Netflix’s Mike Tyson docuseries offers an incomplete portrait of a troubling figure
The once heroic boxer showcases a frankness in this compelling new series but also an unwillingness to take accountability for his darkest moments
Mike Tyson never envisioned old age. And yet here he still is, having outlived his parents, Brooklynites of ill repute who died when he was a teenager, and the Brownsville tough guys who teased him for being scrawny and having a lisp. Here he is after doing hard time for rape in his prime, winning and losing great fortunes and battling addiction to drink, drugs and fame. Here he still is, 60 years old and a grandfather now, mixing it up with Jake Paul in the ring, opening up to manosphere-adjacent podcasters, bobbing into an impromptu White House press briefing – Māori face-tattoounmistakably in the frame – while on a DC visit to buck up his old pal as his party faces a bleak midterm forecast. “I don’t have to exist,” the champ says in Tyson, the latest four-part vanity project on his turbulent life and times. “Some reason, something allowed me to exist.”
Tyson review – deeply icky … and that’s before Trump shows up
Read more
In his heyday, Tyson was a mesmerizing sporting event unto himself – the ruthless knockout machine who struck fear into opponents at first sight, felled them in seconds and looked back on the carnage with cool nonchalance. His darkest episodes – the combustive relationship with actor Robin Givens, the six-year prison sentence for rape, biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear – only deepened the public fascination with him, adding to the lore of boxing’s baddest man. In the winter of his life, Tyson’s self-reflection, so deep it tips into self-parody, is the enthralling spectacle now. And if generations of Black comedians have proved anything, it’s that the appetite for Mike Tyson impersonations is inexhaustible.
This new Netflix docuseries isn’t the first rehabilitation project to feature the disgraced heavyweight champion: in 2008, there was the HBO documentary he produced with since #MeToo-d director James Toback; in 2012, the one-man Broadway show featuring Tyson and director Spike Lee. In between, there were Tyson’s cameos in The Hangover, which reframed his erratic behavior as campy mischief. But even as this kinder, gentler Iron Mike was invited back on to the chatshow circuit to promote his latest ventures, after being dropped as a major pitchman in the wake of abuse and rape allegations, the charm offensive could never quite gloss over his ugliest moments on camera – like the time hethreatened to eat Lennox Lewis’s children.
Tysonbiting off Holyfield’s ear in their 1997 title fight remains one of the most bizarre incidents in sport, a forever freeze-frame of a competitor come totally unhinged. “I was horrified by it,” Bill Clinton said at the time, “and I think the American people are.” When reminded of that quip in the Netflix doc, Tyson took offense, asking what Clinton – of all presidents – knew from scandal.
Donald Trump promoted a number of Tyson’s fights at his Atlantic City casino and went to bat for him in the press after Tyson split with manager Don King. Director Floyd Russ, who previously helmed a forensic OJ Simpson documentary, sits down with Trump at the White House for the Netflix doc, but the interview isn’t much of a coup. Mostly, Trump looks old and tired and makes the interview about himself. “The media was rough on Mike, but it just made Mike hotter,” he says. “They’re rough on me, and I’m president!” The assault allegations aren’t brought up – perhaps because they might hit too close to home.
Givens and Desiree Washington are the glaring omissions from Netflix’s Tyson – but not for lack of effort, the documentary hastens to note. In the case of the pageant contestant – who was 18 when she accused then 25-year-old Tyson of rape – all Russ has to go by is the 1992 interview Washington gave to Barbara Walters, in which she said she was offered $1m to recant her story. “Just a lying, reptilian, monstrous, young lady” is how Tyson characterized Washington ina 2003 interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, adding that, with his reputation as a rapist already established, he might as well “rape her and her fuckin mama”.
<a href="https://comicvibe.com/spider-man-venom-iron-man-more-just-got-the-ultimate-manga-makeover/” title=”Spider-Man, Venom, Iron Man & More Just Got the Ultimate Manga Makeover”>Ultimately, Tyson – who has even outlived fellow rogues Simpson and Tupac, an ardent supporter the boxer still remembers for visiting him in prison – dismisses Washington in the documentary as another opponent he overcame. “Whatever bad she tried to do, she lost,” he tells Russ. “What did she get, a million and a half bucks? I came out of prison with 400m bucks, so you tell me. I’m invincible.”
Of course, longtime Tyson watchers might be inclined to dismiss that as more tough talk, given how entrenched his vulnerabilities are in media canon. Over the years, Tyson has spoken at length about how growing up poor and Black in Brownsville, amid abuse at home and bullying on the streets, followed him into adulthood. The death of Cus D’Amato, the mythic boxing trainer who nurtured his talent and brought stability to his life, continues to cast a long shadow. The timing of that loss, just as Tyson was on the verge of becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history, remains a source of tremendous pain. In 2009, his four-year-old daughter was playing on a treadmill when she became entangled in the machine’s emergency-stop safety tether andaccidentally strangled herself. In those tough moments, you really feel for the guy.
And yet there is something unnerving about Tyson’s candor, his willingness to revisit the darkest chapters of his life with the same openness as his triumphs – like sitting down with a storybook monster and finding him eager to explain the horrors without actually having to take any accountability for them. And while the Netflix doc captures Tyson seemingly without pretense – eavesdropping on his therapy sessions and joining in on his hallucinogenic Toad-venom 5-MeO-DMT trip – the fighter is never completely unguarded. He knows the cameras are there, and that Netflix will take it easy on him. Tyson, a producer on this project too, invited them in after all. If anything, the doc makes clear Tyson lives for the camera and redemption is never the point – and that the gawkers will keep showing up, even though most already know what is in store. “This camera, to me, is a narcotic,” he says. “I’m so overwhelmed and overpowered by this narcotic, I’ll make a fool out of myself. It’s just that addicting.”
Explore more on these topicsShare
Reuse this content
