Cleaning up after the fight

Published on Friday 23 May 2008 17:06

IF, AS THE NOVELIST JOYCE CAROL Oates once wrote, "boxing has become America's tragic theatre", then one might cast Mike Tyson – the former world heavyweight champion and self-professed "baddest man on the planet" – as the leading man.

Yes, against all odds, Tyson is still alive. A pudgy 41-year-old who is millions of dollars in debt to the American taxman, he has been living in the Las Vegas suburbs for about three months. And he is sober – 15 months now, he says – after years of drug and alcohol abuse. This is not a situation anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. In Tyson's own words: "I never thought I'd live to this age."

Now that he's here, he finds himself on an unlikely and unpleasant path forward, although one that could prove cathartic. Earlier this month, Tyson and his new advisers flew to the south of France for the Cannes Film Festival, to attend the premiere of Tyson, a new documentary about his life. Directed by James Toback, the film – which intercuts interviews with Tyson, conducted during rehab, with fight clips – has forced the former world champion to relive and reconsider a life that shames him.

"I look at it now, and I'm embarrassed I did it," he said in a recent interview. "There's a lot of information people didn't need to know."

But exposing Tyson's seemingly impossible relationship with his former self is central to new plans to reintroduce the former heavyweight. The film, along with a memoir still in its early stages – Tyson is collaborating with Larry Sloman, who has ghostwritten autobiographies for Howard Stern and Anthony Kiedis, the Red Hot Chili Peppers singer – are two parts of an effort that Tyson's advisers hope will reintroduce him to the public and propel him into some semblance of a post-boxing career.

Toback, who also directed The Pick-up Artist and Two Girls and a Guy, says he believes the documentary, which is expected to be released this autumn, will allow people to see the former fighter, known for his viciousness in the ring and a well-publicised rape conviction, in a more sympathetic light. "I just showed it to Warren and Annette, and it's the first time I've ever seen him choke up over a movie," Toback says in a telephone interview. "Her too." (That would be Beatty and Bening.)

Still, Tyson seems ambivalent about being in the public eye again, partly because it raises questions that he himself can't answer. "I don't know who I am," he says when we meet in his Las Vegas home, in one of the few extensive interviews he's given in the last few years.

"That might sound stupid. I really have no idea. All my life I've been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop."

He speaks in his familiar, high-pitched voice with a trace of a lisp, but there is no menace as he frames his past as a series of mistakes. It is easy, sitting next to him as he speaks softly and contritely, to forget how feared he was.

But does the public still have an appetite for Tyson? Muhammad Ali, an Olympic hero with political cachet, has been fted in his post-boxing life. Tyson has (unfairly, perhaps) been dismissed as a mere fighting machine.

Certainly there is little that seems threatening about Tyson on this day. Not when he exits a black SUV to greet a visitor in his driveway and trudges across a pathway over a rolling stream – the only noticeable nod to decadence in this home. Not when he is handed a submarine sandwich from a member of his now-small entourage and plops down on the couch, the familiar bowler hat tilted sideways on his bald, tattooed head.

It was 22 years ago, on a Saturday night at the Las Vegas Hilton, 16 miles from here, when a left hook from a 20-year-old Brooklyn kid full of fury landed on the temple of Trevor Berbick at 2:35 in the second round. "The day I won the title I got so drunk and high," he says, lighting a miniature cigar.

This was the point of demarcation in Tyson's life because what had come before was poetic: 13-year-old black kid from the ghetto is taken in by Cus D'Amato, a legendary fight man in upstate New York, who turns him into the heavyweight champion of the world. But what came after was vulgar: Bengal tigers in the backyard, prison and bankruptcy. The documentary covers well-trodden territory, but with the addition of a sober Tyson reflecting on his foibles. During the interview, he becomes engrossed with a show on the E! channel about celebrities in rehab. He is quick to recognise his friends.

"I love addicts," he says, nodding towards the television screen. "I love these guys. That's the people I want to be around. You know, former users. And I think that's really crazy."

He says he was born an addict and doesn't blame his affliction on the trajectory of his life. He disdains talking about his own boxing career. Other than the man sitting on the couch there is no sign that the home is inhabited by the former heavyweight champ: no trophies, no pictures, no memorabilia. "I don't need to remember that," he says.

But Tyson shows he is still enraptured with boxing history, a love born out of watching old fight films at the home of D'Amato, in Catskill, New York, as a teenager. Mention one of the old-time boxers and he will launch into a monologue: "Gene Tunney, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, look at those guys," he says. "In the end they say Gene Tunney became an alcoholic, but he married well, he did well. He was erudite."

The group of people Tyson is surrounded by now is an important part of the latest chapter in his story. Don King, the flamboyant fight promoter whom Tyson accused of milking him of millions of dollars, is long gone. The key people now are Harlan Werner, 40, who has worked with Muhammad Ali on licensing and marketing since he was 19; and Damon Bingham, who is Ali's godson and the son of the photographer, Howard Bingham, who is Ali's best friend.

Both Werner and Bingham were heavily involved in the documentary, and have producer credits.

As for Toback, he met Tyson in 1985 on the set of The Pick-up Artist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Tyson, not yet the champion, had been brought to the set to meet Robert Downey Jr, and "somehow the subject got on to madness," Toback says. "I told him about an LSD experience I had as a sophomore at Harvard. We talked about losing the self, and the difference between dread and fear."

After that meeting Toback cast Tyson in two of his films – Black and White in 1999 and When Will I Be Loved in 2004. At the end of the newest film – which was shot last year in a rented Beverly Hills home and on the beach in Malibu while Tyson got day passes from the Wonderland Center where he was in rehab – Tyson "was talking about that empty void", Toback says.

It was something Tyson reflected on deeply during his three-year stint in prison, following a conviction in 1992 for the rape of beauty pagaent contestant Desiree Washington. Tyson has always claimed he was innocent and, although the new documentary apparently offers no fresh evidence, Toback told reporters in Cannes that he was "absolutely set up there".

While in jail, Tyson converted to Islam and spent long hours in solitary confinement, during which, Toback says, he started to read the works of great philosophers.

Tyson's favourite writers these days are Machiavelli and Tolstoy. "Cool guys," he says. "For some bizarre reason, all these guys are in some bizarre pain. Machiavelli just wanted power. He wanted power and control. His whole game was about manipulation. Tolstoy was all about helping the poor. He was a communist, while his wife was a capitalist. And they had big fights over this."

Tyson's conversation flits from philosophy to addiction to the burdens of celebrity, but the ease with which he moves across this catholic range of interests is less surprising the more time you spend in his presence. During his time at Wonderland, Tyson's book project was also hatched. David Vigliano, the New York literary agent, visited him there, and the two agreed to work together.

But neither project – film nor memoir – has been easy for Tyson, who sees looking back as "very painful stuff". He says of his past: "I didn't know how to be any other way. I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire. I was crazy." Much of what Werner and Bingham are doing is trying to clean up that past. They have had to deploy lawyers to stop the selling of unlicensed products on the internet, and negotiations with the tax department are ongoing. (Tyson, who reportedly earned $300-$400 million – 150-200 million – during his boxing career, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003.)

"We have a job to do," says Werner, adding that he has comic book and video-game deals in the works. "We've got to make the guy money. That's our job. Our plan is to do high-profile projects and associate with companies who understand that he has generated billions around the world in ticket sales, pay-per-view and DVD sales."

"The obvious challenge, in addition to Mike not wanting to be a sellout, is the past legal issues," Werner says. "There are times we don't get a return phone call."

But in his prime, Tyson's name was gold. "Those pay-per-view events were some of the biggest pay-per-view events in history," says Matthew Blank, the chief executive of Showtime, which screened several of Tyson's fights. "The ups and downs of Tyson were extreme. Mike brought a huge amount of drama both in the ring and out of the ring."

Several months before Tyson captured the heavyweight title in 1986, he was visited in Catskill by a reporter for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, who was looking to profile, in the words of Sports Illustrated, "the next great heavyweight".

At 19, Tyson told the Canadian reporter that his life goals were "peace of mind, a lot of money and to be a well-respected person".

Most of the money is long gone, but the other two seem more achievable the longer he remains clean and sober. "I just say I'm not getting high today," he says. "I'm not promising them I'm not getting high tomorrow. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm in an abysmal world trying to figure it out."