Undisputed Truth

by Mike Tyson

  I cracked up.

  Don left the office.

  “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 Don was using these guys to get me to sign contracts that screwed me right and left. Meanwhile, they were making millions and millions of dollars. 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.

  “I hope Rory doesn’t take the firing personally. Rory is still part of my life. It’s up to him what role he wants to play in my life.”

  I got my answer when Don and John and Rory issued their own statements.

  “I love Mike and he knows it, but there are often outside forces and individuals that will try to capitalize on Mike’s frustration that comes from his layoff as a result of the suspension,” Don said.

  John and Rory seemed to be in denial. “I think there is sometimes a frustration and misunderstanding that can occur in the best of friendships and business relationships, and that’s how we categorize this,” they said in their joint statement.

  There was my answer. Rory had cast his lot with two scumbags. I had been let down and betrayed by someone I would have died for. But I’d been betrayed before and it was time to move on. I never talked to Rory and John again.

  We began to untangle the webs that Don had created. One of them was with Showtime. We found huge payments that were given to Don “on behalf of Mike Tyson” that I never saw a penny of. Showtime took the position that I owed them that money. Jeff called up the Showtime guys and screamed and yelled and got them to come out to a meeting in California with our legal team.

  “You guys are worse criminals than Don King,” he told them. “You guys are fucking executives.”

  All they cared about was getting their bonuses at the end of the year. But there was nothing we could do; we had a valid contract with Showtime.

  I was a little less polite to the Showtime execs. I wouldn’t kowtow to them. I didn’t think of them as big executives. I’d get on the phone with them and just threaten to kick Jay Larkin’s ass. They’d be saying, “You can expect a letter from our lawyer.”

  “Fuck your lawyer in the ass, motherfucker,” I’d scream.

  We were finding so much shit that Don and them had pulled that Jeff reached out to Dale Kinsella, Howard Weitzman’s partner. Dale was a great litigator. I met with him a few times. Dale remembered that meeting when he was interviewed for a documentary film about me.

  “Mike’s future was well planned out by Don King prior to getting out of prison. He gave trust to him in many areas and Don managed to insure that Mike had no lawyers, no financial advisors, and no accountants. I was walking him through some of the legal documents, just one of which managed to take 43.5 million dollars out of Mike’s pocket and put it into Don’s pocket.”

  That was just the tip of the iceberg.

  It was a good thing that I had been seeing a shrink since December. Monica had set me up with Dr. Richard Goldberg, the chairman of the psychiatric department at Georgetown Medical School. At first I was a little reluctant to open myself up to a middle-aged Jewish man, but he was really a terrific guy and I benefited a lot from my visits with him. Goldberg diagnosed me as suffering from “dysthymic disorder,” which was basically chronic depression. He got that right. He put me on Zoloft and I was doing well, considering the circumstances. Of course, I was supplementing his drug regimen with some of my own extracurricular drugs too.

  I’m sure that the Zoloft had some bearing on me not going postal when I got into a weird confrontation at an all-night restaurant in Maryland. I had been hanging out and getting high at this club DC Live in Washington. When the club closed, I went to get a bite with this woman Adoria, who was the director of VIP relations at the club, and her coworker and Jeffrey Robinson, a mutual friend of Adoria’s and mine. We got to the restaurant at about five a.m. and were seated at a table. Then Michael Colyar, some comedian we had met at the club, came in with his “bodyguard” and two black women in their thirties. They wanted to sit with us, so the manager moved us all to a bigger table in the main room. These women had an attitude from the start, so I tried to ignore them. But when a pretty young European woman came over to our table and asked to take a picture with me, the black chick in the red dress started going off on me.

  “I hope you’re enjoying your Mike Tyson ‘celebrity’ bullshit,” she said.

  Meanwhile, the hot European chick was putting her arms around me and posing.

  “My own sisters don’t show me love like this,” I told Adoria’s coworker.

  Now the woman in the red dress went berserk.

  “You’re not going to praise white women and disrespect black women while there are two black queens here,” she said.

  “Yeah, you’re not going to disrespect all black women while you have that white bitch in your arms,” her friend in the black dress said.

  I tried to ignore them but the woman in red just kept going.

  “You ain’t nothing. You’re just a ghetto nigga who managed to get some money,” she said. “I’m a correctional officer and if you had been in my prison, I would’ve had your ass in lockdown.”

  “Fuck you, you bitch.” I couldn’t take her shit any longer. She was bringing me down from my high.

  Adoria got up and told the comedian to get those bitches out of the restaurant. He started escorting the one in red out, but she still had to get in some bullshit.

  “You ain’t nothing, nigga,” she said.

  “Yeah? I’ll jump over ten lying black bitches like you, to get to one dead white ho,” I said.

  That made her go postal. She grabbed a cup of coffee from a nearby table and threw it on me, ruining my zebra-striped shirt. I jumped up and accidentally knocked a section of the table to the side and some glasses and dishes fell to the floor. I was so irate that my friend Jeffrey had to hold me back.

  I threw some money on the table and we left. I heard later that the comedian and the two women sat and ate for another hour, laughing and making fun of me. When a guy from the next table asked her what had happened, she told him, “I called Tyson an ignorant motherfucker. I will not tolerate
him being disrespectful to black women. I just don’t appreciate Tyson talking and laughing with these whities while he has sisters at his table.”

  I knew all this because when I got home that night, I called Jeff Wald and he immediately called the owner of the restaurant and tracked down the customers and the staff and got depositions from all of them. Those two harlots wanted to harass me and goad me into a lawsuit. That didn’t work but that didn’t stop them. First their attorney contacted my attorney and asked for $20 million. Nine days later, the two shrews filed a $7.5 million lawsuit against me claiming that I verbally and physically abused them after my sexual advances towards one of them was spurned. They were claiming assault, battery, defamation, and emotional distress. They were so traumatized that they couldn’t even speak to the reporters at the press conference. But their ambulance chaser could.

  “These women were put through a horrendous ordeal, cursed, verbally abused in a situation in front of a fully packed restaurant.”

  He changed his tune a bit when he got all the depositions we had collected. By the end of the year, they offered to settle for $2 million, then they went down to $850,000. Eventually we paid the woman in red $75,000 and the other one $50,000. We had to settle. My name was mud. I was the arrogant nigga who nobody liked, especially upper-middle-class people. It was a bad time for me. I’m sure that if someone had killed me, they would have gone free.

  By the end of February I had new management in place. I hired Jeff Wald, Irving Azoff, and Shelly Finkel, an old friend of mine who used to manage Evander Holyfield, to be my advisors. They would split the standard manager’s fee of 20 percent three ways. I would be taking home a lot more money because one of the things we uncovered when we went through Don’s contracts was that in addition to his fees as promoter of my fights, he was also taking 30 percent of my purse money, which was illegal. So when I fought Holyfield and my purse was $30 million, I wound up with only $15 million because Don was taking $9 million and John and Rory were splitting $6 million. Don was also helping himself to 30 percent of the bonus money from Showtime and the MGM Grand.

  But it got worse. King was getting all the income from the site fees and from foreign telecasts. When he made my deal with the MGM Grand, he was given a $15 million loan from the MGM Grand to purchase MGM stock that was guaranteed by MGM to be worth at least double the value at the end of the term of the contract. I never saw any of that $15 million. Don also had all these side deals with Showtime that were predicated on bringing me to the table. So they paid him to promote non–Mike Tyson events because of my name. The Showtime deal also allowed either Showtime or Don to audit the books, but barred me from doing so!

  As if screwing me out of all that money wasn’t enough, Don was nickel-and-diming me too. He was paying exorbitant purses to the other boxers on my cards and that money wound up coming out of my pocket. He paid $100,000-a-night consultant’s fees to his wife, and $50,000 fees to his two sons. Don’s daughter was pulling in $52,000 a year from being the president of the Mike Tyson Fan Club, a club that never met. His daughter didn’t even bother to open up the stacks of letters sent to the club.

  I was charged huge fees for work allegedly done to my Ohio mansion. I was billed for maid service, legal fees, and pool maintenance at King’s Las Vegas mansion. I paid $100,000 for a WBC “title sanctioning fee” for my 1991 fight with Razor Ruddock. But it wasn’t even a title fight. He also charged me for the $2 million fee to get promotional rights to Ruddock in the future. All my travel was arranged and billed through a travel agency owned by Don’s wife. I was paying ridiculously high fees. Oh yeah, I was paying through the nose for my towels too.

  On March fifth, we sued Don in U.S. District Court in New York for at least $100 million. That same day, my lawyer John Branca sent me a pep-talk memo. “This will give you an opportunity to establish your PLACE in HISTORY—to be a leader in seeking to redress the wrong-doings and injustices perpetrated by Don King, not only on you but on many other fighters during the last two decades. As such, you would secure your place not only in boxing but also in social and cultural history in the manner of an Arthur Ashe or Curt Flood. The success of what we are doing depends entirely on your STRENGTH and your conviction. Don King will look for and exploit any weakness in you. This will require DEDICATION and PATIENCE and could take three years in court with Don King but if you stay committed, you will win.” Branca and Jeff Wald also mapped out a strategy to boost my income with a clothing line, a record label, merchandising deals for posters, and an autobiography.

  Four days later, we sued John Horne and Rory Holloway for another $100 million. By inducing me to sign the deal with Don while I was in prison, which was illegal to begin with, they made $22 million each on my fights after I got out. If they had been real managers, they would never have allowed me to sign off on any of the deals that Don brought to me, especially the revised deal that gave him 30 percent of my purses and bonuses. Instead of being locked into Don for four years, I would have been a free agent and could have worked on a fight-to-fight basis with the promoter who offered me the most money. But it was my fault for hiring a failed stand-up comedian and my wingman to steer my career. Cus once told me, “Hey, there’s animals disguised as human beings out here and you’re not sophisticated enough to decipher the two.”

  I didn’t expect to hear anything from Rory, but I was amused to read what John Horne had to say after we sued his ass.

  “Mike Tyson could never appreciate what we were trying to do. Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist, a felon, and we made him the biggest deal in boxing. If he lives for a long time maybe he’ll understand what an achievement that was. Mike, I am not your bitch. I stood by you out of love and loyalty only.”

  And he also said this, “Don King is a great man. When you hear people ripping him, they’ve never had lunch with him. Don King respects my ability and I respect him.”

  Even though I had my advisors working on my career, three women—Shawnee, Jackie Rowe, and Monica—were doing a lot of the day-to-day work. I didn’t want Monica to get involved in the boxing world. She shouldn’t have to get infected by that bug. I attracted scumbags. They may have been sophisticated and good at what they did, but they were still scumbags because big money was involved. Monica just wanted to protect me. I see that now, even if I didn’t understand that at the time.

  Shawnee and Jackie were something else. They were both big, brash women. Jackie was totally street. We were cut from the same cloth. Instead of talking all political to executives like, “Mike is the biggest attraction out there and MGM should be more than happy to . . .” she’d say stuff like, “You motherfuckers should be licking this man’s ass.” Shawnee wasn’t as crude as Jackie, but she could be cruel. Dealing with Shawnee and Jackie was more than Latondia could handle. She got sick of being bullied around and quit. I was still barely involved in my own shit then. I was just out there getting high, throwing my life away.

  I was hurting for money, so I sold off sixty-two of my vehicles, including some sports cars, six Ducatis, and four Honda trucks, and realized $3.3 million from the sale. My new team had gotten involved in the WWF deal and we renegotiated that now that Don wasn’t in the picture. Instead of a $3.5 million fee, I wound up with $6 million and 35 percent of the pay-per-view buys in excess of one million. I was really looking forward to working for the WWF. When I was a kid, I’d watch wrestling all the time on WNJU, Channel 47, the Spanish UHF station.

  I got a lot of criticism for appearing at WrestleMania, but it was really one of the highlights of my life. People were saying that their wrestling was bullshit, but that $6 million check wasn’t bullshit. I was supposed to have reffed for the WWF at a Hulk Hogan match back in 1990, but they used Buster Douglas instead after he knocked me out.

  I had so much fun promoting this event.

  The WWF wanted me to do MAD TV and the writers even wrote up some suggested sketches. One had me hosting a Martha Stewart
–type show on the new Lifetime channel, which had branched into sports.

  “I find simple flower arrangements bring a little touch of spring in the middle of winter,” they had me say. “See, here I’ve taken these lovely irises and added a touch of pansies.”

  One of the wrestlers would correct me and say that you can’t mix irises and pansies and then we’d get into a fight.

  Another proposed skit was a fake commercial where a guy at a party tries to tell an interesting story but he just can’t. Everyone leaves him sitting alone and then the voice-over comes in.

  “Has this ever happened to you? Well, not anymore. Because Mike Tyson will come to your house and punch you in the face!”

  Then I punch the guy in the face. They cut to the party again and the guy is fucked up, swollen face, bandages all over, black eye, and he can barely talk. But as he struggles to speak, he’s the center of attention.

  “So if your life is really boring, just call us and Mike Tyson will come over and punch you in the face!”

  Jeff and Irving and Shelly put the kibosh on doing that program. I would never have gotten my license back if I’d done it.

  We went to a few different cities to do live events to promote the show on March twenty-seventh. In Boston we held a huge outdoor rally in City Hall Plaza. It was awesome. The crowd went crazy screaming and cursing at me and Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin. They held up signs like TYSON BITES and EARS FEAR TYSON. Austin had called me out and pushed me at an earlier appearance, so now I jumped into the ring while Michaels and two of his comrades in D-Generation X had Austin against the ropes. I kicked him in the shins a few times and then planted a big wet kiss on his forehead.

  The night of the event, I entered the Fleet Center wearing a D-Generation X T-shirt. During the match I was openly rooting for Michaels from ringside. When Austin got knocked out of the ring, I threw him back in. Then the referee in the ring got knocked out. I got into the ring and dragged him out. It was back and forth between Michaels and Austin, but finally Austin pummeled Michaels to the canvas. The ref was still unconscious. So I jumped into the ring and instead of attacking Austin, I counted Michaels out, making Austin the new champ. We celebrated together and he gave me an Austin 3:16 T-shirt. Michaels regained consciousness and confronted me for my betrayal. I floored him with one punch and then draped the Austin T-shirt over his body and Steve and I walked out with our arms around each other.