by Mike Tyson
After a couple of years, I really got used to being in prison. If I had a bad day because I saw something on television I didn’t like or if I had received a bad phone call and I didn’t want to talk to anybody, I’d tell Wayno to tell the administration that I wanted to check myself into the hole for a few days. Wayno would pack up my stuff – my glasses, a couple of books – and I would go and chill out in segregation detention. I even had a guard smuggle me in a Walkman. They didn’t allow inmates to possess Walkmans because the crazy-assed inmates would turn their Walkmans into walkie-talkies and spy on the whole fucking prison administration. But once you were in the hole, they didn’t check your cell, so I’d get my Walkman and listen to Tevin Campbell. His was the only cassette tape I had. I’d be running in place and doing my sit-ups butt-ass naked. I would run in place so much that when I left prison my imprints were in the cement. I broke that floor down.
I even got ahold of a cell phone down there. I’d be calling up friends at two in the morning and they’d freak out when the call didn’t come up collect. They had great reception down there too.
You really know who your friends are when you face adversity. So many people ran from me like the plague after my rape conviction. I was blessed to have so many good people in my life who supported me through thick and thin. My spirits would be boosted by everything I’d get and by visits from people who meant something to me.
My mom Camille came to visit me three times. I never wanted her to see me in there but I couldn’t keep her away. It was a tough trip for her; she was in her eighties, but she did it. Jay would come with her and we’d talk about comic book heroes. I’d be worked up after reading one of the comic books that Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel Comics, had sent me. He also had a drawing done of me posing with some of his Marvel Comics superheroes like I was one of them. One time, Jay and I got into a debate about which cartoon character was the toughest. He picked Galactus and I had my man Apocalypse. We went round and round on that topic until Jay said, “Mike, Galactus eats planets. How can you beat that?”
My little daughter Mikey, my firstborn child, came to visit me a few times with her mom. She was only three years old then, but to this day she remembers those plane rides from New York to Indiana and posing for pictures with me in front of the brick walls.
Don King showed up a few times. Every time he came, he had a contract for me to sign, which was totally illegal, but he didn’t care. I was happy he came because I knew it was about making money. Rory and John Horne would come with him, but they’d visit me more often too. They put in some time.
I was also thrilled to get a visit from Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow. That tripped me out. I was so surprised and intimidated that she came to see me, I was on my best behavior. I didn’t want to say anything crude. She was an awesome lady.
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, stopped in to see me. Brother Siddeeq brought him in. He was wearing a purple suit, purple shoes, and a red tie with his hair all processed. He was telling me how he was going to whip Jackie Wilson’s ass because Jackie tried to mess with James by running his fingers through his hair.
“I’m no boxer, I’m from Georgia,” he said. “People were scared of Jackie. I wasn’t. Feel this.”
He showed me his bicep.
“Hard as a rock.”
I asked James about Otis Redding, who was a good friend of his. James said that his plane was better than Otis’s plane, which had been overloaded and crashed, killing Otis. It was awesome to hear James boast like that. He had the ego of a fighter.
He went on and on about his various enterprises like the radio stations he owned. He pitched me on letting him manage me, so I told him to stay in touch with Siddeeq. He sent Siddeeq a letter shortly afterwards. He would manage me and he’d take 70 percent and I would get 30 percent. And I thought Don King was bad.
I’ll never forget the time that Tupac came to visit me in prison. Of all my celebrity friends, I’ve gotten more questions about Tupac than anybody else. All over the world when people see me, even before they ask me about boxing, they invariably go, “What was Tupac like?”
Tupac was everything. He was fucking Huey Newton, he was Mao Zedong, he was Karl Marx, he was just everything. I can quote Marx and Hegel, but Tupac was really prolific talking revolutionary theory. When you talked to him and got to know him, he was much more of a didactic cat than a thug. He had a fascinating mind.
I met him in 1990 at an industry party at a club on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. The promoter of the party was my friend and we were standing around outside shooting the shit. Everybody was dressed natty for this event and I saw a small black street kid lingering near the door.
“What’s up, Shorty? How are you doing?” I said to the kid. He reminded me of myself when I was a young kid on the streets, hanging out in front of clubs that I couldn’t get in.
“Nah. What’s up?” he replied.
I could see he wanted to go to the party, so I told my friend to let him in. But the little kid said, “One second,” and ran off and came back with fifty guys, one of whom was Tupac.
“Whoa,” my friend said. We walked all those kids around to the back door and let them in. I stayed outside talking for a while, but when I went back inside, I saw Tupac onstage with a mic rocking the party. I couldn’t believe it. He came offstage and we hugged and laughed together. When he smiled his beautiful smile, he lit up the whole goddamned club. I could see that this kid was someone special.
Fast-forward to prison. I got a letter from Tupac’s mom. I knew who he was, he was exploding overnight, but I didn’t realize that he had been the kid rocking that club back in 1990. His mother said in the letter that Tupac was going to be in Indianapolis for a show and wanted to come see me. As soon as he walked into the visiting room, it was bedlam. He maybe weighed 130 pounds, had on these clothes that were bigger than he was. Blacks, whites, Latinos, Martians, everybody started going crazy. Even the guards were cheering. I had no idea he was that famous. When I saw him, I realized he was one of the kids I let into that party in L.A. years earlier.
We went out to the picnic tables in the yard.
“We need to throw a concert right here for you,” he said and jumped up on the picnic table. “My nigga, I love you,” he screamed at me.
I was sitting at the table, begging him, “Get down, please. Please come down. They’ll lock you up with me. Please stop.”
He was bent on doing an impromptu concert, but I was getting nervous. Everything was peaceful and then all of a sudden Tupac was up on the table, and everyone was cheering. Oh shit, this little motherfucker is going to get me in trouble, I thought.
“Mike, don’t let them get you, brother, don’t let them get you, man.”
I finally got him down off the table. I started busting his chops. I had just become a Muslim and I was playing Mr. Righteous Guy.
“Listen, man, you need to stop eating that pork,” I said.
“How do you know I eat pork?” he said.
I was teasing him but he took it serious.
He calmed down and we started talking. He told me that he never forgot our first meeting.
“Nobody never done that – let a bunch of street niggas into a nice club like that. You kept it real,” he said.
“No, no, that’s crazy, nigga,” I said. “We’ve all got to enjoy this world. It’s nothing man, we’re just the same.”
Tupac was an immovable force as a personality. He’d seen so much pain and hardship. Sometimes the adversity we live through traumatizes us and gives us baggage, and we bring our baggage everywhere we go. I bring my baggage into my religion, I bring it into my relationships sometimes, I bring my baggage into my fucking fights. I don’t care how much we succeed, our baggage still comes with us. For Tupac, being born in prison, seeing his mother’s friends killed or sent to prison forever, that just put him in a state of nonism where he felt no one was listening to him or cared. So he went on autopilot and did the best that he could. Tupac was re
ally a freedom fighter.
I would talk to Tupac about the Black Panthers. I knew about his mother’s involvement with them. She was a strong woman. By this time I had become pretty radicalized from reading all those militant books.
We got close after that, and he came out to visit me a few times. I would hear shit that he was in the paper for shooting cops, fighting with people.
“Hey, listen, if you’re not careful, you’re going to be coming in by the time I’m coming out.”
Then he got shot and he was locked up. I’d arrange with a friend on the outside to set up a three-way call with Tupac. He told me that a friend of mine had shot him, but I didn’t know that for certain.
Once I had gotten acclimated to prison, I started seriously plotting my comeback. It was depressing to hear the news about who was winning the heavyweight championship. The belt was being passed around like a volleyball. I was intent on getting out and reclaiming it and showing everybody that I wasn’t the loser that they thought I was. No, I would be a god reclaiming my throne. In my sick mind, I was an ancient noble character and if I lost my quest to get the belt back, civilization as we knew it was done for. I was taking my little narcissistic quest and putting it on the whole world.
I needed that vision, though. I needed that drive for accomplishment or I would have rotted away in prison, so I made my plan. I knew what I had to do; I knew how to discipline my mind with the right things. The last thing I wanted to be was docile. The administration had assigned me to the gym because they wanted me to keep in shape, but then they locked me out because they thought I was involved in the drug trade in prison. But I wasn’t. I was only smuggling in my hair grease. I wanted to get high in prison but I didn’t because I was on a mission to get the belt back.
So I mainly did running and calisthenics to get into shape. I’d run in the yard in the morning, then do a lot of cardio work, jumping rope and push-ups and sit-ups. I had gotten letters from two former boxers who were in prison – Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and James Scott, who actually fought the majority of his fights while he was in Rahway State Prison. Scott wrote to me that I wouldn’t be shit until I could do “a hundred push-ups in the clip.” That was street-gang talk, a gun clip that could hold a hundred bullets. I couldn’t do it at first, but I practiced and practiced and finally I wrote him back, “I got a hundred in the clip.”
At night I’d have Wayno hold my legs down and I’d do five hundred sit-ups at a clip. I did them until my butt would bleed. We had a wall radio in the cell where you could plug your headphones in and listen to music so you didn’t disturb your roommate, and I would get up at two in the morning, put on my shorts and my headphones, and jog in the room for hours. When Wayno would wake up, all the walls were sweating and steamed up from my exertions. Sometimes I’d jog in place in my room during the day and all the guards and inmates would come by and watch me through the little window for hours.
It was worse when I’d shadowbox. I’d be surrounded by inmates, guards, administration people, and every one of them was a fucking trainer.
“Move, nigga. Duck, duck,” they’d say. Everyone had comments to make.
“I’m the pro, goddamnit,” I’d say. “You just watch.”
When I went in, I was 272 pounds, but in six months I had gone down to 216. I went from a little gorilla to some chiseled Adonis.
I began studying Islam while I was in prison. I had actually been introduced in Islam way before I had even gone to jail. Captain Yusuf Shah, Don’s cook, was a Muslim brother who had been Malcolm X’s teacher and Elijah Muhammad’s right-hand man. Captain Joe, as we called him, was very highly respected. He had become my chauffeur, but he should have been my bodyguard; there was no problem that he couldn’t solve.
Don had fired him because he had stomped on Don’s pork chop. Don would routinely humiliate Captain Joe into cooking pork. Captain Joe used to actually wear iron gloves to prepare them. One day I saw Captain Joe crying and he was beating on the pork chop.
I was in L.A. when I heard that Don had fired Captain Joe, but when I landed back in New York, Captain Joe was there to pick me up at the airport.
“I heard you were fired,” I said.
“No, no, good champion brother, nothing happened,” the Captain said. “It was a misunderstanding. I upset Mr. King. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have done it because it’s his food. I’m just a silly man. Allah has blessed me with the privilege of working with Mr. King again.”
“Captain Joe, if you don’t tell me what happened, I’m going to fire you,” I said. “I heard some people came up to see Don. What happened? How many people came up?”
“Seventy-five, all strapped,” Captain Joe said humbly, but with a sinister strength that showed he still had power.
Apparently when he went back to Harlem and told his brothers in the Nation of Islam that Don had laid him off, seventy-five armed men went to Don’s office, roughed up a few people, and made Don hire Captain Joe back, from what I was told.
“You don’t fire Captain Joe, Captain Joe fires you,” they told Don’s staff.
So he went back and made Don assign him to me as my chauffeur. He still had a lot of pull. He was an old, harmless-looking man, but with one call he could get you what you needed. It was an honor for me to have him work for me. Captain Joe was an awesome mentor to me – kind, considerate, generous, a precious man. We would talk about spirituality all the time. He thought all spirituality was good. He was so happy when I got baptized; he thought it was wonderful that I took it seriously. I never had the heart to tell him that I took the choirgirl right back to my hotel room after the ceremony.
So I was already receptive to Islam when I went to prison. There was this convict from Detroit we called Chuck who had grown up as a Muslim. I met him at the mosque. Don’t get me wrong, you didn’t go to the mosque just to pray. Everybody transacted business in there. It was a place to meet up with other inmates from the various dorms. I was learning my prayers, but I would go and get my messages there too. I was praying to God, but I got a .45 too. It’s just what it was. I love Allah, but I’m Mike too, and he made me this way – a manipulator and a hustler.
So Chuck started teaching me the prayers. He was a horrible teacher. He was hyperactive and rude and not very friendly. But he spoke Arabic. We’d go over the prayers and he’d yell, “Did you get it yet?”
“You just told it to me once, what are you talking about?” I’d say.
He had said the prayer like a speed freak. He could have used some Ritalin.
So he’d slow down a little and go over the prayer, but then they’d yell, “Chow,” and it was lunchtime and he’d take off.
So I learned that opening prayer and then I started going to classes with Wayno. His Islamic name was Farid. At first I was rude and obnoxious. Brother Siddeeq would sit me down and talk about Islam, but I was so irritable I didn’t want to hear about it. But once we got to know each other, Siddeeq asked me if I would join with the others in prayer and I chilled out. I got in the habit of praying and then I started reading the Koran with Farid. I didn’t have any one moment of revelation. It was just like, this is who I am now.
I wasn’t getting the spiritual side of Islam. That came much later. I wasn’t really ready for religion then. Back then, I used Islam to subsidize my time and it helped me a great deal. I had something to believe in, but I did all of the right things for the wrong reasons. But it was definitely part of my growing up and learning about love and forgiveness. That was my first encounter with true love and forgiveness.
A year before I was scheduled to be released, there was talk that I would be granted an early release. A lot of national press people like Greta Van Susteren were questioning my conviction. My lawyers were talking to the court and to the Washingtons. Apparently, they had reached an agreement. I would pay the Washingtons $1.5 million and I would apologize to Desiree and I would get out of jail immediately. I didn’t even have to admit to raping her, just apologize for it. Some o
f my friends like Jeff Wald were pushing for the apology.
“Mike, I’d admit to raping Mother Teresa to get the fuck out of jail,” he told me.
“If I apologize, the prison in my head would be worse than the prison I’m in now,” I told him.
So they brought me to Judge Gifford’s courtroom in June of 1994 for a sentence reduction hearing. I was dressed in denim pants, a light blue work shirt, and work boots. The new prosecutor asked me if I had anything to say.
“I’ve committed no crime. I’m going to stick with that to my grave. I never violated anyone’s chastity.”
That wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear. They sent me right back to jail. Everyone was hugging and kissing me when I got back.
“Fuck them motherfuckers,” they all said.
“Chill out,” I said. “I’m cool. Another year. Let’s just do this shit.”
I knew that this wasn’t going to be the end of Mike. I was only twenty-eight by then, but I knew that there was going to be some good reward for me after I did my time. More press came out to interview me. I was reading a lot and I was sharp and very politically focused then.
Larry King came and did a two-part interview with me from jail. He really wanted to get a picture of what it was like for me to go from the top of the world to being behind bars.
“Romantic love, you miss romantic love?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell him about my teacher.
“Maybe, but what is love? Love is like a game, love is competition. Most people who are gorgeous, a guy or a woman maybe, love comes to them all of the time because they attract love. But they never fought for love, what are they prepared to do for love? Love is a situation where you must be prepared to do something, because if you have something lovely, somebody is going to want to challenge you for it, and if you’ve never been competitive enough, the slightest struggle and you are going to give in.”
“Obviously, you gained better control of your own total environment here. What about food? Do you miss certain foods, no?”