Yes. Yes. Did you fear you might kill? I was so disappointed that I didnt
In the boxing ring, he relished being the
bad guy. In real life, he didnt know when to stop. Mike Tyson tells Janice Turner he just wants to be loved
Tyson with boxing
coach Cus DAmato outside the trainers home in the Catskills, New York, 1985
previous spread: joe pugliese/august.
this page: ken regan/camera 5 inc
tell Mike Tyson what my women friends
said when they heard I was coming to interview him that rapist, that monster! and he teeters on the edge of anger. Hey, Im not trying to convince nobody. If you believe that, God bless you, he says. Im not trying to convince you, and Im living my life now. Everybody else is null and void. His autobiography, Undisputed Truth, certainly doesnt hide his obsessive and prolific womanising. By his own account, his sexual tastes were indiscriminate: fat, beautiful, old, thin, supermodel Naomi Campbell, a 50-yearold checkout clerk in Kmart, hookers he met in strip clubs. The book recounts times when hed bed four different women, then still at midnight be looking for another with whom to spend the night. Travelling America, he built up banks of girlfriends in every city. Neither does the book paint him as a tender lover. He made sex tapes to watch with his friends, who dubbed his technique the Womb Shifter or Pelvis Pulveriser. Even after he was baptised in church by Jesse Jackson, he sloped off to screw a choir girl. He describes orgies, inviting his bodyguards to share a girl.
He recalls how his first wife, the actress
Robin Givens, knew he was unfaithful by the lipstick marks on his tracksuit bottoms. Then there is the matter of Desiree Washington, the 18-year-old beauty queen whom, in 1991, he invited back to his hotel room; he was sentenced to six years, serving three, for her rape. In photographs there is no light in Mike Tysons eyes. Even in youthful glory, as he holds aloft a just-won boxing belt or, more recently, celebrates a Golden Globe with the cast of The Hangover, his eyes look dead. In bad-boy mode, in police cuffs or sledging an opponent at a weigh-in, those eyes look mad. It is easy to believe they are the eyes of a rapist, killer, brute, knucklehead, street punk: they contain no play or humour or warmth. Even when Tyson smiles, his eyes stay cold. But as he sits beside me, in a tight black T-shirt, his tattooed arms so pumped he must hold them always at an angle to his barrel chest, I realise all those photos deceive: Tysons eyes are sad. For all his swagger and physical power, he has an air of being damaged and lost, with a tissue-thin skin
born of low self-esteem that causes him to
prickle at every perceived slight. We are discussing his mother, Lorna Mae, who gave up on him at 7, told by the school that he was retarded and hyperactive, proscribed not merely Ritalin but Thorazine, a heavy-duty anti-psychotic. She thought that I was a criminal, he writes in his autobiography, and I would die or never turn out to be s***. Such a withdrawal of love, particularly as he was a Mommas boy who shared her bed until his teens, must never stop hurting. Well, says Tyson softly. I wasnt a good kid. She wasnt proud of me; she was proud of my brother. He stayed on at school and did things. I was bad though. I used to steal from people. When my mothers boyfriends came to the house, got drunk and fell asleep, I would go in their pockets and take their money. Nobody was safe around me. No one trusted me. Yet he does not blame her, is not angry or vengeful. Rather and, unexpectedly, I find this pains my heart Tyson does not believe himself worthy of her love. Not that he ever stopped chasing it; bringing her newspaper cuttings about his first amateur boxing victories she couldnt be bothered to read. The Times Magazine 21
manny millan/sports illustrated/getty images
With Camille Ewald,
Cus DAmatos wife, in her home in 1985
And even after she died, when he was 16 years
old, he chased it still, in those many, often joyless, conquests. Why so many women, I ask. It was like a drug, he says. Chasing a feeling. Youd want that feeling again; youd keep chasing it. Was it just sexual satisfaction, or about being wanted? I dont know, says Tyson, looking awkward. Maybe there was a love factor there. Really? It was like, if they werent the right one, maybe the next one would be. Or the next one. So you kept going until you found her? Tysons head goes down to his chest, like a mortified child. I dont know. Its really embarrassing talking to you about it. Hell, I dont want to come across as the big, black buck and stuff I was always taught that the more women you conquer contributes to you being a greater man, that you were somebody, but in all actuality, it takes so much away from you. How many times were you in love? Every time I slept with somebody. Pretty much. Maybe my level of love with them wasnt at the degree where I would marry them, but I was in love with them when I was with them. You told them that? I always told them I loved them. Straightaway. 22 The Times Magazine
I have a grand view of
myself, in my own thick head, that Im special. And then the reality comes in At which point Larry Sloman, the co-writer of Undisputed Truth, interjects to say he has written biographies of promiscuous men, including Howard Stern and Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss: They were all f*** em and forget em guys. The sexual act was all about them getting off. Mike wasnt like that. Mike was concerned with pleasing the woman, which was very interesting to me. And then Tysons old friend Mario chips in: Then if he was with a girl for a week, he would buy them a house. I was really a big schmuck, says Tyson, shaking his head. El schmucko, the f***er. Tyson has always maintained he did not rape Desiree Washington and the book makes a strong case that, before a court in Indiana
with just three black jurors (one dropping
out before the verdict), combined with his reputation, he stood little chance of a fair trial. Ms Washington, it later transpired, had eight months earlier pressed a false rape charge against the high-school boy to whom shed lost her virginity, after her father found out. Tyson appealed against his conviction and lost. Even during Tysons three years in prison, he contrived to have regular sex. At first hed invite girlfriends or fans to visit and theyd make out on picnic tables away from the eyes of guards. When that was discovered, he targeted his middle-aged drug counsellor. She was reluctant at first, but he had a friend take $10,000 round to her house and, next day, wearing make-up and her best dress, she summoned him to her office. When she became pregnant, he paid for her abortion. While his three wives have all been accomplished, educated women Givens was a rising star, Monica Turner is a doctor and his current wife, Kiki Spicer, trained in Italy as a fashion designer it was as though he didnt feel worthy of them, was drawn back always to the hustling lowlifes with whom he had grown up. I guess because of my mother, her lifestyle, those are the kind of women that
getty images, globe photos
Ive been susceptible to. Very smart, tricky,
slick, nasty bitches. Moral-less women. So you never wanted a nice, kind girl? She may have been too boring. Because your mother was exciting in some ways. I think my mother was exciting, yeah. Very exciting. Lorna Maes own hard-working mother, a maid for a liberal white family, had put her through three years of college. Shed hoped to train as a teacher when Tysons father fell ill and she left work to nurse him. After her husband deserted the family, she lost her job as a prison matron and her life spiralled downwards; she left a respectable workingclass district of Brooklyn for the run-down semi-criminal neighbourhood Brownsville, where she made money by turning her squalid apartment into a drunken card den. Tyson remembers her having sex with a man while he slept in the same bed. Theyd drink, fight and f***, break up, then drink fight and f*** some more, he writes of his mother and boyfriend Eddie. They were truly in love, even if it was a really sick love. But it was not just Lorna Mae who didnt love Mike Tyson; the world never liked him much either. As I watch him talk, restless and uneasy, looking at times as if he might bolt out of the New York Ritzs private lounge, I wonder what animal he most resembles. A bull, maybe: that dense bulk with a low centre of gravity, since he is short for a heavyweight, just 5ft 10in, and weighs more than 16 stone. Or a tiger, like Kenya, the cub he owned during his most grandiose years. Certainly his entourage this evening his ballsy ItalianAmerican publicist JoAnn, Sloman and Mario are watchful of his moods, distracting him 24 The Times Magazine
I was taught that the
more women you conquer contributes to you being a greater man. But it takes so much away from you
Clockwise from top
left: with his first wife, Robin Givens, in 1988; with (from left) daughters Mikey and Milan, wife Kiki and son Morocco, 2013; with his second wife, Monica Turner, in 2003
when they fear a question might make
him fractious. Id heard he was ringing the bell this morning at the New York Stock Exchange, but when I raise this he shakes his head sadly: No, they dont let no broke guy ring that bell, he says. JoAnn is quick to say, soothingly, that it was a mere logistical matter: Well get you ringing that bell, Mike. Bull or tiger, Ive just done what everyone has always done to Mike Tyson: dehumanise him. Indeed, he does it to himself. Damn, youre really an animal, he says of the Brownsville kid he once was. You live below the starving level, youd do anything to survive, and I hate to think of myself like that. Living in the slums, in buildings with stray dogs and cats and germs and rats I have a grand view of myself, in my own thick head, that Im special. You know what I mean? And then the reality comes in. No matter how much money and fame youve got. He lowers his head to his chest again and looks so ashamed I repress the urge to give him a hug. He didnt write the book earlier, he says, because he couldnt face picking the scab off his childhood wounds. The guys I grew up with, those thats not dead or in prison, they dont talk about the past. You bring stuff up and they say, F*** that s***, Mike. Were doing this now. They just dont talk about it. I think about my past and it takes away all my dignity sometimes. Does he not look at his ten-year-old self with compassion now? No, anything that happened to him was good for him. Good therapy for him. And without that upbringing, would you have had the aggression to be world champion? Oh, no way, Tyson says.
getty images
Look at my kids. The only difference between
me and my children they all go to private schools and the older ones are Ivy League kids [his eldest daughter is set to study chemistry at Georgetown] is if Id had love, I would be just like them. And I look at them and think, They may be tough and strong, but they dont have that desire to be violent and hurt somebody. And Im happy that they dont. Did he enjoy hurting people? He hit so hard that 44 of his 58 fights ended in knockouts, often within minutes. Yes, yes! Tyson cries. Did he fear he might kill? Yes, but I was so disappointed that I didnt. Although Im happy now that I didnt. On hearing another fighter had killed an opponent, hed think: How come he did it? Hes not as ferocious as I am. How did he kill somebody? That guy must have been sick already or something. I guess I was a young kid, and I was so insecure, I always wanted to be the centre of attention, he says. I never was that before. This power, this attention, it was like a narcotic. Im sorry to sound so gross. Talking with Tyson, I am reminded of interviewing Camila Batmanghelidjh from the charity Kids Company. She showed me brain scans of two children: one was loved; the other from an abusive home. In the area that contains the brains calming mechanisms, the latter child had only a void. Overexposure to fright hormones when young rewires the brain, so that often the only thing that can bring a feeling of peace is to commit a violent act. Maybe it also creates great fighters. By the time Tyson was 13 he had robbed and burgled his way into every juvenile facility in New York City. When arrested again, for possessing stolen property, he was sent upstate to reform school. But after a vicious fight he ended up in Elmwood, a lock-down for the toughest of kids, where a warden would throw boys in the boxing ring. Tyson took a massive blow to the stomach and was hooked. Noting his precocious strength, the warden took him to meet Cus DAmato, a veteran coach who had discovered Floyd Patterson and Jos Torres. After he had sparred for two rounds, Tyson heard DAmato say, Thats the heavyweight champion of the world. With the reform schools permission, Tyson moved in with DAmato, a left-wing ItalianAmerican whod grown up in the Bronx, admired Ch and Fidel and despised Reagan. When Lorna Mae died of cancer, amid poverty and chaos, DAmato and his Ukrainian wife, Camille, informally adopted Tyson. This was the happiest time in his life: Tyson utterly focused on becoming a champion but, more importantly, on pleasing DAmato, whom he adored as a father. (Tysons own father although not his 26 The Times Magazine
Tyson defeats Trevor
Berbick to become world heavyweight champion, aged 20, in Las Vegas in 1986
I was over my head. I was
developing as a fighter at such a rapid pace, and my brain wasnt catching up biological one, whom he never met was a notorious Brooklyn pimp who deserted his family.) I was the perfect guy for his mission broken home, unloved, destitute, Tyson writes of DAmato. I was hard and strong, and sneaky, but I was still a blank chalkboard. Suddenly his life had discipline and purpose. Throughout his mid-teens all he did was train, run, spar, read boxing books, watch videos of great fighters, often falling asleep in his gloves. He copied the moves of Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong and Benny Leonard; he even started talking in a high-pitched voice to sound like Jack Dempsey. People would mock him, but I had the voice of a killer. Jack Dempsey was a killer. So you were playing a part? Yes, because I was s***, I was garbage, I didnt want to be who I was. I wanted to emulate those guys. But DAmato didnt just train his body; he worked on Tysons mind. He helped him transmute the humiliation of being bullied into courage and power. He had the kid who left formal education at 7 read Hemingway and Machiavelli. He gave him long, intense lectures about mental tactics and inner nobility: a general preparing a gladiator for war. If he told me I could learn how to fly, I would try it, says Tyson. There was
nothing that he said that I doubted. I never
took anything he said as a lie. He said I could control things with my mind; I believed it. He gave me an ego I never had that. Everyone else branded Tyson a no-mark, but Cus never gave up on me, even when I was acting stupid. He knew I wanted to be special. He wanted people to look up to me. Decades later, after hed been declared bankrupt, Tyson discovered DAmato had taken out an IRA a modest pensions savings plan in his name, a careful parental deed that made him weep. If only DAmato hadnt died when Tyson was just 19, on the verge of greatness. If hed lived, Id still be fighting now, he says. Yeah, Cus looked at it as a job. Youre getting beaten up real bad, but youre still working, youre still taking care of your family. It is easy to forget that Tyson was only 20 when he won the third of his belts to become the youngest heavyweight world champion in history. I was a boy, a child, he says. I was still going to 16th birthday parties. I was still eating at Burger King, having French-fry fights. Without DAmato to contain and discipline it, the ego hed given Tyson ran rampant. I was totally over my head, you know? I was developing as a fighter, and a man, at such a rapid pace. And my brain wasnt catching up. My maturity could not keep up with the boom, boom, boom, boom Money, money, girls, money, money. I was just some schmuck, a young kid. I felt like I was still 15 years old. As part of his mind-training, DAmato had told Tyson that when he was a champion, hed have everything hed ever wanted. He said, If you listen to me, no will be a foreign language to you. You wont understand it.
You will never hear it. So not such a good
lesson? No, says Tyson. That was really bad. Because I felt I had achieved my goals in life, that I deserved everything I had. And that meant sex. Whatever happened that night with Desiree Washington, Tyson was sleeping with so many women, in such chaotic and disruptive circumstances, that he was destined for trouble. Most celebrities take out restraining orders on their stalkers, Tyson writes, but I f***ed mine. By his account there were other women before and after Desiree who wrongly tried to sue him for rape; several others pressed paternity suits only to be disproved by DNA tests. DAmato had no respect for the rich. Money, hed always said, should be thrown from the back of the truck. And Tyson certainly did that: he wanted the fun he thought he deserved, had always lacked as a kid; didnt see the point in saving since he never thought hed live long. His generosity was extraordinary: hed give a $65,000 bracelet to a homeless guy; visiting Mexico, he rounded up every street kid in town to buy them new sneakers; he showered clothes and jewellery upon every woman he slept with. Once out of prison and married to Monica, with whom he had two children, he quickly won back two of his three belts and earned $80 million. He also gave free rein to his monumental libido. He describes with some pride how, before rappers started buying Dom Prignon and Rolls-Royces, he invented bling. He had a hot tub installed into one limousine. Didnt the water slosh around? No, he says, laughing. And I dont kiss and tell, but I had some really prominent women, that your husband probably dreams about, in that car. This is really sick s***, you know. Oh, God. What did I do with my life? Creased up with laughter, he raises his Popeye arm and, with his enormous, rough hand, gives me a stinging high-five. In his folie de grandeur, he created a vast Scarface villa in Vegas, all done out in Versace, and commissioned statues of great warriors like Alexander the Great. On the East Coast he bought the biggest house in Connecticut, with 13 kitchens, its own moat, nightclub and lighthouse. For his birthday, he filled each of the 19 bedrooms with a different woman. He once discovered a duffel bag containing $1 million hed forgotten he even had. In all, he earned and squandered up to half a billion dollars. When his tax bill came, he had his people ignore it: hed just pay it off after the next fight. When it came to money, Tyson writes, I wasnt a big details guy. Which made him easy prey for the hustlers, gold-diggers and the hucksters of the boxing world. His agent, the notorious Don King, has been accused of encouraging his vices and addictions. After our interview, I bump into
Tysons mother-in-law, who once worked
for King and is scathing about how he encouraged Mike to mix with whores and lowlifes. If someone mixes with scum, they feel they are scum, she said. And then hed need Don to deal with all the problems. It bred dependency. It was under Kings influence that Tyson ramped up his evil public image. He had always been attracted to the villain in the movie They remember the hero, but they never forget the bad guy fought in plain black shorts, with no crowd-pleasing theatrics. While Muhammad Ali handsome, charming, witty and smart won over white America, Tyson was its worst nightmare: the punk from the ghetto who ruled by pure violence, grabbed all he wanted, just as he snatched gold chains in Brownsville, and to hell with the rules. Besides his drinking and prolific womanising, which gave him gonorrhoea, chlamydia and all those other scientificnamed diseases, he smoked weed and became hooked on cocaine. He snorted three grams a night, smoking it in cigarettes when his
If you could erase my
whole record, I would be happy. I hate my boxing career. I despised it nose started to fall apart. While he says he was never high when fighting he knew drug traces would show up in his urine he obtained a whizzer: a fake penis that would squirt out clean urine to fool the tester. The day I meet Tyson, this story has reached the British press, causing the boxing promoter Frank Warren, who organised his 2000 fight against Lou Saverese in Glasgow, to threaten to sue him. When I tell Tyson this, he grows agitated, letting fly with a flurry of abuse. Frank Warren is such a w***er, he says, surprising me with his grasp of British profanity. Sad, old w***er. There are also, I say, mutterings about removing his world titles retrospectively, as they did after Lance Armstrongs doping scandal. Good luck on taking my title. You can have my belt. If you could erase my whole record and act as if I had never even fought, I would be the happiest man in the world. I hate my boxing career. I despised it. I was never really happy during that time. For years he avoided therapy or, if made to attend by courts, lied to his shrinks. Who are they to know about my life? I just met them ten minutes ago, and Ive got to spill my guts?
Free of charge, too? After endless rehab
and counselling, he has finally broken his coke and booze problem, as he writes in an epilogue. Then he adds a postscript, a primal scream of self-loathing about how, in August, he fell off his AA programme and got drunk. Where once he was a street hound, he is now a house dog. He seldom leaves his Vegas home, lives quietly, trains, plays with his kids; he has two with Kiki and had eight all together (including a daughter, Exodus, who died). He tends to his beloved pigeons, who have been his most longstanding source of peace since he kept them up on the roofs of Brooklyn. His vices are now confined to Call of Duty and Pinkberry frozen yoghurt. Declared bankrupt in 2003 and still millions in debt to the US tax man, he now sees himself as an actor of sorts. He had a cameo in both Hangover films and great success with his one-man show, which was later filmed by Spike Lee. It may come to London in spring. By his old standards, he lives modestly: but this, he says, makes it easier to keep clean. Before, I was always cheating, but Id buy them a gift. Id have power over them with money, he says. Now I dont have no money. Now I do what they tell me to do. If my wife gets mad and leaves the house, Im f***ed. I just learnt how to cook, in case she decides to leave me. I dont have any money how the hell am I going to eat? I either have to go to somebodys house or learn how to cook. Does he have a signature dish? Chicken and egg whites, he says. And I know how to make salads now. He reflects for a moment: Its real s***, though. Critics have said that in his penury, Tyson is selling the last thing he has: his myth. Indeed, Tysons story has the sweep of a legend. It is, whatever your view of him, a monumental American life. But what distinguishes his memoir is the depth of his reflections: his thick Brooklyn accent, lisp and malapropisms from lack of formal schooling obscure a sharp and rather philosophical mind. He starts to discourse on the difference between the great and the good. I have encountered a lot of people who are entitled to greatness, but not even one per cent of them were good, he says. I like good things better than great but what is good? How do you measure the two? Are they intertwined? One day at a time, says JoAnn cheerfully, trying to wrap us up. One day? says Tyson, shaking his head ruefully. One second at a time. n Undisputed Truth (HarperSport), by Mike Tyson and Larry Sloman, is out now. Times+ members can attend an event with Mike Tyson at Lancaster London, W2, on December 12 at 6pm. Tickets cost 10. To book, visit mytimesplus.co.uk The Times Magazine 29