In his explosive autobiography, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, published today, he has revealed that he spent the weeks leading up to that sentencing, traveling round the country ‘romancing’ his various girlfriends.
Tyson aged 13: He recalls watching the Muhammad Ali movie The Greatest and thinking 'I want to be that guy'
And where legal measures had let him down he had turned to ‘divine intervention,’ to bring him a light sentence.
He visited a, ‘hoodoo woman’ who said she would cast a spell to keep him out of jail if he put five hundred dollar bills in a jar, urinated in it and kept it under his bed for three days.
He sought out a voodoo priest who turned out to be a fraud, ‘I knew that guy had nothing,’ he recalls.
And he followed the instructions of a Santeria priest – going to the courthouse one night with a pigeon and an egg which he dropped on the ground as the bird was release and he yelled. ‘We’re free!’
He almost believed it would work. Because he felt invincible. ‘In my mind,’ he says, ‘I had no peers. I was the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. I was a titan, the reincarnation of Alexander the Great.’
He was sentenced to six years and served three.
Tyson at nine years old, left, and his father Jimmy 'Curlee' Kirkpatrick Jr., right
Tyson celebrates his 19th birthday with friends including his first girlfriend Angie, stood to his left
Today Tyson believes that the day he was sent to jail may well have been the day that saved his life.
That life as told by Tyson is one of drama, turbulence, excess and addiction, one in which he gave in to every carnal appetite.
Born in Cumberland Hospital in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Tyson never really knew his father. The man on his birth certificate, Percel Tyson was a man he never met.
And the man his mother, Lorna Mae, told him was his ‘biological father,’ Jimmy ‘Curlee’ Kirkpatrick Jr was an infrequent presence in both their lives.
He was a pimp, a successful one Tyson notes with some pride, who fathered 17 children but raised none of them.
By the time Tyson was seven his mother had lost her job as a matron at the Women’s House of Detention in Manhattan, and she and her clutter of children had been evicted.
Tyson's mother Lorna Mae: When he was seven she lost her job, started drinking heavily and sleeping with men she didn't want to just to keep a roof over her family's head
Tyson poses with arch rival Evander Holyfield, bu tin his book he writes that as the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing he believed he was 'the reincarnation of Alexander the Great'
Highs and lows: Tyson recounts how he found his first wife Robin Givens with a 'gourded' young Brad Pitt who he mistook for a girl at first. He also talks about his various spells under lock and key in prison
She started drinking heavily, never found another job and often slept with men she didn’t want to just to keep a roof over her family’s head. ‘That’s just the way it was,’ he states.
As a seven year old, small and nimble he began a career of petty crime – clambering in windows of houses through which older boys were too large to fit to steal whatever he could get his hands on.
It was ‘like Oliver Twist.’
It was ‘like Oliver Twist.’
The one true pleasure he found during that time was flying pigeons. Introduced to it up on a Brooklyn rooftop by older boys he was hooked from the start. ‘It was like racing horses,’ he recalls. ‘Once it is in your blood you never stop.’
To this day, wherever he lives, Tyson has a coop for his birds.
'In my mind, I had no peers. I was the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. I was a titan, the reincarnation of Alexander the Great'
His early boyhood took on a relentless rhythm of crime sprees, being hauled in by police only to be taken home and brutally beaten by his despairing mother.
By the time he was 12 he was a ‘zonked out zombie’ on Thorazine and a regular attendee of reformatory school, or ‘special-ed crazy school.’ There are not many light spots in the childhood that Tyson recalls. But one that stands out happened during a stint in the Reformatory school of Sporford.
He recalls: ‘We watched a movie called “The Greatest” about Muhammad Ali. When it was over…we were shocked when Ali himself walked out on that stage, ‘ he says. ‘I thought, I want to be that guy.’
He didn’t want to be a boxer. He wanted to be great.
Tyson poses with his children (from left to right) Back: Milan, Amir and Mikey. Front: Rayna, Tyson, Miguel and Gena
Shortly before his thirteenth birthday Tyson was arrested for being in possession of stolen goods. He was send to Tryon, a more hard-line school than Sporford and one where he quickly set about making a name for himself as a troublemaker.
But it was there that a teacher saw potential in the kid who shadowboxed in corners. In May 1980 he was introduced him to the man who would change his life – legendary trainer, Cus D’Amato.
Tyson recalls his first meeting with the man who would become his mentor, trainer and putative father, as daunting: ‘He was short and stout with a bald head and you could see that he was strong. He even talked tough and he was dead serious; there wasn’t a happy muscle in his face.’
'Robin (Givens) and her mother were confidence people, con artists, borderline prostitutes'
After watching Tyson train for a while, D’Amato announced: ‘If you listen to me I can make you the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.’
Tyson’s immediate thought was that the man was a pervert.
The next seven years of Tyson’s life were dominated by D’Amato and his regime. He insisted that Tyson chanted affirmations every day: ‘The best fighter in the world. Nobody can beat me.’
He told him that fear was like fire. ‘If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.’
Ultimately it wasn’t fear but Tyson’s appetites that threatened to do that.
By the time he was 14, Tyson was ‘thinking like a Roman Gladiator, being in a perpetual state of war in your mind, yet on the outside seeming calm and relaxed.’
Left Tyson with his daughters Gene and Rayna and right with wife Kiki and daughter Milan, top, and Morocco
Tyson poses with his early mentors and managers Bill Cayton, left, and Jimmy Jacobs, right
He lived and breathed boxing going through amateur bouts, to the Junior Olympics where he knocked out his opponent in just 8 seconds to win the gold in 1981.
But there was always a conflict within Tyson – however supposedly calm and disciplined the exterior.
By the time he was two time junior national champion his mother was dying and he was ‘still robbing houses because you just go back to who you are.’ He was drinking, smoking angel dust, snorting cocaine and going to dances.
In reality Tyson’s entire life as he tells it in this 600 page tom
e has been a cycle of going back to who he was. The only difference was that with success came great wealth, an entourage, more woman, better drugs and higher stakes.
By the time he was 14, Tyson was 'thinking like a Roman Gladiator, being in a perpetual state of war in your mind, yet on the outside seeming calm and relaxed'
In a cruel collision of events the very day he was to fight for the Heavyweight Champion of the World title, was the day that Cus D’Amato died of pneumonia. ‘It just started crying like it was the end of the world,’ he recalls. ‘It was. My world was gone.’
And a new, a less stable one, was to replace it.
At 20 he won the title – he didn’t take the belt off all night. He kept it on in the lobby of the hotel, at the party that went on all night. In the days and weeks that followed, ‘Sometimes, ‘ he says, ‘Id’ get naked and put the championship belt on and have sex with a girl.’
Wherever he found a willing partner or several, he was more than game. He was only twenty and he had achieved the only goal he had ever set out to meet. He was free. And he was empty – without guidance or purpose.
Suddenly Tyson was earning millions and the girls, models, stars, hookers… were falling at his feet.
At one party in 1987 he recalls meeting a model, ‘At the top of her game... and with an amazing English accent.’
Tyson's daughter Exodus, posing with her brother Miguel, who died in a terrible accident when she was strangled by a blind cord in which she became tangled
It was Naomi Campbell whom he began to date. Not that Tyson was faithful. He was also dating Miss America runner-up Suzette Charles while having sex with dozens of other women.
Then he met actress Robin Givens and says with dry humor: ‘Robin was my first real relationship, except for Naomi who, by the way, was pissed when she found out about Robin.’
Tyson was no more faithful to Robin than any other girl but he was smitten. He was constantly unfaithful and constantly caught out because he wasn’t very clever about it: ‘She’d see lipstick on the crotch of my sweatpants.’
But Robin was willing to overlook these indiscretions. They married on February 7, 1988, 11 months after their first date. Looking back he now feels very differently. Robin and her mother, Ruth, he explains ‘came as a package.’
The way he sees it now, ‘Robin and her mother were confidence people, con artists, borderline prostitutes.’
It wasn’t long before the marriage unraveled. First there were allegations of physical abuse which he strenuously denied. Then Robin and her mother, he says, tried to convince authorities that he was mentally unstable in a bid to take financial control of his estate.
Still, he says, he was in love with Givens. And might have stayed that way much longer had it not been for an interview they gave to Barbara Walters as a couple.
Tyson's son Miguel together with his daughter Mikey
Taking it one day at a time: Mike Tyson seeks to settle several old scores in his explosive autobiography and reveals how he is trying to be a better husband to current wife Kiki, right
As the cameras rolled Tyson sat by his wife’s side in disbelief as she told Walters that her husband was out of control, physically frightening and a manic depressive.
It was the ultimate betrayal. He had been ambushed.
Divorce was inevitable but even as the litigation was in process Tyson drove by Robin’s house in Los Angeles one day looking for one last tumble. He saw her in her car with what he thought was a female companion.
Instead the long haired blonde turned out to be Brad Pitt who, when he saw Tyson, ‘looked like he was ready to receive his last rites. Plus, he looked stoned out of his gourd.’
The divorce was finalized on February 14. Tyson’s life of excess – of Team Tyson, headed by Don King – continued unabated. He thought he was Charlemagne. He was out of shape, overweight and all he wanted to do was party.
On July 19, 1992, the wheels came off spectacularly. Tyson maintains to this day that he did not rape Desiree Washington.
In his book he sets out his account of what happened that night when, after meeting and flirting earlier in the day, he says she came to his hotel room at 2am.
He says it was a ‘booty call,’ and that it was understood earlier in the day that they would have sex.
He claims he gave her oral sex for about 20 minutes then they had intercourse. He said she could stay but she chose to leave.
A recent photo of Tyson together with his brother Rodney and his nephew Lorenzo
His only mistake he says, looking back, was to be too rude and self-absorbed to walk her to the car afterwards. ‘I dissed her,’ he says.
Throughout his account of his life drugs, sex and alcohol are recurring themes. After his rape conviction being in prison did little to limit his sex life.
He had sex with the numerous female visitors who lined up to see him and a long running sexual relationship with his drug counselor.
When he got out he was 29 years old but he felt slower. Infamous promoter Don King had a series of comeback fights lined up with a purse of $200million.
He spent and spent and spent. He commissioned a $100,000, 2000 square foot mural of great fighters on the wall of his Vegas home. He ringed his pool with seven foot statues of the great warriors of history that cost $30,000 each. He had an East Coast mansion with a 5000 square foot master bedroom that made him feel ‘like Scarface.’ As well as a house in Ohio for his most serious girlfriend – the woman he would make his second wife – Monica.
His most over the top expense was a tiger called Kenya – a creature who shredded hotel rooms and Don King’s Mansion and tore the roof of Tyson’s Maserati.
But Tyson was spending money even more quickly than he was earning it and Don King and his cohorts were taking a hefty cut.
In 1997 he was suspended after the notorious Evander Holyfield fight in which he bit off a chunk of his opponent’s ear.
Soon after he learned that he was facing bankruptcy. The news saw him sell off 62 of his vehicles.
In 1999 Tyson wound up back in prison on an assault conviction. He was in prison in Maryland and remembers vividly a remarkable visit from John F Kennedy Jr whom he had met in New York when the scion of the clan invited him to the offices of George, the magazine which he published.
Tyson left with Al Sharpton and right with backstage at WrestleMania in 2010 with his son Amir, plus Triple H and Hornswoggle
Tyson meets up with some sumo wrestlers during a trip to Tokyo in 1988
Poignantly amid good-natured chat Tyson recalls Kennedy telling him that he was flying back to New York later that night. He told him not to as he looked tired and then urged him that if he must fly then to do so alone, not with anyone he loved.
Less than five months later John F Kennedy Jr, his wife Caroline and sister-in-law were killed when his small plane ditched off the East coast in stormy weather.
As the visit wound up that day Tyson asked John F Kennedy Jr to get him out of prison – his cousin Kathleen was Lieutenant Governor of Maryland at the time. Kennedy tried to laugh it off and saying ‘I don’t really know her.’
‘Then he got into his limo and drove to my house to get some coffee,’ Tyson recalls. ‘Shortly after John-John was there, boom, I got out of jail.’
Out of jail he fell quickly off the rails once more – sleeping with prostitutes in Cuba and convincing himself he had got AIDS as a result.
In fact his rapid weight loss was down to food poisoning but by the time he had found that out and got the results of an HIV test – negative – he had already told Monica he had AIDS.
He couldn’t really blame her filing for divorce, he admits, he fooled around a lot and ‘calling to tell her that I had AIDS probably didn’t help.’ The revelation that he had got a stripper in Phoenix pregnant was ‘the icing on the cake.’
Depressed and lost, he got a tattoo on his face simply because he literally wanted to deface himself.
There is no dramatic moment of revelation and salvation in Tyson’s life as he tells it in the pages of this book. Just a series of warnings unheeded. In 2005 Naomi Campbell attempted to intervene calling him to tell him he had to stop doing so much ‘blow.’
His life story is one of bankruptcy, drug-fueled orgies, relationship collapse and drama.
Tyson along with his therapist Marilyn Murray, who introduced him to the 12-step program
He is a sex addict, a drug addict and an alcoholic who has struggled all his life, he admits, to temper his appetites.
What might have seemed like comebacks in the ring, or in his personal life, were really just for show.
Behind the scenes he was as messed up and coked up as ever.
Behind the scenes he was as messed up and coked up as ever.
He reveals he was high during his entire experience of filming The Hangover.
Then true tragedy struck. His four year old daughter, Exodus, died in a terrible accident when she was strangled by a blind cord in which she became tangled.
It was the beginning of a real effort on Tyson’s part to change – to not simply rock back to what he was, where he had come from, what he had always known.
He tried a series of rehab programs, none with lasting success. He formed a relationship with a girl he had known since she was 13, now his wife and mother to two of his children, Kiki.
He studied Islam and started to recognize where he had gone wrong back in a haze of drugs, gunshots, nightclub brawls and anonymous sex.
‘All I wanted back then was to be glamorous and glorious. That’s why I f*** all my money away.’
It is no surprise, he says, that he has ‘an affinity for rollers’ – birds that, for no apparent reason, fly higher than all others then just roll and roll and roll downwards, only sometimes pulling out of their catastrophic fall in time to save themselves from being dashed on the ground.
It is the pattern of Tyson’s life. And, as he admits in a postscript to his Epilogue it still is.
At the time he finished working on the book he was clean and sober and the end was to be an uplifting one of salvation. Then he had a relapse, one which in the interests of veracity he felt bound to share.
There is no neat ending to Tyson’s story because it isn’t over yet. Instead he is forever an addict – forever a roller. He is trying to be a good father, trying to be a good husband and trying to ‘heal.’ One day at a time.
Source: Daily Mail
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