by Mike Tyson
We had a crazy camp for the Bruno fight. Crocodile kept getting in fights with my sparring partners. Then he’d tell them that I’d bust their heads if they keep disrespecting him. He would put the first guy in the ring and then he would come over to me.
“You know, Mike, all them guys are saying that they’re going to kick your ass. That they should be fighting for the title, not you.”
He had me in the middle of it. These guys were now trying to kill me. I was in a fucking life-or-death situation with my sparring partners. What the fuck?
One day close to the fight, I was jumping rope and Crocodile came over.
“You’re back, champ. When Ali was in exile, he came back and fought for the world title,” he said.
“Yeah, Ali didn’t get his, but I’m not fighting Joe Frazier. I’m fighting Frank Bruno. Ali had to fight animals when he came back. But I’m going to get mine,” I said. “I’m going to get this guy.”
I took that confidence into the ring with me. I was led in by Crocodile who was wearing a black vest with white lettering on the back that read, LOVED BY FEW, HATED BY MANY, RESPECTED BY ALL. I was booed for the first time in my career going into the ring because thousands of Bruno’s rabid English fans had flown to Vegas for the fight, but I didn’t hear shit.
“Tyson is a rapist, la la la, la la la,” they chanted. I didn’t hear that either.
When Bruno entered the ring, I smelled the fear on him. His own promoter noted later that as soon as Bruno’s dressing room door opened for his ring walk, “it was as if someone had put a pin to Bruno and all the air rushed out.” He must have crossed himself a dozen times while they played the British national anthem. Him being scared gave me a real confidence boost. He gave me a good fight the first time we squared off. He had beaten my sparring partner Oliver McCall for the title and he also knocked out Lennox Lewis.
I knew that Bruno really didn’t want to be in there, so all I had to do was be tough and hit him with some good shots and it would be a wrap. At the end of the first round, I stunned him with a right that opened up a bad cut over his left eye. He was holding me so much in the second round that Mills Lane had to deduct a point from him. It didn’t matter. About a half a minute into the third round Bruno turned southpaw for a second and I rocked him with two left hooks. He tried to hold me but I got in two vicious right uppercuts, the second one almost knocked him up off his feet. He collapsed against the ropes and then I finished him off. I had gotten in twelve uncontested punches. Mills Lane stopped the fight and I was the new WBC heavyweight champion.
I turned around and raised my arms in triumph, soaking all that adulation up, but then I gained some kind of respect and self-dignity and fell to my knees and put my forehead on the canvas and paid homage to Allah and made a short prayer.
In the back of my mind I knew that if Bruno had fought me in this fight with the same spirit he did in the first fight, there was no way I would have beat him. So I got up and I went right to his corner where he was sitting on a stool being consoled by his wife. I stroked his head and kissed him on the cheek.
That night I had a party in my hotel suite. My friend Zip and a bunch of his L.A. boys came up. Zip loved champagne, so I ordered a hundred bottles of Dom Pérignon and we drank all night.
My humility wore off six days after the fight. I was supposed to fight Bruce Seldon next for his belt.
“I think I deserve a lot more than thirty mil and I don’t think I’ve been getting what I’m entitled,” I told the press. “I have children to take care of. Nobody cares if my children are starving or on welfare. Nobody’s gonna give me no handouts and say, ‘You are a great champion, we owe you this.’”
I was the champion again, which meant that I would be an even bigger target for scamsters, cheap hustlers, conniving women, and every con artist around. I couldn’t even count the massive amount of money that my management team paid out to keep the gold diggers and the ambulance chasers away. Rory and John Horne used to actually leave Johnny Tocco’s gym before I would and approach the girls who were waiting for me. They knew that if I caught a glimpse of one of them, I would say, “Let’s go,” and my training regimen would be shot.
“What do you want from Mike?” Rory would ask the girls. “If you cared about him, you wouldn’t be here.”
Then they’d give the girls some cash to leave so I could train.
My assistant Latondia handled the brunt of all the psychos and scam artists who were after my money. She paid out money right and left to people who would come up to the office in wheelchairs with casts and doctors’ bills and claim I was responsible for them somehow. Workers at my house would “fall” off ladders and sue. Women would drive up in limousines wearing mink coats and wait for hours in the hope that I’d show up at the office.
Some of the time I did have altercations when I’d go out and drink heavily when I wasn’t in camp. So some of the money might have gone to the Unanticipated Consequences of Getting Shitfaced Fund.
A prime example of all this happened a few weeks after the Bruno fight. I was in Chicago hanging out at my friend Leonard’s nightclub. I was chilling in Leonard’s office right off the VIP area with Anthony and a couple of other friends when a crazy lady in a micro skirt and big knockers wanted to meet me. They brought her up to the office. We necked a little bit.
“You know I want you,” I told her. That was my one line. I was a regular black Rudolph Valentino, aka El Schmucko.
She started heating it up, so Anthony and the other guys left the room and went outside to the VIP area. I gave her a little love nip on the neck, but when I found out she was from Indiana, I gave her the boot. Literally. I think I kicked her in her butt. Then I walked her out of the office and she left. Anthony noticed that she wasn’t flustered or anything because that was his job.
The next day, Leonard got a call from this woman’s boyfriend.
“My girlfriend said that Mike Tyson accosted her in your club last night,” he said. “And she just filed a police report.”
Not good. I was still on probation from Indiana. If I as much pinched a girl on her ass, Judge Gifford could haul my ass back into jail for nine more years.
So Leonard and a friend of his, who was a big entrepreneur dealing in illicit consciousness-altering substances, drove to Indiana to see the girl.
She told them that I had bitten her neck and tried to touch her privates.
Leonard sensed immediately that we didn’t want another “he said, she said” situation. And he knew she was only in this to separate me from a large chunk of my money.
“Tell me what you need, because we don’t need any adversity,” he said.
“Here, here’s ten grand,” his friend the entrepreneur offered.
“Ten grand! I want ten million,” the girl said.
“Ten million!” Leonard roared. “What did he do, rip your pussy out and take it so it’s no longer there? We’ll talk more about this.”
By the time Leonard got back on the expressway to Chicago, the story was all over the news. She called the press as soon as they left.
So they turned around and drove back to her house. Now she had some two-bit lawyer there, some guy in a cheap suit and sleeves up to his forearms. He was adamant about wanting ten million.
Leonard and his friend drove back to Chicago. He was trying to figure out a strategy when this woman’s friend, who Leonard knew, called him.
“Let me tell you, nothing happened to that woman,” her friend said. “We drove all the way back that night and she wasn’t mad about anything Mike did.”
So Leonard took one for the team. Her friend was a big fat chick, so he had a limousine pick her up and brought her to Chicago to tell her story at a press conference that Leonard called. Leonard met the car halfway to the press conference and he talked a little while to the girl and then he fucked her in the backseat of the limo.
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nbsp; The next day two police officers came to investigate the claims. Leonard told them that he and two other women, his niece and a girl he was banging, were in the room with us the entire time. Leonard had to drive over to my house in Ohio, where I was forced to remain until these charges against me were substantiated, to get my story straight. My house was already surrounded with press cars, so Leonard took the license plates off his car and drove through my gates. He told Rory and John what I should say to the police officers when they interviewed me the next day.
Before I was remanded to stay at home I had gone back to Leonard’s club one Sunday night when he had gangster night. Two thousand gangsters and their posses packed the club every Sunday. I was sitting at Leonard’s table in the VIP area when a bunch of these young gangster guys came up to me. I was really stressing about this case, thinking this liar could send me back to jail.
“Yo, Mike, what about that bitch,” one of the young guys said. “Where does she live at, man?”
I kept my mouth shut. I was thinking that this guy might have been an undercover cop trying to set me up.
This lady was not the most credible person for the cops to believe. She was a twenty-five-year-old beautician and liquor store owner from Gary, Indiana, whose husband had been murdered weeks earlier while he was facing charges of selling rock cocaine. Plus, days before the incident with me, she had reached a settlement in a personal injury suit she had filed after being in a 1994 traffic accident, where the investigating cop filed a report that no one had been injured.
When the cops refused to file charges, the woman sued Leonard’s club in federal court, saying that he had allowed her to be accosted. She got her money when his insurance company settled out of court.
Even my probation counselor tried to get in on the action. The Indiana court had appointed a Cleveland-based psychologist named Dr. Keith J. Smedi to supervise my probation. Everything I did had to go through this guy. I couldn’t even be intimate with Monica without getting permission from him. This guy was both stupid and corrupt. He had the IQ of a fucking lit candle. He must have gotten his Ph.D. from his uncle.
While he was working for the state supervising me, he was telling all my friends to persuade me to go into business with his father. I knew I could work with a guy like that because if I got in trouble, he’d never violate me, he’d just hold it over my head. I knew that, as time went on, he’d reveal himself to be dirty so I just played him.
At first he was all strict, saying I couldn’t hang out with any of my high-profile friends. But then he tried to extort me. He saw this Chicago case as his ticket to the big time. A few weeks after the dust had cleared and the cops had declined to press charges, Smedi sent my office a bill for his services.
On April 7th, while in Chicago for Muslim Easter services, Mr. Tyson entered a nightclub and caused by Mr. Tyson’s poor judgment and possible parole violation behavior, a major setback in the “trust” and “positive direction” his program towards, was experienced and handled by Dr. Smedi. Mr. Tyson’s recovery from his incarceration also experienced a serious setback! There were five choices to levy upon Mr. Tyson. Dr. Smedi had the responsibility to make this recommendation!
Dr. Smedi chose NOT to have Mr. Tyson returned to Indianapolis, Indiana as initially requested to possibly face the judge and the charges of this young woman who accused Tyson of biting her face while in the nightclub.
Dr. Smedi chose NOT to have Mr. Tyson returned to Chicago and face extensive interrogation by the Chicago authority.
Dr. Smedi chose NOT to have Mr. Tyson immediately re-incarcerated pending the Chicago investigation this April 7th episode.
Dr. Smedi chose NOT to add time onto Mr. Tyson’s present term of parole and offender therapy program.
Dr. Smedi chose to consider a large “Monetary charge” in order to reach the thinking and feeling levels of this offender Mike Tyson.
Dr. Smedi therefore levied a seven million dollar (behavioral modification thinking impact charge based on Tyson’s earning potential of Tyson) for this act of extremely poor judgment which was observed as potential risk to relapse behavior and parole violation behavior in lieu of the above alternate options. This monetary charge is aimed at impacting (ie shocking) Mr. Tyson were [sic] it will cause the most “memory” in order to make him to rethink his actions and apply in real life this “thinking insight” while in nightclubs and other areas were [sic] “Young women are in abundance in his long term future and especially after parole is terminated. Of course this could be levied only once in the course of a sex offender’s parole. Any further acts of poor judgment parole violation behavior will result in possible extension of parole and possible recommendations for re-incarceration. (This is not expected, due to Mike’s good efforts so far, lets keep it up!) This seven million dollar amount is discounted to two million dollars, due to Mr. Tyson’s overall positive effort to this point in time, aside from the April 7th mishap. Remember this charge is in lieu of extending the parole time and to eliminate severe, negative media reports if Tyson had been forced to face Indiana and the Chicago authorities and to restrain from having to “add more time” to Tyson’s parole restrictions. Most of these immediate restrictions after Chicago have been removed at this date.
Total breakdown: April through August 1996 expenses: $182,862.00 April 7th: Offender’s poor judgment/potential offender parole violation behavior setback charge: $2,000,000.00
Total due Dr. Smedi: $2,182,862.00
Payment in full expected by September 15th, 1996
Respectfully submitted K.J. Smedi. PhD.
Wow, I got a five-million-dollar discount for good behavior. We never paid this poor schmuck, and as soon as my probation was over we fired his ass.
Now that I had my belt back, my grandiosity began to stomp all over my humbleness. I threw myself a thirtieth-birthday party at my Connecticut estate and spent a fortune flying in friends from all over the country and putting them all up in a nearby hotel that we took over. We had thirteen different chefs, each one cooking in their own kitchen. Everyone from Oprah to Donald Trump to Jay Z to street pimps and their hos were there. There was a guy hand-rolling cigars. Frankie Beverly and Maze performed. You entered the house on an actual red carpet. Once you got past the forty big Fruit of Islam bodyguards stationed outside.
I was so egomaniacal that I reserved the nineteen bedrooms in my house for girls who I wanted to sleep with. I actually told Crocodile, “See all these girls? They’re mine.” Hope was pissed at me. She had been staying at the house, but I moved her out and put her up at the hotel so the room would be available for one of my lady suitors. She was hurt. Hope was an extremely attractive woman and the girls I was sleeping with were nowhere near her stature.
“Mike, this woman you’re bringing in is just so atrocious and unclean, she’s going to dirty my bed. You’re gonna have to burn the mattress if she sleeps on the bed,” Hope told me.
I didn’t even bother to invite Monica. I hardly saw her much by then. She was always trying to make it work out, but I was a cad. I was definitely not marriage material.
• • •
The next step in unifying the title was to get the WBA belt. It was around the waist of Bruce Seldon, but it wouldn’t be for long. I didn’t think much of Seldon as an opponent; he wasn’t much of a competitor. I hardly trained for the fight. Crocodile came with me to the prefight press conference and we both got under his skin so much that he started doing push-ups off a chair in the hallway at our weigh-in. He looked terrified. Seldon’s manager had bragged about what a great athlete Seldon was—he could run a fifty-second quarter mile, jump forty inches off the ground.
“What’s he gonna do when he gets in the ring?” I said. “Is he going to pole-vault out of there?”
I regained my WBA belt in less than two minutes. I hit Seldon on the top of his head with a right. Although it wasn’t a hard punch, my elbow hit him in the fol
low-through and he went down. As soon as he got up, I threw a left hook that put him down on his stomach. He got up but then he started wobbling and Richard Steele ended the fight. I didn’t think that either of those punches was enough to knock out a guy, but his trainer later said that Seldon had had a nervous breakdown in the ring he was so scared.
“Cus, you got two down and one to go,” I told Ferdie Pacheco when he interviewed me after the fight.
I had fought eight rounds since getting out of jail and I had earned $80 million. That was all that people focused on. Nobody ever gave me any credit for coming out of jail after three years behind bars and winning two championship belts. That hurt my heart a lot not to get that recognition.
After the Seldon fight, Tupac came to my dressing room. I was so happy to see him. Tupac represented where all of us black people came from and what we’re trying to hide. I have Jewish friends who might look at a Jewish guy and say, “He’s too Jewish.” That’s what some blacks thought about Tupac. He was that bitterness, that frustration that was in all of us and that we were all trying to hide and not let people know we possess. We want to front that we have it all together, but it’s not like that. If you’re black, it’s constantly a struggle. I don’t care how rich you are or how much power you have, they’re still going to come after you. Tupac would talk about black people who were tired of being beaten down and who had nothing. Tupac put our slave heritage in our face and most black people respected his strength in doing that. He let us know why we should be angry.
I made plans to see Tupac later that night at Suge Knight’s Club 662. But I wanted to go home and hang out with my daughter, Rayna. I had a few drinks at home and I passed out. Someone woke me.
“Mike, they just shot Tupac.”
I couldn’t believe it. He had been in a car driven by Suge and they stopped at an intersection and someone in the next car started shooting at them. It had to be a setup. Especially since Tupac had had an altercation with a gang guy in the casino after the fight and stomped him in his face. He didn’t kill the guy, but his senses had to be on high alert after that. When I come out of the ring after fighting, my senses are at their zenith. I can see everything, smell everything, hear everything in the audience. You’d think that Tupac’s were like that too after his altercation. So he had to have been assassinated.
