by Mike Tyson
“Hang out with me,” I told him. “Don’t do that shit no more, we could get some money.”
“I ain’t going to take no fucking money from you, Mike,” he said. “Too many people took money from you.”
Shorty Love was gangster to the core. He wanted to be in that life. He got involved in a drug dispute between two rival gangs and they shot him dead six months after he got out of jail. Isn’t it crazy? All of my old friends, they all got murdered or they killed somebody. They were good people just caught up in drugs, sex, and death. That’s what my life was all about, being reckless.
I paid for Shorty’s funeral. I rented out this big luxurious Italian funeral home in Brooklyn and we had to add three other rooms because so many people showed up to pay their respects to him.
So I reluctantly got on that plane to England to make my fight. As soon as I got to London I looked up my Russian girl, but she had gotten fired from Graff Diamonds. Frank Warren, my promoter, had never paid them the money for the jewelry he bought me when I was in London for the Francis fight. What was worse, Graff said they were going to sue me. I was furious. I’m a spoiled narcissistic little brat, so Mr. Warren was going to have to pay.
I told Tommy Brooks, my trainer, to tell Warren to come up to my hotel room.
Warren supposedly had the same gangster reputation that Don King had. He had all the European fighters scared and intimidated of him, so he came into the room oozing arrogance.
“You never paid for that jewelry you were going to buy for me,” I said. “Isn’t Don King your friend?”
“Yeah,” he said with an attitude.
“Didn’t Don tell you what happened when he disrespected me?”
“Yeah, he told me that you smacked him around.”
“That didn’t alarm you, when he told you that? You didn’t get frightened?”
“No,” he said with disdain.
Today I’m pretty much a wimpy guy, but back then if someone openly dissed me, there had to be violence involved. There was no diplomatic way it could be handled. The way he confronted me when I asked him those questions was not acceptable. He was looking at my face and telling me “No,” but what he was really saying was, “You’re not in America. You’re just a fucking pussy, nigga.”
Whack! I just started beating his ass. I broke his jaw with one punch. He fell down and I stomped him and broke his ribs. I picked up a paperweight off my dresser and I hit him in the face with it and broke his eye socket. Then I dragged him over to the window and almost threw him out onto the street. He was begging for his life.
“Oh, you’re not such a tough guy now, huh, motherfucker?”
I threw him back down on the floor.
“You have the balls to talk to me like that and do what you did to me?” I screamed at him. “Take your motherfucking clothes off. Get naked.”
“No,” he pleaded.
I kicked him in the head.
“You’ve beaten me, isn’t that enough?” he pleaded.
“You weren’t thinking that when you didn’t pay that bill, huh? Take your clothes off now.”
He recovered enough to get to his feet and he sprinted out the door. I started chasing him down the hallway but I was in my socks and I kept slipping and he got away. I was furious.
Once I got to Scotland my mood lifted. The fight was in Glasgow and the reception for me there was overwhelming. I was doing some blow before the fight and I smoked some pot. There was no problem with the blow because that leaves your system right away, but for the pot, which stays in your system, I had to use my whizzer, which was a fake penis where you put in someone’s clean urine to pass your drug test. Jeff Wald’s assistant Steve Thomas used to travel with me and contribute.
I was high as a kite the day before the fight. They dressed me up in a kilt and I saluted the crowd from the top of a Mercedes-Benz. I was jumping up and down on the roof of the car screaming, “Champion! Champion!” and the people went crazy. A German man came up to me and told me it was a German car, trying to impress me that it was expensive.
“Big fucking deal,” I said. “Oh, so this is what you did with the money that you stole from the Jews? You bought cars?” I shouldn’t have said it; that was just me being political and disgusting.
Savarese was an interesting opponent for me. He was no tomato can. He had gone the distance and lost a split decision to George Foreman in 1997. In 1998 he knocked out Buster Douglas in one round. He had thirty-two KOs in forty-two bouts, but I didn’t think he would pose any problem for me.
The bell rang and he went down from my first punch, a looping left hook that hit him up on the temple. He got up and I was all over him. He was on his way down again when the ref got in between us. I didn’t realize that the ref was actually stopping the fight, so I kept punching and I accidentally hit him with a left hook and knocked him down. The British broadcasters later joked that that particular ref could never take a punch.
I was one of those spoiled-brat fighters. I thought I could get away with things like hitting the ref and not getting in trouble. But this particular time I really wasn’t trying to hit the ref. I was just being mean until I hurt Savarese. I was really psyched up when Jim Gray from Showtime interviewed me after the fight.
“Mike, was that your shortest fight ever?”
“I bear witness there is only one God and Mohammed blesses and peace be upon him as his prophet. I dedicate this fight to my brother Darryl Baum, who died. I’ll be there to see you, I love you with all of my heart. All praise be to my children, I love you, oh God, oh man, what?!”
“Is this your shortest fight ever, in any time? Amateur, professional, ever?”
“Assalamu alaikum Maida. I don’t know man, yeah, Lennox Lewis, Lennox I am coming for you.”
“Is it frustrating to train like you did and then have this over in seven or eight seconds?”
“I only trained probably two weeks or three weeks for this fight. I had to bury my best friend and I wasn’t going to fight, but I dedicated this fight to him. I was going to rip his heart out, I am the best ever, I am the most brutal and the most vicious and most ruthless champion there has ever been, there is no one could stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No! I am Alexander, he is no Alexander. I am the best ever, there has never been anybody as ruthless. I am Sonny Liston, I am Jack Dempsey, there is no one like me, I am from their cloth. There is no one that can match me, my style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable and I am just ferocious, I want your heart, I want to eat his children, praise be to Allah!”
With that, I stormed away. I was doing all this ranting because I was losing my mind. I was getting so high, my brain was getting fried. I was taking phrases from the Shaw Brothers karate movies like Five Deadly Venoms. I was quoting from Apocalypse, my favorite cartoon character. He was just a black badass and he always spoke so nobly. “Watch me and tremble as I bring the purity of oblivion to your world.” I was a little guy but I talked big like that. I was talking that WWE wrestling patter, eating his babies. I thought I was a tough badass but I was really just a showman in my blood.
When I got back to London, there was a controversy brewing. I was still ready to kill Frank Warren. You can watch that fight and see how enraged I was. I was looking for him after the fight because he had no shame. He had a broken eye socket, cheekbone, and jaw, and still showed up at the fight. But back in London he went into hiding. The Daily Record newspaper had a front-page article saying that I attacked him in my hotel suite over $630,000 still owed for the jewelry. Warren told them that the story was “total rubbish.” I had to hold a news conference to address the issue because back in the States my probation officer had some questions for me.
“Did you hit him?” a reporter asked me.
“No, sir.”
“Did you try to throw him out a window?”
“No, sir. I love Frank Warren.”
&
nbsp; Back in the States my parole officer worried about my comments after the Savarese fight and about the alleged confrontation with Warren. Darrow smoothed it all out. I was even allowed to associate with Ouie.
One of the conditions of my parole was to see a psychiatrist, so I met with Dr. Barksdale and his associate in Tempe, Arizona. The meeting didn’t go so well. But once again, Darrow came to the rescue.
“It is my understanding that the initial meeting with you and your partner may have been rough,” he wrote Barksdale. “Notably, however, Mike telephoned me last night on an unrelated issue and explicitly asked whether he could see you and your partner again. I must tell you that, based upon my experience with Mike, this was quite encouraging.”
I was back in Vegas. One of the reasons why I was in such great shape for the two fights in the U.K. was that I had taken to walking thirty miles a day, sometimes in 105-degree weather. I usually walked alone, but I had some foolish friends who thought that it might be a joyride to walk with me and pick up girls along the way, but it wasn’t like that. There was no talking, no stopping, I was just zoning out. One friend of mine had a heart attack walking with me.
I started these long walks when I was reading a book about Alexander the Great and his army. They were walking sixty miles a day back then so I just said, “Fuck this, I can do this.” I got to ten miles a day and my feet felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to them. I had great sneakers on too, New Balance, and they still felt like someone set them on fire. I did a little more reading and I found out that all these great warriors would do these marches high. The history of war is the history of drugs. Every great general and warrior from the beginning of time was high.
So I started incorporating weed and alcohol into my walking regimen. I was pissed off in general but walking high in over 100-degree heat took my bipolar shit to a new level. Liquor, the weed, and the heat didn’t go together. I’d be walking bare-chested with my shirt tied around my head. My pants were falling off because I had lost so much weight. The sun had fried me, so I was as black as tar. I looked like a crackhead. People would see me and they didn’t know if it was me or not. One guy came up to me for an autograph and, pow, I smacked him. I saw a girl I had slept with one time who worked at Versace. She was concerned about me.
“Mike, are you all right?” she asked me.
“Fuck you, bitch,” I yelled at her. “I hate your guts. I never liked you.”
The sun had really fried my brains, I was losing my mind.
I didn’t carry any money on me and I’d get so dehydrated that I’d stumble into stores and the guys in there gave me water. Sometimes the local news choppers would be overhead following me around like I was O.J. in the Bronco.
All this walking was driving my security crazy. They nicknamed me Gump after Forrest Gump. Anthony Pitts would try to follow me at a discrete distance, but sometimes I’d lose him. Sometimes I didn’t even know he was around. I’d walk over to Cheetahs from my gym and Anthony had the managers primed to call him when I got there. Then Anthony and my other guys would take turns sitting in the parking lot watching for me.
One time, I walked all the way over to my friend Mack’s barbershop from my house. It was a particularly hot day and I had a big bag of weed with me. I was hanging out with Mack at his house, but then he had to go pick up some clothes from the dry cleaner so I started walking home. I was so out of it that I was talking to myself. I got a few blocks when I saw Anthony following me in his Suburban. I was high and I just snapped. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I’d go through spurts like that. In my stoned paranoid mind, Anthony was spying on me. Why did he want to go everywhere I fucking went? It slipped my mind that I was paying him to do this.
So I turned down an alleyway that led to a police station. By the time Anthony followed me, I was complaining to the cops and pointing him out. Anthony got out of his truck.
“I’m hired to look after you and now you need to get in the truck,” Anthony said. “Come on, we’re going back home.”
“I’m not getting in,” I said. “This guy is bothering me. I want this man arrested. He’s been following me.” I was screaming, and all the time I had a huge bag of weed on me.
The cops then started questioning Anthony and I took off. I was a few blocks away but Anthony caught up with me again. I was so pissed off that I picked up a brick that was lying in the gutter and threw it right through the windshield of his Suburban. Shawnee sent him the money to replace his window the next day.
On August twenty-second I was fined $187,500 for accidentally hitting that ref in Glasgow. It was the largest fine in U.K. history. I looked at it as a value-added tax. Besides, I was getting ready to make $20 million fighting Andrew Golota, the Foul Pole. Golota, a huge gentleman of Polish descent, had the reputation of being the dirtiest fighter in boxing. He was ahead in two fights with Riddick Bowe when he was disqualified for repeated low blows. I had gone to the same special ed school as Bowe so I was really psyched to win a fight for him.
We held a press conference in L.A. on September fourteenth to hype the fight and I was my vintage self.
“I’m a convicted rapist! I’m an animal! I’m the stupidest person in boxing! I gotta get outta here or I’m gonna kill somebody,” I mock screamed.
“I’m on this Zoloft thing, right? But I’m on that to keep me from killing y’all. That’s why I’m on that. Listen, now I’m out here fighting, right? They got me on some shit that got my dick fucked up, they got me on all type of shit, right? I’m just keeping it real here, right? I don’t want to be taking the Zoloft, but they are concerned about the fact that I’m a violent person, almost an animal. And they only want me to be an animal in the ring.”
I was on a roll. Or at least on some deep weed.
“You report on boxing, but you all have never fought, never been the champion and don’t know our pain, our sweat. Don’t know it’s so fucking lonely. Boxing’s the loneliest sport in the world. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t fuck my wife in a year. Do you think I give a damn about Andrew Golota? I haven’t seen my kids in months.”
“Why?” one of the reporters interrupted my monologue.
“None of your damned business, white boy, but I haven’t seen them in months. And you think I give a damn about you and any of y’all? I don’t care if I’m living or dying. I’m a dysfunctional motherfucker. Bring Andrew Golota on, bring those guys, they can keep their title, I don’t want their title, I want to strip them of their fucking health. Because I’m in pain, I want them to see pain, I want their kids to see pain. Lennox Lewis, I want his kids to go, ‘Ooo Daddy, are you okay, Daddy?’ Yeah, I don’t care about them, because they don’t care about me and my kids.”
When I got back to my house in Vegas, I was playing with two new cub cats that I smuggled in. By then, I had to get rid of Kenya. We were keeping her in Texas and my trainer was showing her to some animal enthusiasts who supposedly worked with tigers. I don’t know what happened but I heard that the lady enthusiast climbed over the fence to get Kenya and things went terribly wrong. They’re no good after tasting that blood, so I had to get rid of Kenya. We donated her to a zoo in California. I got sued, of course, but I won the case. I didn’t have to give the lady any money but I felt bad, so I gave her $250,000. She deserved something, I thought.
The Golota fight was in Detroit on October twentieth. The night before the fight I was really nervous. When I saw Golota in person at the weigh-in, I freaked out. He was really big and crazy and he had all those big red bumps over his back from taking steroids. He looked like a fucking leper. What the fuck am I doing here fighting this big crazy guy, I kept thinking while I was lying in bed trying to sleep. So I lit up a joint and as soon as I took that first toke my whole mood changed. Fuck that nigga, I thought. Whoa, I needed that joint.
The night of the fight I refused to take a urine test before I went out. I figured I’d just get the w
hizzer from Steve Thomas afterwards. Puffy and Lil Wayne were there and we had some rappers from the Cash Money crew rap me into the ring. I had my best game face on when we met in the center of the ring. I felt bad for that little ref. Between me and Golota, one of us might clock his ass.
The first round, I went to Golota’s body a lot and I could sense him breaking down. I was moving pretty fluidly and I was working off my jab. Jab in the face, boom, boom, then some punches to the body. He was keeping his left hand low. He threw a weak jab and I went under him and, boom, I cut his left eye with a punch. With about ten seconds to go in the round, I got in a solid straight right hand and down he went.
I went after him at the beginning of the second round. I was swinging wild punches that were missing, but I got in some punishment to his body. By the end of the round, he was retreating and just slapping his punches at me.
I was up and ready for round three to start when I couldn’t believe my eyes. Golota was fighting with his corner. I watched the Showtime feed later and Golota didn’t want to go out for another round, but his cornerman, this small, old Italian guy, Al Certo, was screaming at him.
“Throw your right fucking hand,” Certo said.
“I’m stopping the fight,” Golota said.
“Don’t you dare, you cocksucker. You’re gonna win this fight.”
“Stop it,” Golota said.
“Don’t talk like that. C’mon, you fuck you. You’re gonna win this.”
“I quit,” Golota said. And got up and pushed Certo to the side and started pacing around the ring. I didn’t know what the fuck this lunatic was doing.
“No, no,” Certo screamed at him.
Golota walked over to the ref.
“I quit,” he said. And the ref waved the fight off.
But Certo wasn’t finished. When Golota got back to his corner, Certo tried to stuff his mouthpiece in and push him back out. But Golota had had enough. He put his robe on and rushed out of the ring. On the way to the dressing room, he was pelted with all kinds of shit and someone threw an orange soda and hit him and his whole body turned orange.