Undisputed Truth

Description

“Raw, powerful and disturbing—a head-spinning take on Mr. Tyson’s life.”—Wall Street Journal
 
Philosopher, Broadway headliner, fighter, felon—Mike Tyson has defied stereotypes, expectations, and a lot of conventional wisdom during his three decades in the public eye. Bullied as a boy in the toughest, poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn, Tyson grew up to become one of the most ferocious boxers of all time—and the youngest heavyweight champion ever. But his brilliance in the ring was often compromised by reckless behavior. Yet—even after hitting rock bottom—the man who once admitted being addicted “to everything” fought his way back, achieving triumphant success as an actor and newfound happiness and stability as a father and husband. Brutal, honest, raw, and often hilarious, Undisputed Truth is the singular journey of an inspiring American original.“A masterpiece … grimly tragic on one page, laugh-out-loud funny on the next, and unrelentingly vulgar and foul-mouthed. Reading Tyson’s memoir is like watching a Charles Dickens street urchin grow up to join Hunter S. Thompson on a narcotics-filled road trip — with the ensuing antics captured on video by assorted paparazzi.” –Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times

“Undisputed Truth is raw, powerful and disturbing—a head-spinning take on Mr. Tyson’s life…Unlike other sports memoirists, he doesn’t pull punches, offering up slashing comments on people who were once close to him. His narrative reminds us of just how far he has come from his rough beginnings, and, in a way, how close he remains to them. He had a punch like a thunderbolt from Zeus, but there have been a lot of big bangers in boxing; Mike Tyson’s came with a pulsating story line like few others.” –Gordon Marino, Wall Street Journal

“Parts of [Undisputed Truth] read like a real-life Tarantino movie. Parts read like a Tom Wolfe-ian tour of wildly divergent worlds: from the slums of Brooklyn to the high life in Las Vegas to the isolation of prison…. Mr. Tyson’s idiosyncratic voice comes through clearly on the page here — not just his mix of profane street talk and 12-step recovery language, cinematic descriptions of individual fights and philosophical musings, but also his biting humor and fondness for literary and historical references that run the gamut from Alexandre Dumas to Tolstoy to Lenin to Tennessee Williams…. A genuine effort by a troubled soul to gain some understanding of the long, strange journey that has been his life.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“A hefty autobiography that might be the most soul baring book of its genre ever written … a fascinating look into a life that up until now had already been well chronicled … It’s raw and profane … but it is also quite funny.”—Associated Press
 
“Undisputed Truth, which is, without a doubt, one of the grittiest and most harrowing memoirs I’ve ever read.” –Flavorwire

“Most readers are familiar with [Tyson’s] tumultuous life and career—the bizarre behavior in the ring, the sordid behavior out of it—but what’s most surprising about the book is the introspection and self-awareness displayed … it’s raw and profane but also smart and witty … A fascinating and frequently surprising autobiography.”—Booklist
 

 

“Undisputed Truth, is the American dream writ large in raw detail: think Citizen Kane scripted by the writing team of The Wire…. [it] has a great American novel feel to it… Tyson could easily be a Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer creation.” –Austin Collings, New Statesman

“[A] lively mixture of a memoir.” –Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books

“Tyson was ever practised at delivering the early killer blow; and so it is with this gripping and indecently enthralling autobiography….Tyson always had a way with words – although much of the credit for this book must go to his ghostwriter Larry “Ratso” Sloman, who not only makes Tyson’s life read like an Elmore Leonard thriller, but gifts him with considerable self-awareness and a memorably pithy turn of phrase….recounted in gripping, punch-by-punch detail in prose pungent with the reek of blood, sweat and petroleum jelly.” –Mick Brown, The Telegraph (UK)

“Thrilling…addictive…Sloman brings Tyson’s voice springing off the page with its often hilarious combo of street and shrink, pimp profanity and the ‘prisony pseudo-intellectual modern mack rap’ of the autodidact.” –Geoff Dyer, The Guardian (UK)Mike Tyson is the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, and the first boxer to ever hold the three biggest belts in prizefighting—the WBC, WBA, and IBF world heavyweight titles—simultaneously. Tyson’s enduring appeal has launched him into a career in entertainment: he was a standout in the blockbuster films The Hangover and The Hangover 2, and recently he has earned tremendous acclaim for his one-man show Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth. Tyson has launched a clothing company (Mike Tyson Collection) and Tyrrhanic Productions, which currently has several film projects in development. In 2011 Tyson was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Kiki, and their children.

Larry “Ratso” Sloman is best known as Howard Stern’s collaborator on Private Parts and Miss America. Sloman’s recent collaborations include The Secret Life of Houdini, with magic theorist William Kalush; Mysterious Stranger with magician David Blaine; and Scar Tissue; the memoir of Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis. All three books were New York Times bestsellers.

PROLOGUE

I spent most of the six weeks between my conviction for rape and sentencing traveling around the country romancing all of my various girlfriends. It was my way of saying good-bye to them. And when I wasn’t with them, I was fending off all the women who propositioned me. Everywhere I’d go, there were some women who would come up to me and say, “Come on, I’m not going to say that you raped me. You can come with me. I’ll let you film it.” I later realized that that was their way of saying “We know you didn’t do it.” But I didn’t take it that way. I’d strike back indignantly with a rude response. Although they were saying what they said out of support, I was in too much pain to realize it. I was an ignorant, mad, bitter guy who had a lot of growing up to do.

But some of my anger was understandable. I was a twenty-five-year-old kid facing sixty years in jail for a crime that I did not commit. Let me repeat here what I said before the grand jury, during the trial, at my sentencing, at my early-release hearing, after I got out of prison, and what I will continue to say until they put me in the ground. I did not rape Desiree Washington. She knows it, God knows it, and the consequences of her actions are something that she’s got to live with for the rest of her life.

My promoter, Don King, kept assuring me that I would walk from these charges. He told me he was working behind the scenes to make the case disappear. Plus, he had hired Vince Fuller, the best lawyer that a million-dollar fee could buy. Vince just happened to be Don’s tax attorney. And Don probably still owed him money. But I knew from the start that I’d get no justice. I wasn’t being tried in New York or Los Angeles; we were in Indianapolis, Indiana, historically one of the strongholds of the Ku Klux Klan. My judge, Patricia Gifford, was a former sex crimes prosecutor and was known as “the Hanging Judge.” I had been found guilty by a jury of my “peers,” only two of whom were black. Another black jury member had been excused by the judge after a fire in the hotel where the jurors were staying. She dismissed him because of his “state of mind.” Yeah, his state of mind was that he didn’t like the food he was being served.

But 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. My style was impetuous, my defenses were impregnable, and I was ferocious. It’s amazing how a low self-esteem and a huge ego can give you delusions of grandeur. But after the trial, this god among men had to get his black ass back in court for his sentencing.

But first I tried some divine intervention. Calvin, my close friend from Chicago, told me about some hoodoo woman who could cast a spell to keep me out of jail.

“You piss in a jar, then put five hundred-dollar bills in there, then put the jar under your bed for three days and then bring it to her and she’ll pray over it for you,” Calvin told me.

“So the clairvoyant broad is gonna take the pissy pile of hundreds out of the jar, rinse them off, and then go shopping. If somebody gave you a hundred-dollar bill they pissed on, would you care?” I asked Calvin. I had a reputation for throwing around money but that was too much even for me.

Then some friends tried to set me up with a voodoo priest. But they brought around this guy who had a suit on. The guy didn’t even look like a drugstore voodoo guy. This asshole needed to be in the swamp; he needed to have on a dashiki. I knew that guy had nothing. He didn’t even have a ceremony planned. He just wrote some shit on a piece of paper and tried to sell me on some bullshit I didn’t do. He wanted me to wash in some weird oil and pray and drink some special water. But I was drinking goddamn Hennessy. I wasn’t going to water down my Hennessy.

So I settled on getting a Santeria priest to do some witch doctor shit. We went to the courthouse one night with a pigeon and an egg. I dropped the egg on the ground as the bird was released and I yelled, “We’re free!” A few days later, I put on my gray pin-striped suit and went to court.

After the verdict had been delivered, my defense team had put together a presentence memorandum on my behalf. It was an impressive document. Dr. Jerome Miller, the clinical director of the Augustus Institute in Virginia and one of the nation’s leading experts on adult sex offenders, had examined me and concluded that I was “a sensitive and thoughtful young man with problems more the result of developmental deficits than of pathology.” With regular psychotherapy, he was convinced that my long-term prognosis would be quite good. He concluded, “A term in prison will delay the process further and more likely set it back. I would strongly recommend that other options with both deterrent and treatment potential be considered.” Of course, the probation officers who put together their sentencing document left that last paragraph out of their summary. But they were eager to include the prosecution’s opinion, “An assessment of this offense and this offender leads the chief investigator of this case, an experienced sex crimes detective, to conclude that the defendant is inclined to commit a similar offense in the future.”

My lawyers prepared an appendix that contained forty-eight testimonials to my character from such diverse people as my high school principal, my social worker in upstate New York, Sugar Ray Robinson’s widow, my adoptive mother, Camille, my boxing hypnotherapist, and six of my girlfriends (and their mothers), who all wrote moving accounts of how I had been a perfect gentleman with them. One of my first girlfriends from Catskill even wrote the judge, “I waited three years before having sexual intercourse with Mr. Tyson and not once did he force me into anything. That is the reason I love him, because he loves and respects women.”

But of course, Don being Don, he had to go and overdo it. King had the Reverend William F. Crockett, the Imperial First Ceremonial Master of the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles Mystic Shrine of North and South America, write a letter on my behalf. The Reverend wrote, “I beseech you to spare him incarceration. Though I have not spoken to Mike since the day of his trial, my information is that he no longer uses profanity or vulgarity, reads the Bible daily, prays and trains.” Of course, that was all bullshit. He didn’t even know me.

Then there was Don’s personal heartfelt letter to the judge. You would have thought that I had come up with a cure for cancer, had a plan for peace in the Middle East, and nursed sick kittens back to health. He talked about my work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation visiting with sick kids. He informed Judge Gifford that every Thanksgiving we gave away forty thousand turkeys to the needy and the hungry. He recounted the time we met with Simon Wiesenthal and I was so moved that I donated a large sum of money to help him hunt down Nazi war criminals. I guess Don forgot that the Klan hated Jews as much as they hated blacks.

This went on for eight pages, with Don waxing eloquently about me. “It is highly unusual for a person his age to be concerned about his fellow man, let alone with the deep sense of commitment and dedication that he possesses. These are God-like qualities, noble qualities of loving, giving and unselfishness. He is a child of God: one of the most gentle, sensitive, caring, loving, and understanding persons that I have ever met in my twenty years’ experience with boxers.” Shit, Don should have delivered the closing arguments instead of my lawyer. But John Solberg, Don’s public relations man, cut right to the chase in his letter to Judge Gifford. “Mike Tyson is not a scumbag,” he wrote.

I might not have been a scumbag, but I was an arrogant prick. I was so arrogant in the courtroom during the trial that there was no way they were going to give me a break. Even in my moment of doom, I was not a humble person. All those things they wrote about in that report—giving people money and turkeys, taking care of people, looking out for the weak and the infirm—I did all those things because I wanted to be that humble person, not because I was that person. I wanted so desperately to be humble but there wasn’t a humble bone in my body.

So, armed with all my character testimonials, we appeared in Judge Patricia Gifford’s court on March 26, 1992, for my sentencing. Witnesses were permitted and Vince Fuller began the process by calling to the stand Lloyd Bridges, the executive director of the Riverside Residential Center in Indianapolis. My defense team was arguing that instead of jail time, my sentence should be suspended and I should serve my probation term at a halfway house where I could combine personal therapy with community service. Bridges, an ordained minister, ran just such a program and he testified that I would certainly be a prime candidate for his facility.

But the assistant prosecutor got Bridges to reveal that there had been four escapes recently from his halfway house. And when she got the minister to admit that he had interviewed me in my mansion in Ohio and that we had paid for his airfare, that idea was dead in the water. So now it was only a matter of how much time the Hanging Judge would give me.

Fuller approached the bench. It was time for him to weave his million-dollar magic. Instead, I got his usual two-bit bullshit. “Tyson came in with a lot of excess baggage. The press has vilified him. Not a day goes by that the press doesn’t bring up his faults. This is not the Tyson I know. The Tyson I know is a sensitive, thoughtful, caring man. He may be terrifying in the ring, but that ends when he leaves the ring.” Now, this was nowhere near Don King hyperbole, but it wasn’t bad. Except that Fuller had just spent the whole trial portraying me as a savage animal, a crude bore, bent solely on sexual satisfaction.

Then Fuller changed the subject to my poverty-stricken childhood and my adoption by the legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato.

“But there is some tragedy in this,” he intoned. “D’Amato only focused on boxing. Tyson, the man, was secondary to Cus D’Amato’s quest for Tyson’s boxing greatness.” Camille, who was Cus’s companion for many years, was outraged at his statement. It was like Fuller was pissing on the grave of Cus, my mentor. Fuller went on and on, but he was as disjointed as he had been for the entire trial.

Now it was my time to address the court. I got up and stood behind the podium. I really hadn’t been prepared properly and I didn’t even have any notes. But I did have that stupid voodoo guy’s piece of paper in my hand. And I knew one thing—I wasn’t going to apologize for what went on in my hotel room that night. I apologized to the press, the court, and the other contestants of the Miss Black America pageant, where I met Desiree, but not for my actions in my room.

“My conduct was kind of crass. I agree with that. I didn’t rape anyone. I didn’t attempt to rape anyone. I’m sorry.” Then I looked back at Greg Garrison, the prosecutor, or persecutor in my case.

“My personal life has been incarcerated. I’ve been hurt. This was all one big dream. I didn’t come here to beg you for mercy, ma’am. I expect the worst. I’ve been crucified. I’ve been humiliated worldwide. I’ve been humiliated socially. I’m just happy for all my support. I’m prepared to deal with whatever you give me.”

I sat back down behind the defense table and the judge asked me a few questions about being a role model for kids. “I was never taught how to handle my celebrity status. I don’t tell kids it’s right to be Mike Tyson. Parents serve as better role models.”

Now the prosecution had their say. Instead of the redneck Garrison, who argued against me during the trial, his boss, Jeffrey Modisett, the Marion County prosecutor, stepped up. He went on for ten minutes saying that males with money and fame shouldn’t get special privileges. Then he read from a letter from Desiree Washington. “In the early morning hours of July 19, 1991, an attack on both my body and my mind occurred. I was physically defeated to the point that my innermost person was taken away. In the place of what has been me for eighteen years is now a cold and empty feeling. I am not able to comment on what my future will be. I can only say that each day after being raped has been a struggle to learn to trust again, to smile the way I did and to find the Desiree Lynn Washington who was stolen from me and those who loved me on July 19, 1991. On those occasions when I became angry about the pain that my attacker caused me, God granted me the wisdom to see that he was psychologically ill. Although some days I cry when I see the pain in my own eyes, I am also able to pity my attacker. It has been and still is my wish that he be rehabilitated.”

US

Additional information

Dimensions	1.4500 × 5.5400 × 8.4600 in
Imprint	Plume
ISBN-13	09780142181218
ISBN-10	0142181218
Author	Mike Tyson, Larry Sloman
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	BIO026000, BIO013000
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