Mike Tyson, aging with grace and dignity

Although Tyson figures to attract fans and viewers to the exhibitions, he can't figure out why.

"I think I'm useless to society," he told the assembled crowd. "I don't think I'm worthy of the people who come out to see me, but they do."

so did this steele fellow help tyson pay some bills in exchange for the endorsement?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2006-10/25942338.jpg

"only in america! only in america."

“[He] called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a recluse.”

On Lennox Lewis

"Lennox Lewis, I'm coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!"

"My main objective is to be professional but to kill him."

"I want to rip out his heart and feed it to him [Lennox Lewis]. I want to kill people. I want to rip their stomachs out and eat their children."

On Evander Holyfield

"You got nothing coming, man. I'm going to enjoy this fight."

After biting Holyfield he said, "This is my career. I have children to raise. I have to retaliate. He butted me. Look at me. My kids will be scared of me."

"I felt Holyfield was using his head illegally. I told the referee I wasn't getting any help, so I went back to the streets. I cannot defend it, but it happened."

On Razor Ruddock

"You're sweet. I'm going to make sure you kiss me good with those big lips. I'm gonna make you my girlfriend."

On Tyrell Biggs

Tyson on Tyrell Biggs' complaining to him about low blows "Low blows? Low blows? Huh! Motherf**ker you're fittin' to die!"

"He was screaming like my wife."

"I could have knocked him out in the third round but I wanted to do it slowly, so he would remember this night for a long time."

On His Wife

"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin. When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined."

"Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I punched my wife I would rip her head off. It's all lies. I have never laid a finger on her."

On His Childhood

"One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like a infantile retard."

On Fans

To a question on whether he feels support from the common fan: "I don't feel love from them because there's no love. They don't know me as an individual; they know me for what I actually do. Because they pay to see me smash anybody. If they're white they pay, [it's] because the only thing they have respect for is my ability as an athlete. But if I was in court and I had to use them to testify against me on my character, they wouldn't testify positively against me and they would think I'm a cad..."

"There are nine million people who see me in the ring and hate my guts. Most of them are white. That's okay. Just spell my name right."

"I think the average person thinks I'm a f**king nut and I deserve whatever happens to me. That's what I believe."

"When you see me smash somebody's skull, you enjoy it."

On His Time in Prison

"You have to understand, Frank Bruno would not have been champion if I had not been in prison. Oliver McCall would not have been champion if I had not been in prison. A lot of these guys would not have been champion. Michael Moorer would not have been champion. Those guys would not have been champion if I had been around. They would have had no legacy. None of those guys would have had a legacy."

"I would have been in shape. I would have been active. Holyfield, those guys wouldn't have been champion when I was around, but I went away for four or five years inactive and that made them competitive for a time."

"But you really have to look at the science of the situation. You guys come here to talk and report but you don't actually look at the facts of what this business is all about. The best thing that happened to those guys and they should stand on their mother's shoulders and kiss my ass because I went to prison or they would not be existing right now. They'd be a flash in the pan and would have made some money and opened up a restaurant or bar somewhere where they live at."

On Boxing

"I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain."

"Everyone in boxing probably makes out well except for the fighter. He's the only one that's on Skid Row most of the time; he's the only one that everybody just leaves when he loses his mind. He sometimes goes insane, he sometimes goes on the bottle, because it's a highly intensive pressure sport that allows people to just lose it [their self-control]."

"How dare these boxers challenge me with their primitive skills? It makes me angry. They're just as good as dead."

"My power is discombobulatingly devastating I could feel is muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm."

Tyson: "It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register."

"Without discipline, no matter how good you are, you are nothing! One day, and I might not be around; you're going to meet a tough guy who takes your best shot. He'll keep coming because he's tough. Don't get discouraged. That's when the discipline comes in."

"I just want them to keep bringing guys on and I'm going to strip them of their health. I bring pain, a lot of pain."

On His Family

"No one gives a f**k about me. No one cares if my children starve, if they're on welfare. I have to support my children. I need more money."

Mike, on his mother who died in 1982: "I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: She only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn't pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it's crushing emotionally and personally."

On the Media

“I want to throw down your kid and stomp on his testicles, and then you will know what it is like to experience waking up everyday as me. And only then will you feel my pain.”

[To a female reporter] "It's no doubt I am going to win this fight and I feel confident about winning this fight. I normally don't do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn't talk anymore... Unless you want to, you know."

"People [are] going to say what they say. It has to be for a reason. It's just for a reason. I know sometimes I say things; I offend people. I ask this lady a lewd question because I'm in a lot of pain too. I have some pain I'm gonna have for the rest of my life. And Lewis, I'm trying to give some of that pain to ya'll."

"You gentlemen have no idea what it's like to be myself, no idea what it's like. I'm not interested in being humiliated anymore."

"Sometimes you guys have no pride, so no matter what I say, you guys ... it doesn't affect you because you don't care about nothing but money. So every now and then I kick your f**king ass and stomp on you and put some kind of pain and inflict some of the pain on you because you deserve to feel the pain that I feel."

"If I take this camera and put it in your face for 20 years, I don't know what you might be. You might be a homosexual if I put that camera on you since you were 13 years old. I've been on that camera since I was 13 years old."

On Religion

"All praise is to Allah, I'll fight any man, any animal, if Jesus were here I'd fight him too."

"I feel like sometimes that I was born, that I'm not meant for this society because everyone here is a f**king hypocrite. Everybody says they believe in God but they don't do God's work. Everybody counteracts what God is really about. If Jesus was here, do you think Jesus would show me any love? Do you think Jesus would love me? I'm a Muslim, but do you think Jesus would love me ... I think Jesus would have a drink with me and discuss ... why you acting like that? Now, he would be cool. He would talk to me. No Christian ever did that and said in the name of Jesus even ... They'd throw me in jail and write bad articles about me and then go to church on Sunday and say Jesus is a wonderful man and he's coming back to save us. But they don't understand that when he comes back, that these crazy greedy capitalistic men are gonna kill him again."

Stacey McKinley: "He sees a guy beggin' in the street and he gives him a hundred dollars. I'll say, 'Man, y'know the guy's just gonna spend it on crack!' But he says, 'I leave it to Allah to judge him.'"

"I'm a man. I lived it and I'm not afraid to die but when I die I'm going to paradise and I'm not worried."

On Himself

"The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person and everyone's not true with themselves. All of these people who are heroes, these guys who have been lily white and clean all their lives, if they went through what I went through, they would commit suicide. They don't have the heart that I have. I've lived places they can't defecate in."

"I'm not Mother Teresa. But I'm also not Charles Manson!"

"Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn."

"I'm just like you. I enjoy the forbidden fruits in life, too. I think it's un-American not to go out with a woman, not to be with a beautiful woman, not to get my dick sucked ... It's just what I said before, everybody in this country is a big f**king liar. [The media] tells people ... that this person did this and this person did that and then we find out that were just human and we find out that Michael Jordan cheats on his wife just like everybody else and that we all cheat on our f**king wife in one way or another either emotionally, physically or sexually or one way."

"There's no one perfect. We're always gonna do that. Jimmy Swaggart is lascivious, Mike Tyson is lascivious -- but we're not criminally, at least I'm not, criminally lascivious. You know what I mean. I may like to fornicate more than other people -- it's just who I am. I sacrifice so much of my life, can I at least get laid? I mean, I been robbed of my most of my money, can I at least get [oral sex] without the people wanting to harass me and wanting to throw me in jail?"

"At times, I come across as crude or crass, that irritates you when I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot at times. But I like to be that person. I like to show you all that person because that's who you come to see."

"I'm the most irresponsible person in the world. The reason I'm like that is because, at 21, you all gave me $50 or $100 million, and I didn't know what to do. I'm from the ghetto. I don't know how to act. One day I'm in a dope house robbing somebody. The next thing I know, 'You're the heavyweight champion of the world.' ... Who am I? What am I? I don't even know who I am. I'm just a dumb child. I'm being abused. I'm being robbed by lawyers. I think I have more money than I do. I'm just a dumb pugnacious fool. I'm just a fool who thinks I'm someone. And you tell me I should be responsible?"

On His Mental Health

"I don't know if I'm mentally sick, but I have... episodes sometimes. I'm a depressant kind of dude. I have episodes, and I'm human. But no one cares about my health as a human because sometimes I'm in my episodes when I'm at work."

"Well, [contemplating suicide] goes through everyone's mind, I'm sure. And if it doesn't I really must be crazy. Everyone thinks about that because sometimes, you know what I mean, it's just tough being a ni**er and it's tough being a bad ni**er."

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more."

"I'm on the Zoloft [an antidepressant] to keep from killing y'all."

On America

"I'm just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can't make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime."

Miscellaneous Quotes

"I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

"I like the British bikes. I like British people. They're real mellow."

"I can sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating."

"I have some pain I'm gonna have for the rest of my life. So every now and then I kick your f**king ass."

"I just want to conquer people and their souls."

http://i40.tinypic.com/nc76x.jpg

"I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

"I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

"I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

"I really dig Hannibal. Hannibal had real guts. He rode elephants into Cartilage."

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

ftw

man there is no way I can sit here with a straight face and say a lot of Tyson's malapropisms aren't hilarious but I still think ppl suck for overclowning a guy who for a really brief period really was all that as a fighter and whose awkwardness is at least partially attributable to having grown up under circumstances even the most smacked-around of us wince at

dude was a wife-beater. fuck him.

i think he's the axl rose of boxing (and both guys fascinate me)

axl rose is the axl rose of boxing. at least if yr vince neil bob guccione jr.

*or

or stephanie seymour or erin everly

or tommy hilfiger

or the swedish security guard he bit in the leg

or buckethead, relegated to an actual chicken coop

I've got nothing on tyson anyway, b/c he stole so many hours from me in 6th grade when I was trying to knock out his impossible ass Nintendo-style. He owes me.

dude was a wife-beater. fuck him.

so was my stepfather, and I have a lot of hate for him, but I suspect my nearness to that kind of figure lets me in on the ugly secret that "a wifebeater" isn't some guy who just doesn't get it/is a two-dimensional asshole/etc - he's somebody who got good & ruined before he got out of childhood, which is tragic. in Tyson's case extreme poverty & hellish upbringing = he didn't really have a chance

How is Tyson financially? How fucked? It's gotta be worth comparing him to Diego Maradona, who was the only other global sports superstar/GOAT-of-all-time-in-his-sport contender that the 80s produced. Both outstanding unorthodox talents who combining the anti-establishment streak with a massive vein of self-destruction. Don't they both have communists tattooed on them as well?

completely, utterly fucked - broke, by many accounts. last I heard he was living in a rented house in Phoenix.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032821/

^^^has anyone seen this?

http://nomas-nyc.com/uploaded_images/tyson10-790992.jpg

He's a truly tragic figure. Such power and natural ability, and so many negative influences in a horrible train wreck of a person.

Kind of like a Ferrari with a blind-folded drunk behind the wheel.

i had HBO back when they were showing his classic era fights, up to the Buster Douglas fight which i vividly remember, but goddamn he was a real life force of fucking nature back then, a fighter you'd never forget.

yeah and iaw j0hn, mike is probably a bad person in a lot of ways, but i also am pretty sure i can't imagine the type of circumstance in which he grew up.

yeah and iaw j0hn, mike is probably a bad person in a lot of ways, but i also am pretty sure i can't imagine the type of circumstance in which he grew up.

Regardless of the specifics, it was BAD. And he was this genetic freak who would just wreck people, even before he was taught how to do it well.

I'm very curious to see what happens once Don King dies. I think a WHOLE lot of shit is going surface about that man that we know nothing about yet, and a lot will have to do with Tyson. His demise was brought on by the division between him and his discipline. Prior to splitting with Kevin Rooney, he was just an utter badass. I still remember him coming down the aisle in all black. Sick.

<3 mike

I just saw the Tyson/Douglas fight for the first time and had it in my head that it was fat blob Douglas landing a lucky punch but it turned out to be one of the best post-Ali heavyweight fights I've seen.

Yeah, but can you imagine if it had been an in-shape Tyson? I don't think Douglas would have fared nearly as well. Tyson was overweight and out of shape, and terribly undisciplined in that fight.

Its really a shame that we never got to see Tyson v. Holyfield with both in their prime. That would have been an amazing fight. Or it could have just gone down like Tyson-Spinks did. Hoo.

Mike Tyson vs. Sonny Liston: FITE!

Tyson would have kicked Liston's ASS. Liston, as big and powerful as he was, was never the tactician that Tyson in his prime was. True, he was better than Douglas, and probably would have utilzed the same tactics that Douglas did in beating Tyson, but man...when you look at the asskicking Tyson laid down on Spinks - Spinks' ONLY loss - you have to believe that Tyson would have just taken the relatively undisciplined Liston to school.

my recollection was that tyson was already starting to slip well before the douglass fight, under rooney he really had great technique as well as brute force, unfortunately he has so much brute force he thought he could ride that, beating dudes w/o even trying.

And when you look at the heavyweight division at that time - post Spinks/Holmes, pre-Holyfield/Lewis - he was largely correct. Tyson could have kept up a modicum of training and coasted to a 45-0 record.

I'm saying that Tyson-in-prime, which is the only way to ever have these hypothetical arguments, would have beaten Liston.

amazon has the same problem when they do thursday night football. its a sucky place to watch sports.

aging with grace and dignity (in a thong)

Wasn’t this an entire ass plot line on an episode of Siliicon Valley? Iirc their streaming service couldn’t handle a UFC fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IGvzb-KCpY

i felt bad when evander's microphone was out when he was trying to speak. later, i did not care that jerry jones's microphone was out when he was trying to speak.

oh god they got Mauro Ranallo on commentary

Ranallo, Rosie Perez and punch drunk Roy Jones Jr. this is the worst commentary team I've ever heard

was expecting this to be a disaster but I didn't think it was gonna be on Netflix's end

okay I admit I am kind of intrigued by this. for one it really is like a real life Rocky movie. for two Mike Tyson in his prime was the most insanely powerful dude on the planet if he can still kinda do it after 30 years that's pretty cool. otoh him getting knocked out in 20 seconds would be hilarious

also I think Jake Paul has a good character going, a guy who everyone wants to see get his ass kicked but never does

Mike Tyson in his prime was the most insanely powerful dude on the planet if he can still kinda do it after 30 years that's pretty cool

otm x2

alright seeing Tyson actually come out its really starting to hit me how weird this is

after that intro I want Paul to die in the ring, come back and die again

He looks like he’s either scared shitless or like he’s gonna lunch Jake’s head clean off his shoulders

like imagine Michael Jordan coming out of retirement to play Dillon Brooks 1v1 for $10 million

Jake is a coward and I hope his head falls off

this is even sadder than expected

Like if you win against a dude who is this old and cooked how proud can you be

if you're going to take more PEDs than the entire 1999 Tour De France field and fight a senior citizen how are you not going full berserker?

yeah doesn't really feel good to watch this

Yeah even if jake wins its like great job, you beat up a grandpa

Paul is such a pathetic loser

could be argued that Paul has carried him for the last six rounds instead of knocking him out but jesus christ how many more of these freak show fights are out there for this MAGA dipshit

is Butterbean still alive? Maybe fight one of the Gracies under UFC 1 rules?

27 year old man fighting a 58 year old senior citizen. Is this not a joke to you guys? how are you watching this. Jake Paul is nothing but a coward, he never has and never will be a real fighter. just a "boxer" who wants fun easy fights

— Brandon (@wowitsbrando) November 16, 2024

watching a sad fight in, like, 20 second increments is even sadder.

if netflix does this buffering thing to football fans its gonna get ugly. because they are ugly.

that was depressing but we'll always have Tyson introducing a 14-year old interviewer to the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer

whole thing felt dystopian including of course the fact that the stream kept crashing

worst Black Mirror ever.

not sure if the Pauls and their ilk are uniquely horrifying, if I'm just old or a combo. I don't know who the Jake Paul was of my generation - Jackass? Jackass was so much less evil.

The Jerky Boys!

you know every rich tech bro training with their private judo instructor thinks they can be an MMA champion. its an epidemic of rich wannabe tough guys. and they are all on drugs.

tragic that Elon chickened out on fighting Zuck

xpost Brian Bosworth?

Gerry Cooney is still around. If Jake Paul dares!

the roots of a champion:

"As an actor, he played Dirk Mann on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark (2016–2018)."

Glad I missed these 8 rounds of elder abuse

Got a brief adrenaline rush from convincing myself that Tyson was rope-a-doping Paul before breaking him in two, but really I missed the bigger dystopic-as-shit picture that I was one of dozen or so watching this on a laptop perched on the bar at my local.

Lol @ this being top of the sports pages.

the delightful youtuber Napoleon Blownapart has a great video on freak show fights, with special emphasis on why jake paul is trash:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJdNirkCDKY

Perhaps the mods should think about changing the title of this thread.

You need not feel bad about watching what ended up being a depressing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. After all, people were simply watching with the collective hope in the small chance they’d get to see a YouTuber executed. And that’s beautiful

— Lolo (@LolOverruled) November 16, 2024

resding this thread and love that I don't yet know the outcome lol kiu

Gerry Cooney is still around. If Jake Paul dares!

i heard cooney interviewed earlier yesterday before the fight.. he thought mike would win on the logic that he, cooney, at 68 “still hits as hard as i did in my prime”;

ppl get deluded and say what they want to happen rather than what is likely to happen

i want eugenia cooney to punch a hole thru jake paul's chest

Hopefully Jake uses the unearned confidence from the Rocky Balboa remake to fight a real boxer and die in the ring

Strength suffers less as you age than reflexes and stamina, so Tyson probably still has some juice behind his punches when he sets his feet, but in every other regard he may as well be a slow, white stiff who sleepwalks into punches and is dead on his feet after two rounds.

Relatable

that barrios/ramos fight was good. they are good fighters.