by Mike Tyson
“Tonight we are having a special invitation-only event to debut the new 2006 Winter Olympics Russian uniforms. Every sports official in Russia will be there. Would you like to be our honored guest?”
Usually I charged big bucks for an appearance but meeting all these wonderful athletes was very exciting for me. I told him I’d be happy to attend, and then, in gratitude, he took me all around the mall to the finest Italian clothing stores, and he gave me all this incredible clothing.
That night we had dinner with him and he invited Viacheslav “Slava” Fetisov, the ex–hockey player who was the head of all sports in Russia then. They hadn’t announced that I would be there, so when the event started and I was introduced and walked in, those athletes almost tore that building down. They had created a big podium to look like the Olympic torch, and they sat Marilyn and me up there, and she was blinded by all the flashbulbs from the press. When the event was over, all these athletes rushed us to get my autograph and I had some big security guys watch over Marilyn. She would have been trampled in that crush.
One day Jeff, Marilyn, and I were eating lunch at the New York Café, a downtown Moscow restaurant where all the players hung out. We were sitting there and we saw a Chechen politician who had been partying with us in Saint-Tropez. He was one of the senators from Chechnya in the Russian Parliament. In Saint-Tropez and Sardinia he was so humble and nice and respectful. He looked and acted like a true diplomat. So I started to say, “Hey, brother,” but here in Moscow he wasn’t the nice guy that he appeared to be back in Saint-Tropez.
“Mike, he’s not as friendly as he was on the boat. What the fuck?” Jeff said.
This was not looking good for me. When we were hanging out on the boat, these Chechen guys pretty much kept me flush. I’d say, “I’m your Muslim brother. Please give me some money, I’m doing bad here.” They had so much money they’d tip people enormous amounts. Well, I needed some money now. The deal with the Ukrainian vodka people had run its course and they were going to stop paying for my big hotel suite.
But things started looking up a bit when the senator came over to our table and sat down.
“I have someone with me that really, really wants to meet Mike,” he told us. “This is a very special person.”
I said “Sure” and we got up and left our food on the table and followed the senator to a private dining room to one side of the restaurant. There was a table set up in there and we all sat down. A few seconds later, the door opened and Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, walked in. Now, I knew all about the Chechen wars from a few years before. Ramzan’s father, Akhmad, was one of the most powerful warlords in Chechnya and one of the leaders of the independence movement to secede from Russia. It was a bloody, bloody struggle and the Russians made Akhmad president of Chechnya, hoping that would quell the rebellion. He was assassinated a year later and they made his son, Ramzan, the new leader. Ramzan was a big boxing fan and he wanted to meet me more than anything.
Ramzan sat down directly across the table from me. He was about twenty-eight years old but he looked much younger. After talking a bit, he pleaded with me to visit Chechnya. Now, the first thing that Americans were told when they entered Russia was “DO NOT GO TO CHECHNYA.” Back in 2005 it was still a very violent and dangerous place to be.
While I was thinking about this, a young, tall, husky guy walked into the room. He looked like he pumped some serious iron. He was wearing a black leather jacket and he pulled the jacket open and revealed two large automatic handguns stuck in a huge ammunition belt around his waist. He was just one of Ramzan’s bodyguards.
“Do you think anybody back in Arizona would believe any of this?” I whispered to Marilyn.
Ramzan kept pitching for me to come to his country, and we set up a lunch the following day at the Hyatt, my last day at the hotel. When I told them about my hotel situation, they offered to move me to the Rossiya, a huge non-touristy Russian hotel that was right near Red Square. The owner was a friend of Ramzan’s. There must have been ten thousand rooms in this hotel. When Marilyn picked me up in the morning, it took her half an hour to get from the lobby to my room.
The third morning I was staying at the hotel, Marilyn came to get me but I wasn’t there. She waited in the lobby for an hour and then she went home and frantically called Darryl, my assistant, back in Vegas and told him that she had lost me. He had no idea where I was. Later that night one of her friends called her.
“I just saw Mike on TV. He’s in Chechnya.”
I had left with Ramzan and his entourage that morning. I couldn’t turn down all that money. Chechnya was an amazing place. As soon as I got there, they gave me a machine gun. I was nervous as hell. I didn’t particularly want to shoot no goddamn gun but, hey, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Chechnya was predominately Muslim so they gave me a kufi to wear and they called me by my Muslim name, Malik Abdul Aziz, which meant “King and Servant of the Almighty” in Arabic. I only like to be called Abdul. If you don’t call me Abdul then just call me Mike. I was being hailed to the whole country as a Muslim hero. Muslim hero, my ass—I was a raging cokehead.
It really was a primitive culture in Chechnya. Half of the country had been burnt down during the wars with Russia. There were hardly any stores where I was. Nothing but land, no buildings. Marilyn later told me that she was worried for my safety because some of the rebels were opposed to Ramzan’s regime, but if anybody would have looked at me the wrong way while I was there those bodyguards would have taken their eyes out.
I made an appearance at their big soccer stadium. Their idea of excitement was to watch somebody do wheelies on a motorbike, Evel Knievel style. That was their culture. Look, if they’re going to take me to watch something, I’m going to say, “This is magnificent.” One thing I learned from that trip was to let people be in charge. I didn’t want to be confrontational.
My main job there was to open a four-day national boxing tournament that was being held in the memory of Ramzan’s dad.
“I am glad that I am in the Chechen Republic that I have read and heard so much about,” I told the crowd. “And I’m glad that I am among Muslims. We have seen on television an unfair war being waged in the Chechen Republic for a long time. We in America prayed for it to end.”
I went back to Moscow late that night. I didn’t get a chance to meet any Chechen girls. This visit was all about spirituality, all about Allah and Islam.
Back in Moscow, I spent some more quality time with Marilyn. My purpose of going to Russia was to see her and get some therapy. And if I ever needed some help from the courts, I could tell them that I had put in time with Marilyn in Russia, so it was a good political move for me too.
One night Marilyn set up a dinner at a Georgian restaurant and I met some very prominent business leaders. The next day, I told Marilyn that I didn’t want to meet any more big people. I wanted to hang out with some of her personal friends. So Marilyn invited me to lunch at her apartment. I was shocked when I saw the building she lived in. It reminded me of the tenement buildings I’d lived in as a kid. It even had the same stench of piss lingering in the halls. “Marilyn, what are you doing here?” I asked her. But that’s where she wanted to be—with the people. After lunch, Marilyn invited over about seven of her close Russian friends. They were all psychologists and pastors, all professional people.
We sat around in a circle in Marilyn’s living room and these people began to share their stories with me. Most of them had come from alcoholic homes. I knew just from living with Cus and Camille that Communism had some kind of ill backlash. So when they all started sharing I didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable because I was there. They might think that I had it going on because I was famous and known around the world. They must have assumed that I had nothing in common with them until I started telling my story. That’s what we all had in common, our stories. I was used to sharing like this just from being in all the institutions and g
roup homes over the years. So I laid it all out for them. I told them about the violence in my childhood and the issues with my mother and being scared and bullied all the time. And they all felt more at ease.
There was a woman sitting next to me whose father had been a Russian military officer. Their home had been blown up by terrorists when she was a baby and her father died trying to save her life. She had been severely burnt in the attack and now her hands were just stubs and she had scars all over her body. She was now the head of the counseling psychology department for Moscow State University of Psychology and Education.
“Here I am, a psychologist, but nobody has ever been able to help me deal with my pain, all the psychological pain, the loss of my dad. I feel like I’ve waited my whole lifetime for Marilyn to come and to help me and know how to deal with this pain,” she said.
She started crying as she talked and I slipped out of my seat and sat down on the floor at her feet and held what was left of her hand as she talked. When she finished, I stayed sitting on the floor.
All of us in the room really bonded. What was supposed to have been a two-hour session ended up running for six hours. When we were leaving, one of the people came up to me.
“We think you should either be a politician or a preacher,” she said. “You could run for president of Russia and win.”
But I knew that Russia was no place for me. In Russian they don’t even have a word for “balance.” There’s no balance in Russia, only extremes. That’s why I fit in so good there. That place was just too perfect for me and my demons. I loved being in Russia. I could do anything I wanted with impunity.
Jeff went back to the States and I went on to Portugal. I called my friend Mario to come meet me there the next day because he’s Portuguese, but he couldn’t just drop everything and come. I checked into a resort and I scored some coke and began doing it. I had been up for days without sleeping before that and the combination of that and the amount of coke I had done was enough to make me pass out. The lady I was with didn’t think I was still breathing so she called for the hotel physician. By the time he arrived I was fine. He wanted me to go to the hospital to be checked out but I passed.
I didn’t like where I was staying in Portugal very much. It was too stuffy for me. Everyone was too serious. The men all dressed up in suits. Everyone in the whole country was a workaholic. There was nobody to play with there. I got bored the second day and went to Amsterdam. Now, the Dutch knew how to party. I flew in a girl that I had met in Romania. She was a wonderful girl but she got nervous when I started doing a ton of cocaine and invited prostitutes up to our room. She told me she wasn’t into drugs and went home. But I continued my orgies and partying. Two weeks later I couldn’t take it anymore and I had Darryl come and get me. Even after he got there I partied for two more weeks before he could convince me to go home.
I flew back to Vegas and then I immediately left for L.A. I stayed there for a day and then I flew by myself to New York. I checked into the St. Regis hotel. It was my favorite hotel because they kept your butler on call by your door. I put down my suitcases and immediately got high on coke. Now I wanted to go out and party, so I opened one of my suitcases and I saw that my clothes were wrinkled. I panicked. My head started hurting, my heart started racing, and I freaked out. I was high as a kite when I called my butler.
“I NEED SOMEBODY UP HERE TO IRON MY PANTS, NOW!!! NOW, NOW!!”
The people on the phone were laughing because I was in a state of panic over my pants. I left the hotel and started walking while my pants were getting pressed. I wanted to eat something but the coke had killed my appetite so I figured that walking would wear down my high. I walked around Fifth Avenue, I walked over to Times Square, and then I walked back to the hotel.
When I got back to my room, the butler was just finishing up. He had ironed the contents of both of my suitcases. He was still laughing about my call. I gave the guy a huge tip and went out and partied.
The next day I flew down to Florida to see Roy Jones Jr. fight Antonio Tarver. I was high and I was tired but the whole time I was down there Tarver was chasing me around saying, “Me and you have got to fight, man.” He was in my ear constantly.
“No, man,” I finally told him. “I’m having a rough time. I don’t even know if I want to be in America now. I’m really down now. I don’t want to fight anybody.”
I was still wired from coke, I’d been doing it nonstop since I went to Europe four months before. All I wanted to do was take a shit. When you’ve got all that cocaine in your system, you take these cocaine dumps because your guts are all wrapped up. But all that didn’t stop me from driving over to the Overtown and Liberty City areas of Miami to score coke and some Cuban hookers. Of course, whenever I was in the ghettos, I’d get stopped by the police.
“Mike Tyson! What the hell are you doing here, man? This is a dangerous place, Mike,” the cop said. “Get in the car, let us take you someplace safe.”
“No, I’m fine, Officer. Please, you can just go. You’re causing problems for me, sir.”
“Mr. Tyson, please. They don’t care that you’re the champ, this is not the place to be,” the cop insisted.
“Sir, I’ll be in a lot of trouble if you keep hanging around. I’m fine.”
I was trying to score some blow and some Cuban girls and these guys were making me hot. When I went to these neighborhoods, the people would see me and say, “What’s up, champ, what are you looking for?”
They just saw it on me. They knew I wanted to get high.
I partied with drugs and alcohol nonstop from the time that I got out of the ring with McBride. After my trips around the world, I settled back into Vegas and established my drug routine. I’d try to wake up by ten p.m. and be out of the shower and all pretty and ready to go out by eleven p.m. By then, someone was on the way over here and I’d do a little coke before I left. We’d drive to the hood in North Vegas and hit the bars until about one a.m. unless there was something interesting going on there, like a new drug individual coming to town. Then I’d hit some clubs on the Strip. There it was all about knowing the maître d’s, hanging out in the suites, and hustling girls. I’d hang out there until four or five a.m. when we’d hit the after-hours spots like Drai’s. After staying there for an hour we’d go to the strip clubs like Seamless that had a crowd that came there to hang out. At these after-hours spots you’d see everyone from celebrities and beautiful models to hard-core hustlers.
These beautiful people were all drugpires. You never saw them in the daytime, going to a dentist’s office or at a mall. Their life was just like mine; they’d be sleeping all day and partying all night. So we’d hang out with them one morning after the after-hours club and they all had beautiful homes. They were either drug dealers or rich, bad-seed kids. There were always tons of people hanging out with them at the clubs and they’d always get the bill.
I’d be out in the clubs and the next thing I knew, I was in a room in a big mansion with all these people. I don’t even know how we got from the club to this house. By now I’d lost my woman. And I want to be the facilitator. When people do blow, for some reason they think I’m cute. And the women of these very scary guys decide that they want to touch me. I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, this is not what it’s about right here. It’s all about togetherness.”
Now I get nervous. This guy is watching his woman touch me. I’m getting sober because the fear and the high just don’t go together. Now I feel like a disgusting fat motherfucker. I can tell that this guy is a bad person. He’s probably done time already and he’s not afraid to kill someone. And he’s got a crazy lady who’s intent on touching me.
I’ve learned how to deal with women in these kinds of situations. I always put myself down, don’t make myself important. I’m really good at that.
“Oh, baby, I’m a junkie. Please, girl, don’t mess with me. I’ve caught so many diseases. I’m surprised
you didn’t get one just by being in my presence.”
I know how to turn a woman off. And that’s good for my health. Sometimes a woman is a man’s whole life. A woman can invade a man’s mind. She can take a pussy-whipped boyfriend and turn him into a gut-wrenching psychopath. So I never underestimate a guy like that.
One of the interesting people I met around then was a pimp I called Chance. I was at one of the strip club/after-hours clubs and he came over to me.
“Hey, Mr. Tyson. Wow, I always wanted to meet you because you always say you’re the baddest man on the planet, and I’m always saying I’m the baddest pimp on the planet. The way you fight is the way I pimp.”
“Is that true, nigga?” I said.
“Yeah, man, I ain’t shitting. I know about your bankruptcy, I know about them stealing your money. Nigga, you’re with me now, I’ve got nothing but money. You see all these men here? They’re on the wagon until I come. I supply everything.”
I started hanging out with Chance and he had all these pretty cars, Porsches, Ferraris, the Maseratis and Lamborghinis. I thought that he must like cocaine but this guy was a country pimp. He’d tell all these lies to make it seem like he was a man of the world but all he did was sissy drugs like ecstasy.
I was broke, so one night I said, “Get me some cocaine, nigga.”
“Who got cocaine?” he said. “Let me call my man.”
The next time I saw him, he had the coke. He called a weed dealer friend of his who had some. So I snorted some and then I passed it to him.
“Go ahead, man, do that shit, nigga,” I said. “It’s just like ecstasy but chopped up.”
He did a couple of lines but he immediately had a bad reaction to the coke.
“Oh, my head!” he screamed and fell to the floor. “Oh shit, Mike! Pimp down! Pimp down!”
I was thinking, Oh shit, this guy is about to die. We were with his nephew so I got him to drive Chance home. I was in the front seat and Chance was lying down and moaning in the back of his four-door Maserati. Meanwhile, I was such a druggie, I was snorting the bad coke, I didn’t care if it was killing Chance. We dropped him off at his house and I took the whole stash with me. Hey, bad coke is better than no coke. Chance recovered in a few days.