Mike Tyson

• 1. Introduction

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  Mike Tyson was just 20 years old when he became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. The date was the 22nd of November 1986, and his opponent was Trevor Berbick. The fight lasted two rounds. Within a year, Tyson would hold all three major heavyweight titles at once, something no boxer had ever done. Within four years, he would lose everything in a single night in Tokyo. And within six years of that championship fight, he would be in prison. The questions this documentary will answer are not simply about boxing. They are about a boy arrested 38 times before the age of 13, a man who fought his way to the pinnacle of sport and then watched it collapse, and a life that never seemed to run in a straight line.

• 2. Brownsville and Before

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  Cumberland Hospital in Fort Greene, Brooklyn was where Michael Gerard Tyson was born on the 30th of June 1966. His birth certificate named a cab driver from Jamaica as his father, but the man Tyson had known as his father was a pimp named Jimmy Kirkpatrick, who had left his own family in Grier Town, North Carolina, before moving to Brooklyn and meeting Tyson's mother, Lorna Mae. Kirkpatrick abandoned the family around the time Mike was born and died in 1992. The family was forced to move from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Brownsville when Tyson was 10, and the neighborhood was rough. By 13, he had been arrested 38 times. He was repeatedly mocked for a high-pitched voice and a lisp, and he fought the people who mocked him. His first recorded fight, according to an interview in Details magazine, started when a bigger youth pulled the head off one of Tyson's pigeons. He ended up at the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, New York, where a juvenile detention counselor and former boxer named Bobby Stewart noticed something. Stewart saw that Tyson could bench press more than his own body weight, and it was Stewart who arranged for Tyson to meet Cus D'Amato. Tyson's mother died when he was 16. He later described what that loss meant: "I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: she only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn't pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it's crushing emotionally and personally." D'Amato became his legal guardian after that, and the training that would shape Tyson's entire professional life began.

• 3. The Making of Iron Mike

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  Cus D'Amato taught Tyson the peek-a-boo style: hands held high, slipping under and weaving around punches, timing counters while maintaining constant pressure. The style suited Tyson's compact frame and extraordinary physical tools. D'Amato's method also added a technical dimension to Tyson's raw power: Tyson would crouch immediately before throwing a hook or uppercut, using the spring of his legs to amplify the punch. Among his signature combinations was a right hook to the body followed by a right uppercut to the chin. On the amateur circuit, Tyson won gold medals at the 1981 and 1982 Junior Olympic Games, defeating Joe Cortez in 1981 and Kelton Brown in 1982. Brown's corner threw in the towel in the first round. In 1984 at the National Golden Gloves in New York, Tyson beat Jonathan Littles for the gold medal. He did lose twice as an amateur to Henry Tillman, who went on to win heavyweight gold at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Tyson turned professional on the 6th of March 1985, in Albany, New York, defeating Hector Mercedes by first-round TKO at the age of 18. He had 15 bouts in his first year as a professional. D'Amato died in November 1985, not long into that debut year, and Tyson was not yet 20. Those who followed his career closely would later speculate that this death was the catalyst for much of what followed. Kevin Rooney took over primary training duties and carried on D'Amato's methods, but Tyson was now without the man who had taken him from a juvenile detention center to the national stage. The fight world would notice the difference when Rooney eventually left too.

• 4. The Undisputed Years

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  When Tyson stopped Trevor Berbick in the second round on the 22nd of November 1986, he was 20 years and 4 months old, a record that still stands. He added the WBA title by defeating James Smith on the 7th of March 1987, in Las Vegas, by unanimous decision. The IBF title followed on August 1, when he beat Tony Tucker by twelve-round unanimous decision, with scores of 119-111, 118-113, and 116-112. He was the first heavyweight ever to hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles simultaneously. The media described the period as "Tyson-mania." Sportswriter Donald Saunders wrote that boxing could "cease worrying about its immediate future, now that it has discovered a heavyweight champion fit to stand alongside Dempsey, Tunney, Louis, Marciano, and Ali." Around this time, Minoru Arakawa, the president of Nintendo of America, witnessed one of Tyson's fights and was impressed by the fighter's "power and skill." He suggested Tyson be included in a Nintendo Entertainment System game. In 1987, Nintendo released Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, which sold more than a million copies and has since been considered one of the greatest games of all time. The peak of Tyson's boxing achievement came on the 27th of June 1988, when he fought Michael Spinks, who had taken the heavyweight title from Larry Holmes in 1985. The bout was the richest fight in history at the time, and analysts predicted a tactical war. The fight lasted 91 seconds. Tyson knocked Spinks out in the first round and became the lineal champion. Behind the scenes, things were already fracturing. His marriage to actress Robin Givens was deteriorating. In September 1988, on the ABC news program 20/20, Givens described life with Tyson as "torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could possibly imagine." She also described him as "manic depressive," which doctors later confirmed, while Tyson sat beside her with what observers described as a calm expression. In late 1988, Tyson fired longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, the man many credited with developing his craft after D'Amato's death. Critics observed that Tyson subsequently showed less head movement and combination punching.

• 5. Tokyo, February 1990

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  Buster Douglas was not supposed to win. The Mirage casino, the only venue to post odds for the 11th of February 1990 fight in Tokyo, made Tyson a 42-to-1 favorite. Reports circulated that Tyson's training had been less rigorous than usual. Douglas's jab had a 12-inch reach advantage over Tyson's, and Douglas used it relentlessly. Tyson did connect with an uppercut in the eighth round and knocked Douglas to the canvas, and Tyson's camp would later argue the count was slow and that Douglas had taken more than ten seconds to rise. But Douglas recovered and went after Tyson hard in the following two rounds. Thirty-five seconds into the tenth round, Douglas threw an uppercut and followed it with a four-punch combination of hooks. Tyson went down for the first time in his professional career. Referee Octavio Meyran counted him out. Tyson himself later called the loss the greatest moment of his career: "I needed that fight to make me a better person and fighter. I have a broader perspective of myself and boxing." He rebounded with first-round knockouts of Henry Tillman, the 1984 Olympic heavyweight gold medalist who had beaten him as an amateur, and Alex Stewart. An elimination match to set up a title shot was arranged. The undisputed championship now belonged to Evander Holyfield, who had taken it from Douglas in Douglas's first defense. But before Tyson could fight Holyfield, he was arrested in July 1991 for the rape of Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Black America pageant, at the Canterbury Hotel in Indianapolis.

• 6. Trial and Incarceration

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  Desiree Washington had previously been crowned Miss Black Rhode Island, and she was in Indianapolis for pageant rehearsals when Tyson contacted her. Her testimony at the Marion County superior court trial, which ran from January 26 to the 10th of February 1992, described being called around 1:45 in the morning to tour the city, then being taken back to Tyson's room. She testified that after refusing his advances, she went to use the bathroom before leaving, and when she returned, "Tyson then pulled her to the bed, pinned her down and raped her." She said, "He was mean, evil." Three days after the incident she went to the police. Corroboration came from several sources. Tyson's own chauffeur, Virginia Foster, confirmed Washington's "state of shock" after the incident and also testified that Tyson had previously attempted to assault her as well. Emergency room physician Dr. Thomas Richardson, who had examined Washington, testified that she had suffered two small vaginal abrasions consistent with those seen in sexual assault cases, and that over 20 years and approximately 20,000 cases he had seen such abrasions following consensual sex only twice. Tyson's defense was led by Vincent J. Fuller, a Washington attorney whose reputation rested on federal white-collar cases such as the defense of John Hinckley Jr. and junk-bond king Michael Milken. Tyson himself would later describe Fuller as "a horrible lawyer." Legal analyst Mark Shaw argued that the jury-selection process allowed a conservative ex-Marine to become foreman, and that the decision to let Tyson testify at his own grand jury hearing, trial, and sentencing was a serious strategic error. The jury convicted Tyson on the 10th of February 1992, after deliberating for nearly 10 hours. He was sentenced on March 26 to six years in prison. In April 1992, he was assigned to the Indiana Youth Center. He was released in March 1995 after serving less than three years. He left prison with tattoos of tennis player Arthur Ashe and Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, and he dates his tattoo of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara to the same period.

• 7. Comeback, Bite, and Bankruptcy

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  Tyson's first fight after release was marketed with the slogan "He's back!" and grossed more than 96 million dollars worldwide, including 63 million dollars from pay-per-view in the United States alone. The fight was purchased by 1.52 million homes, setting pay-per-view records. The 89-second fight against Peter McNeeley drew criticism that his management had lined up easy opponents, and the fight later appeared on TV Guide's list of the 50 Greatest TV Sports Moments of All Time in 1998. He recaptured the WBC title in March 1996 by knocking out Frank Bruno in the third round, and he added the WBA belt in September by stopping Bruce Seldon in the first round. The two-belt comeback set up a fight with Evander Holyfield on the 9th of November 1996, in Las Vegas, billed as "Finally." Holyfield, who was 34 at the time and described by many as a washed-up former champion, stopped Tyson by TKO in the eleventh round, becoming the second boxer to win a heavyweight championship belt three times. The rematch on the 28th of June 1997, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, billed as "The Sound and the Fury," grossed 100 million dollars and was seen by 1.99 million households, a pay-per-view record that stood until the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight on the 5th of May 2007. The rematch became one of the most controversial events in modern sports. In the third round, Tyson bit Holyfield on both ears. The first bite removed a piece of Holyfield's right ear, which was found on the ring floor. Referee Mills Lane deducted two points and let the fight continue. When Tyson bit Holyfield again, the fight was stopped. Tyson was disqualified, and the Nevada state boxing commission immediately withheld 3 million dollars from his 30-million-dollar purse, the legal maximum at the time. Tyson later said his actions were retaliation for what he described as repeated headbutts. His boxing license was rescinded on the 9th of July 1997, in a unanimous voice vote. The commission restored his license on the 18th of October 1998, by a 4-to-1 vote. In August 2003, Tyson filed for bankruptcy. He had earned over 30 million dollars for several individual fights and more than 300 million dollars across his career. At the time of filing, he reportedly carried approximately 23 million dollars in debt.

• 8. Legacy and Later Life

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  Lennox Lewis knocked Tyson out in the eighth round on the 8th of June 2002, in Memphis, Tennessee, in what was at that time the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in history, generating 106.9 million dollars. Tyson's final professional win came against Clifford Etienne on the 22nd of February 2003, just 49 seconds into the first round, and his final professional fight before a long retirement was a loss by retirement on the stool against journeyman Kevin McBride on the 11th of June 2005. In the 2008 documentary Tyson, he said he had fought McBride only for a payday and had not anticipated winning. His knockout-to-win percentage across his career was 88 percent. The Ring magazine named him Fighter of the Year in both 1986 and 1988. He was ranked 16th on The Ring's list of the 100 greatest punchers of all time and first on ESPN's list of the hardest hitters in heavyweight history. On the 12th of June 2011, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame alongside Julio Cesar Chavez, Kostya Tszyu, and Sylvester Stallone. In November 2024, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Tyson fought Jake Paul via eight rounds and lost by unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring the fight 79-73 or 80-72 in Paul's favor. The fight became the biggest boxing gate in US history outside of Las Vegas. An autobiography, Undisputed Truth, published in November 2013, appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. A second memoir, Iron Ambition, published in May 2017, details his time with Cus D'Amato. Both books were written with Larry Sloman. In July 2010, Tyson completed the Islamic pilgrimage Umrah for the first time, and he did so again in December 2022 alongside DJ Khaled. He tended to a flock of 350 pigeons in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix, and described the birds as something that "got him out of trouble." The sport that shaped him began with pigeons, in a Brooklyn street fight over one of them, and the birds stayed with him long after the belts were gone.