by Mike Tyson
“Mike, are you sorry that this fight didn’t take place years ago?”
“It wasn’t meant to be. I’ve known Lennox since he was sixteen. I have mad respect for him. Everything I said was to promote the fight. He knows that I love him and his mother. And if he thinks that I don’t love and respect him then he’s crazy.”
“So you’re saying that a lot of the behavior was just to sell tickets and that doesn’t represent your true feelings?” Gray seemed shocked.
“He knows who I am and he knows that I’m not disrespectful. I respect this man as a brother. He’s a magnificent, prolific fighter.”
The little gesture of me wiping the blood off Lennox’s cheek was seized on by all the boxing writers. They thought that I had been heroic in defeat. And for the first time, a lot of them seemed to see the human behind my façade. Almost.
“Tyson is a despicable character. A rapist, a thug you would not want within an area code of your daughter. But it’s going to be just a little harder to despise him now,” a nemesis from Sports Illustrated wrote.
As soon as the fight was over, I got right back into my vices. I had met an attractive Dominican girl named Luz. She had come to the Lewis fight with some other guys and we started hanging out. She lived in Spanish Harlem in New York and I moved in with her that fall. And I was right back in my environment. Abandoned buildings, the dope man on the street, people were OD’ing, a fat lady was pushing an addicted newborn down an alley, niggas with beers shooting at one another. That’s my element, sorry.
It was bad for me to be in my element, but once I was there my senses sharpened. I was paranoid, on the move, I was in survival mode. Once I moved into Spanish Harlem, I became Brownsville Mike again. People were feeding me. My drugs were free. I started hanging out in the drug dens.
How did I get from slapping a motherfucker five and letting him take a picture with me to being right there in the dope den where the naked women are packing the bags of coke? How did I get there, sniffing the coke and the man is going, “No, that shit is for the dumb crack niggas. This is the flakes. You’ve got to try the flakes, Poppy.” I took one hit of that shit and my eyeballs froze.
I’d go down to the restaurant that was on the corner and they’d give me free food. I’d be eating all the rice and beans and they were plying me with liquor and it was still early in the morning. Some of my gangster friends would come to visit me. They’d be in their Rollses and fancy cars.
“What the fuck are you doing up here with these bitches?” one of them asked me. “Come live in my house.”
“No, I’m good right here, nigga,” I said. “This is my woman, I’m good.”
“Mike, you got to watch these niggas up here,” he said.
“Nah, man. These people are good,” I told him.
I was hanging with those people and deep in my heart I knew I belonged there at that moment because that was how I felt about myself. Because in the hood it was different—people might feed me for free and give me drugs and take care of me, but if something went down, I was there with them. I had my vices and the people in the neighborhood understood my barometer.
I was juggling at least twenty girls at that time. Sometimes their worlds collided and I bore the brunt of it. Someone I was dating heard that I had been with someone else. Now, you would think a girl would be out of her mind to put her hands on Mike Tyson. But when they got mad they didn’t give a shit. They’d hit me and scratch at my face. Then when you thought that it was all over and they’d cooled down, the next thing you know, a rock hits you in the head and she was mad as a motherfucker all over again.
• • •
On January 13, 2003, my divorce was finalized. Monica got the Connecticut house, her house, and $6.5 million from my future earnings. Eventually she would get a lien on my Vegas house. She was pretty hostile towards me at this point, but I didn’t care about giving her the money. I’m a street guy; I was going to be out in the streets hustling.
Even though my heart wasn’t in boxing anymore, I still had to make some money. I had Shelly get me a fight on February twenty-second against Clifford Etienne. A week before the fight, I went to get a tattoo that became my most notorious tattoo. I told the artist, S. Victor Whitmill, aka Paradox, that I wanted a tattoo on my face. I hated my face and I literally wanted to deface myself. I suggested tiny little hearts all over it. It wasn’t some ploy to make me more attractive to women; I just wanted to cover up my face. But Victor refused to do that; he said that I had a good face. He came up with that Maori tribal design and I told him I’d think about it. The more I thought, the more I liked the idea of putting a tattoo that was used by warriors to scare their opponents in battle on my face. So I went with it.
I trained much harder for this fight than the Lewis fight. I came in under 225 pounds, nine pounds lighter than for Lewis. Etienne had a good record and he was in the top ten of both conferences, but he had a weak chin. He’d been knocked down ten times in twenty-six fights.
There was a documentary crew trailing me around for a film. They filmed me as I gulped down my prefight meal.
“I hate Mike Tyson. I mostly wish the worst for Mike Tyson. That’s why I don’t like my friends or myself. I’m going to extremes. Maybe in my next life, I’ll have a better life. That’s why I’m looking forward to go to the other world—I hate the way I live now. I hate my life now.”
I didn’t know why I was more focused for this fight than for the fight with Lewis. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. The bell rang and I charged Etienne and we came together on the ropes and I pulled him down on me. I think that I had hurt him with one of my first punches. We got up and I ducked one of his punches and threw a counter that landed square on his jaw and down he went. I thought that he could have gotten up. I didn’t think it was a great punch that could knock someone cold, but I don’t really know because it was really precise. After he was counted out, I helped him get up and we hugged. Clifford whispered something in my ear.
Jim Gray came into the ring to do the interview.
“He said something to you in your ear that nobody could hear, what exactly was it that he said?”
“To be honest, he said, ‘You need to stop bullshitting and be serious, you’re not serious, that’s why you are out here playing around.’ He said the truth.”
“And he is right, isn’t he?” Jim asked.
“Yeah, he is. I am just happy to be back in Memphis and give a decent show and I am glad brother Clifford gave me a fight and people don’t understand the business when you show your love and respect, when you fight one another, because that is how we elevate our lifestyle.”
“Mike, were you really sick this week? What was the problem?”
“I broke my back.”
“What do you mean by that, you broke your back?”
“My back is broken.”
“A vertebrae or a portion . . . ?”
“Spinal.”
“You did that in sparring?”
“No, I did it by a motorcycle accident. The doctor discovered, I was doing my sit-ups, 2,500 a day with my twenty-pound weight, and one day I couldn’t move anymore. And I just asked the doctor, ‘What is wrong?’ And he said, ‘Believe it or not your back is broken slightly.’”
“Are you in pain right now? Did you take some type of injection? How did you make it to this fight?”
“I can’t take injections; you know they’re going to test me. But all praise be to Allah, I don’t know. I’m just happy that I’m fighting and I’m punching well and accurate.”
“Were you ready for this fight, Mike, I mean your trainer Freddie Roach advised you four days before the fight, not to fight. Were you ready?”
“No, but I’m obligated, I’ve got to be a man and fight. I canceled too many fights in my career, and I don’t want anybody to think I was afraid. And I needed the money, I am always in need
of money, and I am glad the both of us did it. I have so much respect for him as a man, he is a friend of mine.”
Gray started asking me whether I was going to fight Lewis again. That was the speculation: another big Lewis fight to make a lot of money.
“I’m not ready to fight him now. I’m not interested in getting beat up again. I don’t know if I want to fight anymore if I have to fight Lewis next fight. I want to get my shit together. I’m so messed up; I just want to get my life together.”
I carried that morose attitude with me back to my hotel suite, trailed by my documentary film crew. I did a video conference call with my kids to see if they had seen their daddy win. Then I kicked the camera crew out of my room and started partying with my pimp/gangster friend. He had brought some of his girls with him along with another girl who was a friend of a friend. I had a few snorts of coke and smoked some weed and my mood lifted. We had a few bottles of Dom Pérignon open. My friend was telling one of his war stories and we were all laughing and the girl who was a friend of my friend joked and said, “Oh, you’re full of shit, nigga.”
BOOM! My friend grabbed that Dom bottle and clocked her on the head with it. I tried to stop him, but he was too fast. The blood was bursting out of her head like an oil geyser.
I was thinking that my life was ruined. We were in the South. The girl was screaming like crazy, and she was married to a very well-known celebrity. My friend was going to have to kill these people and I would be associated with all this. Then all of a sudden, my friend and the girl were talking all pleasant with each other. That was just how that pimp-ho shit goes.
I had picked up another $5 million from the Etienne fight, but I was still in massive debt. My lawsuit against Don King was still making its way through the court system and Don was getting nervous about me having my day in court. So he started reaching out to me. I didn’t have any long-standing contract with Shelly, so I was a free agent of sorts at the time. Don figured he could woo me and show me a little cash and I’d come back to him and drop the lawsuit.
I was consumed with getting money. I couldn’t wait years for the lawsuit to play out; I needed money right then. Instant gratification wasn’t quick enough for me. So I reached out to Jackie Rowe to help me deal with Don. Jackie was like a pit bull. I’d say, “Baby, get me this,” and she’d go out and get it done. And then I’d go get high.
In April of that year, I had Jackie talk Don into buying me three Mercedes-Benzes. I had him put one of them in Jackie’s name, one in Luz’s name, and the other in my friend Zip’s name. We were playing Don, telling him that if he’d come through with cash and cars, maybe I’d drop the lawsuit. So Don would set up a meeting thinking he could fool me into signing some new agreement to settle the case for peanuts and I’d wind up robbing or beating him each time.
One time, I brought two childhood friends of mine to a hotel room where Don was staying. When we got there, Don started threatening my guys and talking smack. “I got three bodies, two on record,” Don bragged. He looked over at my friend but my friend didn’t say anything. He was supposed to scare Don, but Don had him all shook up. I was looking at my guys like, What the fuck, you’re supposed to be tough guys. So all of a sudden I got up and smacked the shit out of Don.
“Just shut the fuck up, motherfucker,” I said.
And my guys, the guys I brought up to deal with Don, started jumping on me to restrain me.
Meanwhile, I kept meeting with Don whenever he reached out to me. I’m so happy that at that stage in my life, I didn’t have the guts that I had back when I was younger or I really would have done a number on Don. Don once called me and said that he was going to come over to my office in Vegas and drop off $100,000 for me. My friend Zip was in town, so the two of us were there waiting for Don to show up.
Don arrived with a bag full of cash.
“I’ve got to pay some people off,” he said and began counting out $100,000. Zip walked over to him, calmly took the whole bag, and brought it over to me.
“Thank you very much. Please escort Don to the door,” I said.
Zip grabbed Don’s arm and walked him out.
“Me and the champ are going to work out now,” Zip said.
“Hey, man, I need that money. I’ve got to pay some people off. I told you that,” Don said.
“See you later, Don, it was a pleasure meeting you. I’ve always been a big fan,” Zip said and closed the door in his face. We started counting the money. There was sure a lot of gwap in the bag.
My lawyer Dale Kinsella heard about these meetings with Don and drafted a letter to Don’s attorney at the end of May.
I am appalled about what is going on with the participation of your office in the last thirty days.
Jerry Bernstein and I are Mike’s counsel of record. To work so perilously to exclude us from what is going on should cause anybody, let alone Judge Daniels, to have serious reservations about any proposed settlement.
Don appears to have learned absolutely nothing from this litigation. It is Don’s persistence in getting Mike sequestered, whether in an office or in a hotel room, and having him execute documents without the benefit of any independent legal or financial advice, which is a core fact of this litigation. I truly do not understand what anybody on your side of the table is thinking.
Mike’s propensity to sign agreements, let alone settlement agreements, under the influence of people that he trusts, respects, and/or whom he believes he can trust (even if momentarily) is well documented. His recent decision to settle his divorce with Monica without counsel or financial advice (which had to be undone on the grounds of undue influence) is a prime example of what I am talking about.
If and when Mike is served with process, and if and when Jerry and you and I are called upon to address the court, these matters as well as others will undoubtedly be raised. I agree with the court that Mike’s case is his case and not his lawyer’s, but for everybody’s sake any settlement consummated between Mike and Don should (and probably must) be reviewed by someone who is independently representing Mike.
In this context, I would appreciate it if Don and/or your office would see fit to advise Jerry and me to what in the world is going on.
What Dale didn’t know was that a few weeks before he sent that letter, I had Jackie negotiating with Don behind their backs. My assistant Darryl had called Jackie to tell her that we were down to our last $5,000. We had no money to pay the house bills or the maintenance workers or anything. Jackie came out to Vegas and saw how dire my financial situation was.
“I want my fucking money from Don,” I told her.
Don was thrilled to hear from Jackie. He was desperate to settle the case because we finally had gotten a trial date the coming September. As soon as we heard that, Jeff Wald told me that Don was going to do his magic and we’d see why he was Don King. Jeff didn’t know that I had Jackie talking directly with Don, trying to get some money from him. Don was offering me a $20 million settlement in exchange for him getting to promote my fights again. I told Jackie that before we could talk about working together and settling, I wanted three things of mine that Don still had—a green Rolls-Royce, a painting that the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had given me that was supposed to be worth a lot, and the thing I was worried the most about: a drawing of me in the middle of a bunch of X-Men that Stan Lee had done.
Don called Jackie and told her that he would fly us down to Florida and put us up in the Delano Hotel so we could work out a settlement. Jackie, her son, my girlfriend Luz, and I got on Don’s private jet and flew down. I packed a big block of coke and a duffel bag with a half-pound of reefer. I was doing my coke and smoking my blunts and listening to my Discman and I was higher than the plane was when an epiphany hit me.
“This is my motherfucking plane. I paid for this plane. And this motherfucker is acting like he’s doing me a favor sending me down on my own fuckin
g plane. This nigga is playing me.”
The drugs were playing with my head and I was freaking out and getting jealous.
Don picked us up at the private airport in his Rolls and he had Isadore Bolton, his chauffeur, who used to be my chauffeur before he stole him from me, driving some of Don’s associates in the lead car. We were driving down to Miami from Fort Lauderdale on I-95, the main highway, and Jackie was in the front seat and I was in the back with Luz and Jackie’s son. Don said some innocuous thing, and all that jealousy and rage spilled out of me and I kicked him in his fucking head. Boom! You don’t turn your back on a jealous cokehead.
Don swerved off onto the side median and I started choking him from the backseat.
“No, no, let him go, Mike,” Jackie screamed.
“Jackie, you hold this nigga up, I’m coming to the front,” I said.
She said, “Okay, I got him.”
I got out of the car to get into the front seat and kick his ass some more, but Jackie couldn’t hold him, she was in shock, and Don took off down the median.
Now I was on the side of the fucking highway by myself. Don drove a little bit down the road and then let Jackie and her son and Luz out of the car. They came up to me carrying my bag with the half-pound of reefer. I had the coke stash on me when I got out of the car.
“Why did you let him go, Jackie?” I screamed. “Now we’re out here on the fucking highway.”
The cars and the trucks were whizzing by us. All of a sudden, Isadore pulled up. He was there to pick us up because he lost our car and when he called Don, Don told him to turn around and get us.
He pulled up alongside me and rolled his window down and told me to get in the car.
“Fuck you, motherfucker,” I screamed.
Isadore got out of his driver’s door and I was right on him. I punched him in the face twice, shattering his left orbital bone. The force of the blows knocked him across the driver’s seat and I reached in and grabbed his leg and bit it. Isadore managed to kick me off him and close his door, so I punched the outer panel of his door and bent the steel. I was about to break his window when he managed to drive away.
