MIke Tyson sat in an almost overwhelming silence, refusing to take part in the bombast and roar of the last press conference before fighting Jake Paul in a charade of a Friday night match in Arlington, Texas. As I stared at his familiar tattooed face, I remembered what he had told me on a sweltering afternoon in the summer of 1991.
We were sitting in a smelly gym in Las Vegas at the time and Tyson tapped me on the hand to remind me of a bleak truth. “Look what happens to fighters,” he said, “even the best of them. Joe Louis became a doorman at Caesars Palace. He ended up in a wheelchair. Sonny Liston died in this town, a drunk and a junkie with no money. Even Ali, look at Ali. I love Ali, but when they introduce him during my fights I look away. Sure, they cheer him on, but where is his beauty, his speed, his talent? It’s gone… it’s gone.’
I wondered what Tyson would have thought if he had been told then that in November 2024, at the age of 58, he would be wheeled back into the ring to fight a 27-year-old upstart boxer who became famous for something called the internet, where the boy made stupid videos about a mysterious entity known as YouTube. I think Tyson would have cackled in disbelief if he then heard that he would make $20 million for the stunt, while the high-profile non-boxer would rake in $40 million.
Ariel Helwani, the astute and polished combat sports journalist who hosted the Texas press conference, did his best with Tyson. But there was no changing old Mike. “I’m ready to fight,” was his most elaborate comment when Helwani asked him about the supposed significance of a scandal against Paul on Netflix.
Helwani opened the press to other reporters. They also tried their best, but Tyson remained mute or mumbled a few words. He only got engaged when a female journalist asked a thoughtful question that ended with the question, “What would you lose if you lose this fight?”
Tyson leaned forward and spoke clearly. “I’m not going to lose.”
She returned to an old quote from Tyson, in which he discussed the consequences of defeat in a different context. “I’m not going to lose,” Tyson repeated.
Tyson has always understood why people want to see him, why they go out of their way to be around him. In the past, those closest to him wanted his money, but the rest of us were looking for something else. Tyson was only 19 when he put it well in ten words in May 1986: “People want entertainment, intrigue. I give them what they want.”
Between the ropes, when entertainment is the opposite of boredom, Iron Mike was a performer of immeasurable power. He made us focus our eyes on his crushing capacity for violence. He won his first 19 fights by knockout, 12 of which came in the opening round. In November 1986, 38 years ago this month, he became the youngest world heavyweight champion in history after hitting Trevor Berbick with such force that the Jamaican staggered across the ring, fell, stood up, fell over, staggered and hurled into the opposite corner, where he collapsed again.
When it was over, that excitement faded into a kind of restless fascination. Where did Tyson find such cruelty – what must have been done to him to make him so frightening?
The last time I interviewed Tyson, in 2014, we spoke for two days at his office in Henderson, on the outskirts of Vegas. He returned to his childhood in Brownsville, a harsh New York ghetto: ‘I was a chubby child, very shy, and I had a lisp. The children called me ‘Little Fairy Boy’.”
Tyson recalled that “my mother once had a fight with a man, Eddie, and that’s barbaric. Eddie knocked out her gold tooth, and me and Denise [Tyson’s sister] are shouting. But my mother is very smart. She puts a pan of water on. Next thing I know, she’s pouring boiling water on Eddie. He screamed, his back and face covered in blisters. We put him on the ground. My sister takes a lighter and sterilizes a needle, then blows open the blisters one by one.”
Tyson did not use such trauma to justify his villainy. He said: ‘I look back at the life I once had and see that I had no emotional problem. I had a moral problem. I had no morals.” He added: “That’s all I ever knew: how to hurt people.”
It is important to never forget that Tyson was imprisoned in 1992 for the rape of Desiree Washington. Her father, Donald, had been an avid Tyson fan. All his adoration disappeared when his daughter said, “Daddy, I have bad news for you…he raped me.”
Tyson has always denied the accusation, but when prison came, his grim mystery grew. “Mike Tyson belongs in a cage,” George Foreman suggested. “I think he should be protected like you should protect a lion or a tiger. You lock him up unless you want him to come out and jump through some hoops. When that’s over, lock him back up.’
Desiree Washington has avoided publicity, while Tyson claimed some form of redemption for the sins of his past. But he is also lost in an endless struggle with alcohol, drugs and depression. He is now locked into this week’s madness.
Tyson knows what it’s like to work in a circus. After all, it was Iron Mike who descended into madness in June 1997 when he fought Evander Holyfield for the second time. Jake Paul was just six months old when Tyson bit the top half of Holyfield’s right ear. The skin of Tyson’s face, from his eye to his jaw, tightened in a horrible grimace as if he had suffered a sudden stroke. But instead he turned his head to the left with ferocious force and tore at the cartilaginous flesh.
Part of Holyfield’s ear ended up in Tyson’s mouth. As shock and pain spread across Holyfield’s face in equal measure, Tyson stepped back and spat in disgust. The piece of ear shot out of his mouth like a wad of chewing gum. Tyson opened his arms and pointed accusingly at the canvas as if he couldn’t believe what Holyfield had just done by shoving an unwanted piece of cartilage into his mouth.
All of these memories came flooding back to me on Wednesday night as people cheered to see Tyson in Texas. Paul was frustrated. “It’s cute,” he initially said of Tyson’s reluctance. But then the YouTuber declared: “I fear no one. I want him to be that old wild Mike… I want there to be no excuses if I knock him out.”
Paul then complained directly to Tyson: ‘There’s a lot of bullshit online that you’re going to kill me, but nothing personal is happening. Is that what you’re going to do?”
Tyson shrugged. “I’m just ready.”
Paul looked furious. “It’s fucking boring,” he whined.
He rose from his seat to challenge the fighters on the undercard who had picked Tyson to beat him. Nine of those twelve fighters sided with Tyson and Paul urged many of them to bet on the outcome.
Tyson knows that now that he’s approaching 60 and has been out of the ring for so long, none of this matters. He has little left, but so many terrible things have happened in his life, or been handed out by him to others, that there is nothing new to say. He sank deeper into the silence.
The everyday chaos rattled on and Tyson stared straight into the distance. He waited for the moment when it would finally end and he could walk away with his money.