by Mike Tyson
I never talked to girls in Brownsville. They were scared of me because I was real crude when I was young and I had a nasty attitude back then. The girls in my neighborhood could always see through me. I didn’t have enough game for them. So my friends would go, “Come here, baby, let me talk to you.” It was easier to meet girls back in my white world. I’d meet them at photo shoots or when they’d interview me, or they’d be the model working with you on the shoot. Being the champ made me slightly more confident around women, but it also made the women a lot more aggressive. So that made me feel it was okay to do things. Like if they were hugging me, it made me feel that it was okay to grab their ass and kiss them because at twenty I still didn’t know any better. I really believed that every women who approached me wanted to have sex with me. Before I was “Mike Tyson” nobody wanted anything to do with me. Since I wasn’t particularly adept with women, if I slept with someone once, I’d try to see them again.
I still didn’t have the tools to decipher women’s intentions. Beautiful women would hit on me but I was such a smuck. Instead of saying, “Hey, let’s go to my car” or “Let’s go hook up in my apartment,” I’d make plans to go to a movie with her the next day. Then I’d go home and jerk off thinking about her. I could have had her right there in the room. I should have just said, “Why don’t you come over right now.” I once was talking to a girl for hours and finally she said, “Hey, listen, I’m just going to get in this car and come over to your apartment.” In my head I was going, Thank God. Oh, thank God. And I sprayed the deodorant thing even though my house looked good and I got my condoms and some porn movies out. Everything was ready. I was just so happy.
I’d be hanging out with older celebrities at Columbus and they’d see that girls would like me and they’d say, “Why don’t you bring her over to my hotel and we’ll have dinner?” They could see that I wasn’t too cool with the girls. When girls started coming on to me at Columbus, I’d take them downstairs to where the bathrooms were. The place would be packed and they’d see us go down. And then when we came back up, the girl’s back would be all dirty from the bathroom floor. And Paulie would go, “Yo, Mike. They’re all coming up dirty.”
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I got too self-indulgent. I’d have ten women hanging out in my hotel room in Vegas. When I had to go down for the press conference, I’d bring one and leave the rest in the room for when I was finished. Sometimes I’d get naked and put the championship belt on and have sex with a girl. Whenever there was a willing partner, I wanted to do it. The crazy part was that I was trying to satisfy each one of them. That was impossible; these ladies were nuts. After a while, I put together a Rolodex of girls in different cities. I had my Vegas girls, my L.A. girls, my Florida girls, my Detroit girls. Oh, man, why would I want to do that?
I just went totally off the track. I was burning the candle at both ends, training hard and partying just as hard as I was training—drinking, fucking, and fighting with these women all night. Just stupid selfish shit that you do when you’re a young kid with some loot.
Around this time, I met a girl who was more than my match. I had been introduced to some people who were at the top of the fashion world. This wasn’t Columbus, this was the real international jet-setting dining-with-royalty scene. I was going out with a model at the time but my friend Q got angry with her over some money. “Forget her, Mike. I am going to put you in touch with perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s just a teenager now but she will be the highest-paid model soon. You better get with her now because she won’t talk to anyone in a few years.”
Q invited me to a party that this girl would be attending. It was at an exquisite apartment on Fifth Avenue. We’re chilling and Q brings this model over to meet me. She was everything Q said she was, plus she had an amazing English accent. You could tell she was on top of her game. We started talking and she knew who I was and she seemed intrigued with me.
We had exchanged numbers, so the next day I looked for the piece of paper she gave me. I found it. She had written “Naomi Campbell” on it along with her number.
The next thing I knew, we were dating. We couldn’t keep away from each other. She was a very passionate, physical kind of person. We actually had a lot in common. She was raised by a single parent. Her mother broke her ass to save enough money to send her to private schools in England. Naomi was a privileged little young lady all her life.
We fought a lot. I was always with other girls and she didn’t like that. I don’t think we were meant to be in a great love affair but we were two people who really liked being around each other. She was so focused on her career. She was just an awesome strong-willed person. And she’d fight for you. If I’d get in a scrap she’d be right alongside me, she wasn’t afraid to fight. She wouldn’t let anyone talk back about me either. She was just a little girl trying to find her way back then, both of us were really, and the world was devouring us. We didn’t know anything about life then, or at least I didn’t. But in a few years, she was on top of the world and no one could withstand her. She could have any man on the planet. Her presence was too strong. They had to give in.
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 something was up when I walked into the restaurant and Robin was sitting there with her sister, her mother, and her publicist.
I also didn’t know that Robin and her mother, Ruth, had been on the prowl for a big black celebrity for Robin since she graduated from college. 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.
After I saw her and her mother in operation mode, it struck me that her mother was a prolific stage mom, investing in her daughter so that she could be, or at least marry, somebody big. They somehow finagled their way onto Cosby’s show and then wormed their way into staying at his house in L.A.
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 b
oy 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. What her mother probably said was, “Let’s get our hooks in this guy. This is what I’ve been training you to do for years. It didn’t work with Eddie Murphy or Michael Jordan, so let’s try this big black buck.”
“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 the Ruthless 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. They had nothing until I came on the scene. They were two broke charlatans. 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 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.
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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.
