I mock screamed.
“I’m on this Zoloft thing, right? But I’m on that to keep me from killing y’all. That’s why I’m on that. Listen, now I’m out here fighting, right? They got me on some shit that got my dick fucked up, they got me on all type of shit, right? I’m just keeping it real here, right? I don’t want to be taking the Zoloft, but they are concerned about the fact that I’m a violent person, almost an animal. And they only want me to be an animal in the ring.”
I was on a roll. Or at least on some deep weed.
“You report on boxing, but you all have never fought, never been the champion and don’t know our pain, our sweat. Don’t know it’s so fucking lonely. Boxing’s the loneliest sport in the world. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t fuck my wife in a year. Do you think I give a damn about Andrew Golota? I haven’t seen my kids in months.”
“Why?” one of the reporters interrupted my monologue.
“None of your damned business, white boy, but I haven’t seen them in months. And you think I give a damn about you and any of y’all? I don’t care if I’m living or dying. I’m a dysfunctional motherfucker. Bring Andrew Golota on, bring those guys, they can keep their title, I don’t want their title, I want to strip them of their fucking health. Because I’m in pain, I want them to see pain, I want their kids to see pain. Lennox Lewis, I want his kids to go, ‘Ooo Daddy, are you okay, Daddy?’ Yeah, I don’t care about them, because they don’t care about me and my kids.”
When I got back to my house in Vegas, I was playing with two new cub cats that I smuggled in. By then, I had to get rid of Kenya. We were keeping her in Texas and my trainer was showing her to some animal enthusiasts who supposedly worked with tigers. I don’t know what happened but I heard that the lady enthusiast climbed over the fence to get Kenya and things went terribly wrong. They’re no good after tasting that blood, so I had to get rid of Kenya. We donated her to a zoo in California. I got sued, of course, but I won the case. I didn’t have to give the lady any money but I felt bad, so I gave her $250,000. She deserved something, I thought.
The Golota fight was in Detroit on October twentieth. The night before the fight I was really nervous. When I saw Golota in person at the weigh-in, I freaked out. He was really big and crazy and he had big red bumps over his back. He looked like a fucking leper. What the fuck am I doing here fighting this big crazy guy, I kept thinking while I was lying in bed trying to sleep. So I lit up a joint and as soon as I took that first toke my whole mood changed. Fuck that nigga, I thought. Whoa, I needed that joint.
The night of the fight I refused to take a urine test before I went out. I figured I’d just get the whizzer from Steve Thomas afterwards. Puffy and Lil Wayne were there and we had some rappers from the Cash Money crew rap me into the ring. I had my best game face on when we met in the center of the ring. I felt bad for that little ref. Between me and Golota, one of us might clock his ass.
The first round, I went to Golota’s body a lot and I could sense him breaking down. I was moving pretty fluidly and I was working off my jab. Jab in the face, boom, boom, then some punches to the body. He was keeping his left hand low. He threw a weak jab and I went under him and, boom, I cut his left eye with a punch. With about ten seconds to go in the round, I got in a solid straight right hand and down he went.
I went after him at the beginning of the second round. I was swinging wild punches that were missing, but I got in some punishment to his body. By the end of the round, he was retreating and just slapping his punches at me.
I was up and ready for round three to start when I couldn’t believe my eyes. Golota was fighting with his corner. I watched the Showtime feed later and Golota didn’t want to go out for another round, but his cornerman, this small, old Italian guy, Al Certo, was screaming at him.
“Throw your right fucking hand,” Certo said.
“I’m stopping the fight,” Golota said
.
“Don’t you dare, you cocksucker. You’re gonna win this fight.”
“Stop it,” Golota said.
“Don’t talk like that. C’mon, you fuck you. You’re gonna win this.”
“I quit,” Golota said. And got up and pushed Certo to the side and started pacing around the ring. I didn’t know what the fuck this lunatic was doing.
“No, no,” Certo screamed at him.
Golota walked over to the ref.
“I quit,” he said. And the ref waved the fight off.
But Certo wasn’t finished. When Golota got back to his corner, Certo tried to stuff his mouthpiece in and push him back out. But Golota had had enough. He put his robe on and rushed out of the ring. On the way to the dressing room, he was pelted with all kinds of shit and someone threw an orange soda and hit him and his whole body turned orange.
Afterwards, Golota tried to blame his quitting on getting dizzy from head butts but he just quit on his stool. He was one of those guys who went nuts from the pressure of fighting. But the next day, Golota’s wife took him to a hospital in Chicago and the doctor diagnosed him with a concussion and a fractured left cheekbone, the one that was the target of the right hand that floored him.
As soon as I got back to my dressing room, the Michigan officials rushed in to give me my urine test, so I didn’t have time to get the whizzer from Steve Thomas. I had to give them my own urine. Of course, they found the weed in my system. They should have given me a bonus for fighting under pot because it dulls your aggression. They suspended me for ninety days, which didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to fight anyway, but they also fined me $5,000 and made me donate $200,000 to a Michigan-based charity. And they took away my TKO and changed it to a no-decision.
Even with that $20 million from that fight, I was fucked financially. It got so bad that I started hustling some Malaysian promoters who wanted me to fight over there. They sent this lady named Rose Chu to convince me and she spent weeks at my house. They offered me a site fee of $16 million and they gave me a million-dollar advance and I even got them to spend $200,000 on renovations to my house and a down payment for a new Rolls-Royce.
At the beginning of 2001 my accountants sent me a cash flow breakdown for the year 2000. I had started the year $3.3 million in the hole. I earned $65.7 million in 2000, including a $20 million settlement from Sidley, my former business manager. They were happy to settle. The problem was that I spent $62 million that year – $8 million for taxes, $5.1 million for legal fees, $5 million to Monica, $4.1 million to repay a loan from one of my promoters, $3.9 million to Rooney for his suit, $3.4 million in payroll, $2.1 million for cars, $1.8 million infusion into Iron Mike Records, the shit added up.
Of course, my new management team had no answers. They were at one another’s throats. Jackie was telling me one thing, and Shawnee another.
Shawnee had visited the seventy-five-thousand-square-foot office that Jackie had opened in Brooklyn for Iron Mike Records and Shawnee decided she needed the same luxurious offices in Atlanta where she lived. Like an idiot I agreed. I never once stepped foot in those offices.
The truth was I couldn’t give a shit about my business. I wanted to deal with my vices and nothing else. My attitude was, I don’t give a fuck. Why would I think like that when I was at the top of my game? The sad truth is that no one ever had my best interests at heart except for Cus. I still can’t believe that he put that money aside for me in an IRA. When I think about that, I cry to this very day.
Things didn’t get better in June of 2001 when Camille died. I plunged deeper into depression and took more drugs. But I had to start training for my next fight, which was going to be in Denmark, so we set up camp at Big Bear City in San Bernardino County, California.
Monica and the kids came to stay with me for a few days. The day after they left, Rick Bowers, one of my security guys, and I went to the local Kmart because that was the only place in town to get certain provisions. There was an older woman, maybe fifty or so, at one of the cash registers. She was far from a looker but she had a dynamite body. She asked me for an autograph when we were checking out and then slipped me her phone number. Dog that I am, I called her and she came over to the house that Rick and I were staying in.
We had sex on the couch in the living room. The next morning Rick took Crocodile to the emergency room because Croc wanted to have something looked at. The Kmart woman was there and she told Rick that she “did something I shouldn’t have done.” I had told her the night before that we shouldn’t be having sex because I was in training. She also told Rick that I had hurt her during the sex and that she needed treatment. Then she asked him how I felt about her since we had sex. Later she called Rick and arranged to meet him at the local Denny’s. She told Rick that she liked me and that she was disappointed that I hadn’t come with him. She kept bugging Rick to call me and tell me to come down because she wanted to go out with me again.
Then she started calling Rick on his cell and warned us to leave town because the D.A. wanted her to press charges. She also said she was going to the tabloids. Rick said, “How do we fix this?” and she said, “I just need a new car,” because she had some run-down piece of shit.
Rick came back to the house.
“What’s up with that Kmart lady? She says you hurt her,” Rick said.
“Huh?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
We decided to go and confront her at her job. We met her in the parking lot and she was just nuts. She started talking about going to the tabloids with the story and that she needed a new car. I listened for a few seconds and then I turned to Rick.
“Let’s get out of here, I told you she was crazy,” I said.
Now she really got pissed. There were people around us in that parking lot and she felt disrespected.
The next day, July eighteenth, we opened the papers to see that this lunatic was saying that I had raped her. I went to the gym and there were hordes of media trying to get me to make a statement.
Within hours, Darrow was on the case. He went to the gym, told Rick to go back to the house and pack all our shit, and in a half hour we were all on a small prop jet heading to L.A. Then Darrow went back to Big Bear City and went to work.
It’s amazing how similar this claim was to Desiree Washington’s. The difference was that this time I had a genius of a lawyer who began by interviewing some of the Kmart lady’s coworkers. He found a close friend who worked with her who told him that the alleged victim had approached her at work the day after and told her that she had “made love” with me. She described me as being “sweet” and “nice” and how she “liked” my kisses and sweet talk. She also drew a picture of a large penis on a piece of paper and told her friend that I was that big and that she actually was hurt after having sex with me. She asked her friend to drive her to my house so she could get an apology from me for disrespecting her. She was disappointed because she expected “red carpet” treatment from me and I didn’t even serve her any refreshments. She also told her friend that she wanted things to “go a little farther” to get revenge against me because I didn’t apologize to her.
Darrow didn’t stop there. He got a call from the Kmart lady’s nephew, Kermit, and set up a meeting at Kermit’s apartment. Kermit told Darrow that he rented his apartment and that “I sure wish I had the two million dollars to afford the entire building.” Darrow then asked Kermit if he could record their conversation and Kermit said, “That’s not the way I do business. I guess you don’t want to do business.”
Darrow found the manager of Kmart, who told him, “You can’t believe anything she says.” Her manager also told Darrow that the woman was openly discussing her rape allegations with anyone who would listen, including her customers at Kmart. She was enjoying all the attention from the tabloids. Darrow also talked to the lady’s landlord who told him that she wasn’t “a very credible individual.” He even found a customer of the lady who ran a computer business who gave Darrow a tape of a
conversation between the lady and himself because the woman wanted to meet him after work. She told the computer guy that she was frustrated with her situation at home with her husband and that she sought out physical companionship elsewhere. When the computer guy told her he didn’t want to have an affair, she started harassing him with phone calls.
Last but not least, Darrow even got affidavits from two prominent doctors who said that pain and/or bleeding is often a consequence of consensual sex.
Darrow put all of these interviews into a hundred fifty pages that he presented to the D.A. of San Bernardino County. He told the D.A. that under the California penal code the D.A. was “obligated to inform the grand jury of evidence that reasonably tends to negate guilt” and that his investigation had uncovered a wealth of evidence that strongly supports “Mr. Tyson’s unwavering contention that he has engaged in absolutely no criminal wrongdoing whatsoever.”
Meanwhile, the Kmart lady got that ambulance chaser Gloria Allred to represent her in a civil claims case. And Showtime was concerned that the allegations had received press around the world that could “seriously impede Showtime’s ability to conduct its preparations for Tyson’s next bout in Copenhagen.” They wanted a resolution to see if the D.A. would press charges. They got it. After receiving the amazing document Darrow had prepared, the San Bernardino D.A. refused to return an indictment against me. I guess sometimes justice does prevail.
Then they tried to screw me again. A few weeks later, I was lying down in the television room at my Vegas house, watching ESPN SportsCenter. I could smell the fried chicken that Chef Drew was whipping up in the kitchen for lunch. Just a typical Vegas morning. Until my assistant Darryl rushed into the room. “Yo, Mike. I think the Taliban is here.” He seemed hysterical.
“Darryl, shut the fuck up,” I said. It was about ten days after the terrible attacks on 9/11.
