Original subtitles

Oh, no.

Who had the

potential to be the greatest heavyweight ever...

Great Black and Moss towns record of 49 and old...

Great, the record... probably go under for you to this whole career.

Become the greatest fighter ever because of the custom model...

He's sitting in Indianapolis in Plainfield, Indiana in the Youth Center.

Serving a six-year sentence.

Now, you go figure it.

I didn't do this to take your career away.

I did it because you need help.

And if your so-called friends weren't big enough to tell you, at least I was,

you hurt me.

And I was big enough to stand up to you and tell you you need help.

You hurt me and I'm trying to help you.

I was young.

I mean, I wanted to have fun.

I enjoyed having fun.

And maybe I took it further, whatever.

People know who I am and people know I have money.

People know I'm young.

That means that they put the two together, young, black, single with money.

90% or 80% of the people believe what they read.

And that doesn't have a big effect on people.

If they ever got a chance to know me, they would think differently.

They would think totally differently.

The

colors in the sky look pretty like rainbows.

It's like a big flock of birds just swooping down

on the roof, bringing down other people's birds.

If you catch this or you, they catch yours, it's keeps.

Ain't no giving back.

Well, if you want to give it back, charge.

I knew Mike every since he was a little kid.

All right.

He used to rob still to fly pigeons.

And he says, I seen him flying birds.

When I got bigger, I said I wanted to be like that.

Fly birds have my own crew.

Mike left here.

Mike left here.

My lady bum stayed on the roof, flying pigeons all the time, kept trouble.

Mike was a trifling kid.

The same like most kids from the ghetto.

They used to call him dirty, Mike, because his clothes was bumming stuff like this.

His mom's on welfare.

They didn't have much, so this is the way he was.

He got to realize a lot of band and buildings here, so this is what you played.

And I was your playground, the band and building, so little dirt locks and stuff,

so he was always dirty.

Nobody has any money.

Somebody might say they hungry or something like that, so you go out,

go up on the shopping area.

You know, you might see somebody cast a check or it's a nasty pocketbook.

It's peer pressure, because if I'm with them, I'm with them, and they say,

come on, we going to get money.

Bad as I would want to say, I'm good with who?

I would say, I'm with them.

Because, you know what I'm saying?

The next day, if they caught $1,000 and they fresh, and I'm coming dirty,

like yesterday, I'm going to go.

I'm going to go.

That's how it is out here.

It was so exciting.

I mean, you couldn't... See, me and your world are so vastly different.

You could never understand the action and the excitement of it.

Oh.

I mean, the cunningness, you know.

I'd be able to outsmart somebody.

It was a big drill.

Not just to go out there and beat a guy up and slam on the ground and take his wallet.

Now smart them, now time them.

Now think of them.

Even though they know that you're a crook.

When you're on the bar, or when you're walking in the check cashing plate through

the grocery store, they know to watch you and you're still out smart them.

Most people would think, well, she knows me.

She's on to me.

I'm going to walk away with just... They're still watching.

Watching they think they know, and then they make one mistake.

You know, it's smart, and they have their wallet.

He was adjudicated a juvenile delinquent, and that means that a person would have

committed a felony had they'd been 16 years old or older.

He was initially placed downstate, and because of acting out, he was sent to try on.

He acted out severely at try on initially, and

then calmed down after meeting Bobby Stewart.

I remember the day when Mike came here.

I remember the first time laying eyes on him.

He was being escorted across the field, or placed by two of the bigger staff.

And they brought him in handcuffs.

And he found out that I was an ex-fighter.

And he asked one of the staff, how can I meet Stewart?

Finally, I went to his room one night, and I banged on his door to intimidate him.

I said, so you want to meet me?

What the hell do you want?

He said, I want to be a fighter.

I said, so do all the rest of these other guys.

They haven't got the **** to work to be a fighter.

I'm serious, Mr. Stewart.

I said, let's see your behavior continue like it

is for a few weeks, and we'll see what happens.

This is what impressed me.

This kid chant, I mean, because he wanted it.

The teachers call from school.

I knew one of the English teachers calls him, what the hell happens to this guy?

He went from like, in a few week period, like

one year in his reading level, he was trying.

Mike and I were sparring one time.

He hit me with a jab.

It almost knocked me down.

Luckily, I had the next week off from trying,

because my nose broke and my eyes were all black.

And I told my wife, and I said, that's it.

And I told him that I didn't cost a model.

And I said, he'd take a ninkus like you and work with him.

I told Patterson, Jose Torres, and he's had

champions and worked with other champions.

And he said, really?

And he saw us as a way to make it.

So we took him down to Catskill.

We talked all the way down.

He says, what's the only light?

This is the top of the police station.

Simple as that.

We're going to work on the gym just like you do up here.

He'll be all right.

He'll be all right.

Don't worry about it.

So we walked in.

Teddy Atlas was a trainer at the time.

I said, I was playing with him.

I doubled the chair, I broke his foot back.

Yeah, there we go.

We wanted to see the spirit of Mike.

He's coming towards us, you know, prospect.

He was 12 years old.

He was 190 pounds.

We had nobody near that weight.

So Bobby box him.

He tried to be ferocious.

He went after Bobby.

He was very strong.

And Bobby had to open up to keep him in his place from overwhelming him.

And Bobby said every time he hit me, he hurt me.

He was perfect.

He was aggressive as hell.

So we got ready and we left, you know, 20 minutes later and I sent him back to Port.

We got outside the back of the police station there.

I said, I guess what he said about you.

Punk, and he says, you continue down the line you're on now.

You become the heavyweight champion of the world.

And he hugged me.

He did not.

He did not.

He didn't tell you.

We

know that we were going to be involved with him.

Cuz wanted to be involved with this kid.

The first time I drove him down myself.

And he drove in this long driveway.

He was looking, looking, looking.

He said, what's this?

I said, this is the house.

Cuz the house is here.

I'm going to stay here.

What am I going to do?

Take the garbage out?

He said, probably.

There's a lot of earth he's going to do too.

But I said, if you behave and you do what you're

supposed to, you will live here with me on the bus.

The big house is like 13 or 14 rooms.

And Mike and other young fighters will stay there.

Many of them never even turn professional.

It was just like a halfway house for juvenile delinquents.

And Cuz had a room on the top floor that knowing was ever allowed to enter.

That's why I never wanted anybody to come in my room.

But I want to find something.

I want to be able to find it.

Come at Cuz in 1939.

It was like a cocoa bird.

He had a terrible thing about gangsters.

If he went to a restaurant, he'd have to see himself

looking over here, looking here, seated by the door.

Or look under the bed when he went home or open the closet.

He was half mad and half blind and an all-trainer

had a handful of incredible knowledge.

And had this impact on every fighter that he had ever trained.

We saw it with how his head to our issue later became the light heavyweight champion.

Floyd Patterson became the heavyweight champion.

He was almost as though he had a branding on it.

And he would stamp custom auto-store patterns or whatever on the fighter.

Your mind is not in your way.

Your mind is not in your way.

It's something distracting you.

But they got to have the initial interest.

They got to have the spark there for me to fare.

If there's no spark, I can't put life.

I'm not a creator.

What I do is discover and uncover.

And when I uncover, the boys themselves discover

qualities in themselves that didn't even know what he had.

Well, he had a room over his own.

He stabbed a Frankie because he stabbed in the third floor.

Because most of the boys stabbed in the third floor.

It was like heaven.

It was good, right, boom.

He was fun.

And it was easy to fool, too.

It was easy to goof on and fool.

And I admit, it looked cute.

You know, like some big guy, you're fooling him and stuff.

And he was a lovable guy in ways.

He was hugging people and stuff.

And he needed that, too.

He comes out of a boys' home.

He comes to Catskin.

There are people who are friendly, too.

There's no one saying, okay, I just fed you now.

You're going to do this for me.

You know, you say, hey, Lenny, could you take me to the store and get me a milkshake?

And you buy him a milkshake.

And a couple days later, he tries to pay you back.

And you say, Michael, that's okay.

You know, you don't have to pay me back.

It's no, you know, I did this because I'm your friend, you know.

I'm not doing this for any reason.

He was very sensitive about people picking on him in school.

I know some kids would call him names.

They call him Mighty Joe Young because his kids could be mean

and they would use that name to make fun of the size of him.

And a change happened in Mike.

Through boxing, he obviously became more proud of himself and sure of himself.

I know there was a guy a milkshake who turned a good fighter, a good country.

Good fighter.

They've... I don't remember if I didn't name him.

Shane.

Shane.

Shane.

Shane.

Shane.

Yeah, it's like Dave Shane, that's right.

I don't remember that.

And before Mickey Walker fought everybody.

And after him the first time knocked out, wasn't

it the right game later, we can't get to work.

Boy, I buffed a lot.

Slattery?

Slattery.

He's got a number to everybody.

Slattery.

Round one.

Then he would come out.

Lock y'all up.

How many did they all throw?

I look at these guys when I first came out.

I thought they would, you know, guard.

I thought they were born like that, but they're not, you know.

They're just ordinary people.

I would like to be something like them.

Not much with a flamboying or something.

Arrogant, you can say, but just different from all the fighters nowadays.

Because that's some way I just like being.

I like being sometimes a little arrogant.

A little bit, not much.

Just a little bit.

And you know, a little sport.

I like that.

That's me.

And it's always going to be me.

And I'm not going to try to change it for nobody.

Mike was cocky and shy at the same time.

He was a little boy once you got to know him.

But it took a bit of going through the layers to find this out.

You know, he sometimes swagged.

He was a bad kid in his head.

The first time I saw Mike and Gus was in September of

1980 when Jose Torres drove me up to Catskill, New York.

It was an astounding experience.

He was obviously a prodigy.

It was like the first time I saw John Coltrane.

And the first time I saw Bruce Springsteen.

For the first time I read Norman Mailer.

For the first time I saw Perishnikov.

It was clear this was somebody special.

He's a good fighter too.

Cool.

You think so?

I don't think he would fight.

Do you really think so?

How much do you think so?

I don't know.

Oh, you must have some reason to think of that.

Why do you think this is the first time?

It was like he could knock out anybody.

Well, that's a very good reason.

That's the day.

There you go.

Go get it.

Keep the last guy to stop.

Hot.

Very good.

That's my thing.

That's my thing.

Jim Mike fought like a wildcat.

Always, no matter who he was with.

He would try to knock out anybody, no matter who it was.

Mike used to knock out somebody every day of the week.

Sometimes two guys.

Gus used to say he said, don't knock everybody

out, because he wouldn't have nobody to spar with.

You think that in a way Mike Tyson is an American pit bull, and that he was trained

and that he was bred, you know, to be a killer in the ring.

So he's living with this crazy father figure.

He's totally paranoid about all the other forces in boxing that want to steal

fighters from him, who think that women make you weak and vulnerable.

That's all they think about.

There's nothing wrong with things about gloves, but they tell about all the time.

Everything they do.

That guy there, they make me.

No, no, no.

Yeah, they come, it's just going to get in the car.

It's going to get in the car.

The other day, Mike, I'll sing.

Yeah.

Oh, that's a compliment.

That was the day I was like it, I said, yeah.

We talked to this girl.

They don't sing.

I didn't do that because it was like a fool.

If you do because I said it, you're a fool.

You got to do because what I said was right.

That's what you got to do it for.

Not because I said, all I do is remind you.

You got to do because you know what's right to do.

It's going to benefit you in the long run.

Mike Tyson was maybe 14 or 15, and they had the school dances, and he was shy.

So he didn't know what to do to get the girls to even pay attention to him.

And so he came to me one day, and he says, now I know what to do.

I figured out what to do.

I figured out how to make it work.

And I said, what do you mean?

He says, well, in the dance, he said, I'm always

afraid they're going to say no if I asked him to dance.

He said, now I know what to do.

He said, you run up, and you grab your hand, and you take them

out on the floor quick before they have a chance to say no.

He said, then they won't say no because they're too embarrassed.

So they'll wait until the dance is over.

Yeah, he was my first love.

I didn't like him at first.

I remember I used to come home from school, and I used to see him.

And I knew he liked me, right?

So one day I could remember.

He was coming home, and he said, are you scared of me?

And I was one of those girls, like, my mother

would say, don't show a man you're afraid of.

So I was like, no, I'm not afraid of you.

And he went boo.

And I ran up the street, and he laughed.

You know, he was cracking up.

So I just feel good stretch.

Get a good stretch.

You tell me what you're going to do tomorrow.

I'm going to jab to the head.

Then I'm going to move after I head.

I'm going to punch the body.

What are you going to do when you get inside?

Open it up like a s***.

Okay.

Eight-second knock-out, your first round.

Eight-second knock-out.

Yeah.

You're right here.

Yeah, he did.

Eight-second knock-out.

Right on the chin.

I'm going to relax then, because I don't want my head to fall any more than it is.

Okay.

He's everyone that sees me.

They say, oh boy, you got that Tyson.

You're lucky.

You know, you got that Tyson.

He's an animal.

He just loves to fight.

He just loves to hurt people.

You know, he's not afraid of nothing.

But a lot of times he's intimidated.

He's intimidated by his opponents.

Things go on in his mind like he's not all capable as he is.

You know, and how could a guy like that think he's not capable?

Michael!

Mike!

Don't leave Denver now, come on.

Maybe God, you know, gave him such a strong body.

He figured, well, I give him a strong body, you know.

I make him have to become strong the other way on his own, you know what I mean?

He's a little weak personality as far as being... he's easily misled.

He needs love.

He needs a boost.

He needs confidence.

Somebody to be there with him.

Look, look, look, it's just relax.

Relax, it's just relax.

Relax, it's just relax.

Relax.

Relax.

We've been glad nothing.

Ever, it's just relax.

It's just relax.

I'm only first time.

Hey, well, it's just relax.

I'll get a little tense.

Relax.

All that is is another part relax.

We've done it already 20 times.

We've done it in two.

It's better to find us than we ever got to fight here.

It's always hard, but I mean, you know, they always have

confidence because it always comes out on your side.

They're always better than everyone you get in here.

Right?

It's just relax.

It's only to imagination to get you.

Let's go get ready for a fight.

Go on.

That's it.

He

doesn't have much experience.

He's only got about a dozen fights.

He just knows how to fight.

He's very quick for a heavyweight, and makes him look

like he has more experience than he actually has.

Would you say that he's a natural fighter?

I wouldn't say he's a natural.

He didn't walk in a gym like that.

Another right duck in the body by Tyson.

Very, very strong boxer, Tyson.

Very, very strong.

Brown has taken some vicious punishment and held on.

There's another right by Tyson.

It's just the last right.

He's giving up.

The towel's coming in.

Look at all Tyson.

Jump on the ropes.

That is it.

They threw the towel into the towel.

They didn't want to see.

They didn't want to see his boxer hurt.

I think the towel hit the canvas about 35 seconds into the fight.

Look at all Tyson.

Rolling out the ground with John.

6,000, 6,000.

Now listen.

Look at all Tyson.

He's back.

Come in.

That's the top of the game.

He's gonna take your core out.

I think he's cool.

Hey, there he is.

Look at the lot of guts, kid.

We got a lot of guts, kid.

We got a lot of guts.

Are you just stick with him on the knee, just in the straight?

Is it two time no?

You're a tough one.

You need stick with him.

You're gonna have your day.

You understand?

We got a lot of guts.

A lot of guys.

A lot to be fronts.

All the

nervousness and tension is stopped.

It's not there, no more.

We got In the locker room thinking about, oh, man, this guy's a killer.

I'll post this happen.

This happened.

Oh, so I'm gonna do this.

As soon as I get in the ring, there's a whole different story.

I'm the killer then.

I remember incident with Mike in school, dawn, lunch period.

We had came in one day to get our lunch.

And Mike was online with me that day.

I don't recall at first, you know, anybody

coming in saying anything to Mike or anything.

But all I can remember is Mike out of set.

He was very angry.

And my tray and everybody else's tray hit the floor.

He just pushed him and they all landed on the floor.

And later we found out the reason he did act like

that is because he found out his mother passed away.

When his mother died, he asked me if I should be his mother.

If we are right, he calls me mother.

I says, yes, Mike.

So from that time I became his mother, because he became his father.

I know one day he introduced me to the kid.

And he said his name was Eric.

He says, Eric, I want you to meet my mother.

And the poor boy looked at me and looked at Mike.

And he was just rolling his eyes.

Mike was always changing.

I noticed things about him.

He was a sensitive part about him.

He was emotional.

He knew how to get what he wanted with different people.

When Tyson started to develop, it was just certain

things that started taking president over what had been.

I thought Cuss started compromising certain rules.

One day I remembered taking Mike after an incident where Mike flew into some kind of

a rage and felt that he was being embarrassed by the

teacher and threatened the teacher or got physical with him.

For that incident and some other incidents I felt

the right thing to do was to spend them from the gym.

Take away something that was more important than obviously being suspended from school.

And Cuss brought him back to the gym.

And basically that was like giving him Cott Blanche to continue disrespecting people.

Boys are boys.

And I know exactly how he feels and how he's from time to time.

I know when to put a little pressure down to make him

aware and perhaps influence him in a particular direction.

And I also know when to lay off.

Tyson went wayward if you want to call it that further and further.

And because of Cuss's approach to it, things started snowballing.

I don't know much about with Teddy and Mike other than it was a personality

conflict there that had something to do with the girl.

Mike abused somebody in the community there that was close to me.

And I reacted in a way that I thought I had to react at that time.

And I confronted Mike with it.

But Teddy Atlas found out one day that Mike Tyson had

ludly propositioned an underage girl, a very underage girl.

Mike, you know, like I said, got a little bit too big

for himself and thought he could do what he wanted.

And I didn't allow him to do that.

I confronted him and became almost a physical thing.

Teddy got hold of Mike and took him over to the

gym one night and put a gun to Mike Tyson's head.

And it was a one-on-one situation.

And he threatened to blow Mike Tyson's brains out unless Mike Tyson changed his

way and his behavior toward people in general and girls specifically.

I just felt that that was necessary to protect

my people and people that were close to me.

Mike Tyson bolted from that gym and ran down Main Street and Catskill,

ran all the way home, and that was the final break.

Mike Tyson was sent back up to the try-in school by Customato, the reform school he

had come out of, for a few days until things cooled off.

And during that time, Customato got rid of Teddy Atlas.

Tyson turns pro pretty much in obscurity upstate New York.

However, he is managed by Jim Jacobs and Bill Kate.

He was in very good hands.

Jim Jacobs and Customato were very, very close friends.

They thought the same.

They talked the same.

They loved to talk about boxing.

Bill and I both feel that Mike Tyson is definitely

going to be the heavyweight champion of the world.

The real question is when Jimmie was known in one segment

of society as the greatest handball player in America.

And he was a very competitive, interesting guy.

And he did, when's it?

Jim and Jacob.

Jacob's had a very good relationship with Tyson.

It was like a big brother, little brother type thing.

Kate was more of a rough businessman.

Kate and Sting was how many people of y 'all bring him in

to fight free because we don't have a lot of free tickets.

Jimmie Jacobs told me that he was going to manage this fighter.

And when he turned professional in the early 1985,

he wanted to get him into the arena back to the gym.

Back to the arena back to the gym.

Never giving him a chance to rest.

And he said, I believe that if you give him any

kind of time, he's already been in a reformatory.

If you let him run wild up in the Catskill area,

all of any so forth, he's going to get in trouble.

We're not looking in trouble.

We're looking for this kid to become the youngest heavyweight champ of all time,

the wealthiest heavyweight champ of all time,

and the greatest heavyweight champ of all time.

There was a fire inside of Mike Tyson.

There was this absolute rumbling.

He wouldn't stop.

He was relentless.

He was everything a fighter had to be.

He was ruthless.

No compassion.

A brutal country with both fists.

We have a set job on that.

You know where I put on your feet.

You ready your time?

You see how this air will be lit?

I love what I'm doing.

The basic concept of his style is not to have any feeling out of time, but he

fights everybody like they stole something from him.

How you doing?

Hey, how you doing, my man?

I'm going to be the next chap, all right.

That's why I'm going to business.

Well, of course.

Having watched him come from where he was the body is, I

can't say honestly I have a very deep affection for him.

I do.

To me, he's my boy.

He's with me.

And I would look at it as he's my trainer and my manager.

He's like my father.

I often say to me, you know, I owe you a lot.

He doesn't know what I mean, but I'm going to tell him now what I mean.

If he weren't here, I probably wouldn't be alive today.

I will stay alive and I will watch him become a success.

That's the motivation I have to keep me alive and keep me going.

I used to only be bored part of the time.

Then I talked to him and he keep me and spent now bored all the time.

I have nothing to do.

The Tyson story is more, in my opinion anyway, the custom model story.

I mean, of course had a philosophy about boxing and life and how they intertwined.

I mean, Tyson was pretty close to... he was close.

He was on the road to going down probably as the greatest heavyweight ever.

Now the goal is just happening.

And he put in all the effort and all the time and all the misery and heartbreak.

He's not around enjoying it.

Cuss taught him what Cuss called elusive aggression,

which I think was the signature of Cuss's method.

If it became known as the pinkaboo style, it could have held high.

But I think the cornerstone of what Cuss taught was head

movement to move your head after you punched every time.

He had timing and leverage and strength and a desire

to put his fist through the back of your head.

The first time I saw him, he got up in the ring and I

think the first and second round he knocked his guy.

I thought he had knocked his head on because

I'd never seen anybody hit somebody like that.

And the amazing thing I remember was like he wasn't satisfied.

He would almost feel like he wanted a guy to get up so he could knock him out again.

You get hit with jabs, wild hooks, pulverizing

right hand leads, and he keeps coming and coming.

Hey, I wanted to hit him in the nose one more

time for that bonk that went up in his brain.

I wanted to go up in his brain because I always thought about that point.

I always wanted to listen to the doctors and television and that's my friend.

I think they want to nose go in the brain.

The consequences of him getting up right away.

It was reported in the newspapers that Mike had said something about wanting to

jam the nose up into the brain, I think.

And I was very angry reading that and I wrote

Micheletta and I asked him to be a man, not an animal.

If everything goes the way it's been going, I'd put Mike in

the ring in about June or July as somebody in the top ten.

But you must remember, once you break into the top ten, you can't go backwards.

Every opponent was carefully selected as to be not dangerous,

but sufficiently capable to bring Michael further along.

Our picking was very, very well done.

Some people forefelt that we were bringing Mike along too quickly.

Other people felt that we were bringing the like along

too slowly, but Mike was brought along exactly right.

That's it.

How are you going?

Very good.

Jimmy and Bill Katein knew what they were doing with Mike Tyson.

And if they said, Kevin Rooney is your man, he's going to train you.

There were no more questions.

And Kevin Rooney and Tyson had this closeness because

of that closeness Tyson had with custom motto.

But whatever they were doing, we worked.

And Kevin Rooney was all of a sudden looking like the

greatest trainer who has ever come into the sport of boxing.

This is the main event of the night.

Twelve rounds are boxing for the WBC Championship of the World.

It was an electrifying experience because one felt that here was some sort of

primeval force coming in in his black trunks and no socks.

And Trevor Burford is the older man who is just arrogant.

The boxer must feel on himself in some strange

way an extension of the nerve fibers of the crowd.

Because the boxer is acting out suppressed or denied aggressions in the civilization.

So he sort of rises to this peak of adrenaline, you know.

But it's not that he's alone in doing that.

The crowd is urging him on.

So the whole thing is a strange exercise in

complicity, which people don't like to talk about.

This one is going to be over, I believe.

It's over.

That's all.

And we have a new era in boxing.

I like to dedicate my fight to my great guardian custom model.

I'm sure he's looking and he's talking to all the great fighters.

The fainted boy did it.

That's right.

Right twice.

Yeah.

I just remember going back to the room and Mike

having this belt and just staring at this green belt.

And he just went up into the mirror and he was holding it up like this and just

staring in the mirror and truly not believing that this was his or that this was him.

I remember this girl walking the throne like Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson.

And he was like, shot.

Well, I mean, you know me.

And I'm like, Mike, people know you.

Oh my goodness.

I saw you on TV the other night.

Please welcome Mike Tyson.

Just a championship belt or is that your watch?

You know the grace?

For a big, powerful, strong guy, you got such a sensitive, sweet voice.

The press jumped all over.

Not that they were trying to take advantage of it, but they had a hero in it.

And they wanted to speak to this hero.

And they wanted to find out what made him tick.

How do people here do you like me?

I'm gonna make a lot of cash.

Mike came to my house one summer and he sat down and

he signed my kids' pictures and we kind of talked.

We wanted to know how does it feel the fast life and the new found stardom.

We had the feeling that he didn't really like, you know, the publicity,

the cameras and everything.

Personally, you know, I'm one that really don't care much

about being in front of the television or anything like that.

I'm just the kind of person I get the biggest satisfaction from giving.

And she's not sweet supposed to save.

The people that need help are supposed to have a lending hand.

All the Brooklyn loves Mike, because Mike came from the streets and a lot of people,

that send the streets look up to that and they feel that, okay, if this brother can

do it, get out of here, I can get out of here too.

Make it better for myself.

Thank you, Hunt.

Have a good night.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the Las Vegas Hilton Sports Center, where tonight, Don King

Productions presents the hard road to glory.

Every fighter that we fought in the HBO tournament was a Don King promoted,

managed, fired, so once we wiped them all out, Don King had nothing.

Had them all fired.

We beat all his guys.

So when Don King said, well, I got nothing, I got to have, I got,

I'll steal the champ.

Don King is a gangster from Cleveland.

He murdered two people when he was running the numbers in Cleveland.

One was ruled justifiable, homicide, the other.

He did three years and 11 months in prison.

He came out of prison in 71 and began to get involved in boxing.

And by 76, 77, he was emerging as the dominant figure in boxing.

I am an extraordinary hustler.

So therefore, I feel that I am liking to only two or three giant promoters in the

lifetime that we have lived in, and that's

PT Barnum and Michael Todd and yours truly.

He reverted back to his hustler, gangster, roots in Cleveland and started a

robin' sheet his fighters to the point where six former heavyweight champions and

25 different fighters have a sewage king, just king robin' of that money.

If he cheated me out of a million dollars, and I made two million dollars,

I'd be happy.

Because when I was fighting, you could make over, if you

made a couple hundred thousand dollars, you were a lucky guy.

I mean, I never made that kind of money.

I never made over fifteen thousand dollars in my whole fight career.

I revolutionized the pay skill in boxing.

I made more millionaires in boxing than all the rest of my competitors collectively.

And I put on better bouts, better competitive bouts.

So why do I always be singled out?

Do you know what I mean?

To be the one that they're going to go out and

target to go do whatever they want to do with?

Do you know what I mean?

So I feel that in America, and I will not refuse nor reject America.

I say I'm the only in America, man.

And I stay on that criteria because this is the greatest country in the world.

And because I believe in this country, I'm

going to continue to fight for this country.

The country that's told in the birches of this

country decrying is the nickel, diesel, and justice.

I was hitting

him with body punching.

I heard him actually he was crying in there, making women gestures.

I can't find him, but I knew that he was breaking down soon.

You're saying that Biggs was crying while you were hitting him?

One more pejorative comment could have asked to make about another.

He'd shriek like a woman, as if Tyson knew what a woman was like when she was hit.

Which maybe he did.

I just see a guy with class in there tonight.

I've seen a guy that throws elbows.

I've seen a guy that throws butts.

I've seen a guy that hits after the bell.

I've seen all of this in my type.

I see a gentleman in there.

If they want to make him out of a beast that he's

claimed to be, he's going to be in there with a beast.

Ladies and gentlemen, the man known as the Easton Assassin

former heavyweight champion of the world, Larry Ho!

The last friendly, warm and friendly meeting

I had with Mike was after the Holmes fight.

For the Holmes fight, Mike was going with three-year-olds.

He seemed to be semi-serious about three women.

This was Miss America, Robin, and a very gorgeous model.

We put one in one section, one in the second section, and one in the third section.

And it's sad here we talked about and we laughed about it.

So when he left, I started to say, where are you going now, Mike?

He said I'm going to the coast.

Those are the last things he said to me prior to his being married to Robin.

Robin, inquiring minds want to know, how does a woman who went to Sarah

Lawrence in Harvard Medical School wind up falling in love

with a guy who's a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks?

God, I want to know too.

There's something we have a lot in common, traditional

families, and we just sort of love each other.

We ended up married.

Well, just three weeks after the marriage, I got a call from Robin.

I am Mrs. Mike Tyson, and I'm taking over.

I demand this, and I demand this.

I said, wait a minute.

We welcome you back to Live at Fire, Robin.

The Sports Illustrated article, and some of the others, the tone is.

It suggests that you and your mother are opportunists

and that you are meddling too much in Mike's career.

That's absurd.

First one, Michael's wife.

And not only that, but we're family.

I mean, my mother has become Michael's mother.

An incident happened, and we noticed a discrepancy with Michael's money.

That's what sort of opened up everything.

If Michael has $50 million and he's supposed to have $70 million, there's a problem.

In a way, Robin and Ruth were like a football team.

They, you know, the mother-in-law had a game plan.

The game plan was to get Mike Tyson on the field, march the ball up the field,

score the touchdown, end of game.

They marched away with the ball and the money

and we have fame and fortune and all that.

Don King looked on Mike Tyson's marriage as his opportunity, giving him advice and

counsel on how to take Mike over, and how to make problems of various kinds for me.

But the women being shrewd and greedy and smart on the one side, the criminal

smartness, they said to themselves, Don King, we don't need him.

We don't, you know, we're going to have him.

He's going to take all money.

We don't need him.

We're going to take all the money we can get now.

From Cincinnati, Ohio, he is the second right heavyweight in the world,

and a former heavyweight champion, ladies and gentlemen, the challenger, Tony, T.

N.T.

Paul.

My mission is to go and destroy and not let anything get involved.

You get punched, you get hurt.

I refuse to be hurt, knock down and knock out.

I can't lose.

I refuse to lose.

You saw behind Mike Scholder there, his co-manager, Bill Caton.

For the first time since Mike's been fighting as a professional, the other

co-manager, Jim Jacobs, has not been able to make this trip.

Funeral services were held in Hillside Memorial Cemetery

for boxing manager Jimmy Jacobs, who died Wednesday.

Heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

Mike was at Jimmy Jacobs Funeral.

There were shouting matches with people from Merle

Lynch over trust funds that Mike had put away.

The mother and Robin Givens herself were up at offices of investment firm,

trying, screaming desperately to get the money.

You have poor cuts and poor Jimmy gone.

Rest their souls.

All these forces struggling for the soul of Mike Tyson.

Now we have Don King at the gate.

This is a man who does not discourage easily.

And I tried to tell Jim and Bill, King said to me, he was going to take your fight.

I'm trying to tell you, he won't take it, Jim Jacobs and Bill King.

Oh, no, we're two, we're five, we're five, we're five, we're five.

Hey, when did he end up?

I tried to tell you.

But hey, that's business.

Now he's getting ready to fight Michael Smith.

It's a fight issue in Atlantic City.

They managed to get through the training period during the week.

But on the weekends, Ruth Roper and Robin Givens would come down to Atlantic City to

lend their particular brand of charm to this already inflammatory situation.

And Trump was romancing that.

I happen to know Robin Givens Tyson.

She is one hell of a fine lady.

And Clayton was trying to be there and trying to prove

to the world that Mike Tyson loved him, which he didn't.

And it was just a constant emotional drain on everybody involved.

So I come down here.

And he says, we could talk upstairs.

So to break the ice, I said, you know, where do you run in the mornings?

I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to start an interview.

And he said to me, I went on a boardwalk.

And I said, great.

I said, what do you think about it?

He said, I think about cuss.

And some of the things he told me.

And how right he was about some things.

And how he's not here anymore to help me.

And then I begin to think about different things.

And he said, and it occurs to me, how much more fun it used to be.

I mean, it wasn't about money then so much.

We were all like a family.

We were together.

But then suddenly everything he said, he said, they died, meaning cuss.

And everything became money, money, money.

And he said, now it's like I don't have anybody to talk to.

Now this is a newlywed sandwich.

And he leans forward and he grabs me.

And he's got his head against my chest.

And he is clearly going through absolute total hysteria.

And the water is flowing.

So much to the point that when the interview was

over, I had to go back upstairs and change my shirt.

Special edition of Atlantic City's Press, souvenirs, get it now, get it high.

News and more, 30 projects.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, once and for all, let's get ready to rumble 12 rounds.

Holy undisputed, honeyweight, championship of the world.

You want my prediction?

Yeah.

I think a black guy is going to win.

Yeah, I think Michael speaks in the 10th round.

I definitely picked the guy with the short pants.

It speaks in tight, and it's on.

The world is waiting for this fight.

So you go to each other's dressing room to

check the wraps and the gloves and so forth.

I walk down, you know, I always try to get an edge where I can.

When my guy's getting ready.

But I go in and I think I'm going to rattle the kid.

Because he's under a lot of pressure.

At the time, Jacobs had passed.

Jim Jacobs, the closest guy to him, had died right on the verge of this happening.

He was in the mix with Robin Givens.

Don King is trying to pull him away from Caton.

So I'm in the dressing room with Tyson, and I'm looking to rattle this guy.

I walk in, and he's punching, standing there.

He and Rooney, Rooney's putting something on.

He's punching holes in the wall.

I'm like to myself.

Oh, no.

This guy's getting ready to fight my guy, my little guy.

And he's punching holes in the wall before he goes out to fight.

Oh, no.

That night, Mike Tyson knew that his whole life had built to this moment.

He had been green like a gladiator.

He was so true to that fight, because he felt that unless he prepared in that ring,

that nobody would accept him outside of the room.

That Tyson that we met that night.

No other boxers, professionally or as an amateur, has seen that Mike Tyson,

other than Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson was at the best he could be that night.

I watched Tyson jump right into his chest.

When Tyson fought spigs, Tyson's purse was somewhere in the neighborhood.

It was $22 million.

The fight, of course, only lasted barely a minute and a half, 91 seconds.

He divided that up and you see Mike Tyson earned almost

a quarter of a million dollars a second for that fight.

And Spinks didn't do too badly.

He earned about $150,000 a second because he made about $13 million to get a fight.

Tyson, not a brain.

As we expected, and Spinks, ready to mix it up with him.

Tyson along the ropes, doing damage.

Michael Spinks has to keep moving because every shot...

Oh, they got landed inside and Spinks went down.

It was the left uppercut.

I was surprised there was a body shot that put him to the canvas.

And that is the first time Michael Spinks has ever been down in a professional fight.

And he's down again and in serious trouble.

A right hand right on the chin.

He's not going to make it.

It's all over.

We did it!

When Mike Tyson isn't earning $15 million in 91 seconds and Robin Givens isn't

starring in television's head of the class, how they live is just an average

couple of newlyweds on their $4.5 million New Jersey estate.

He's very romantic.

He's very, you know, slippin' diamond under your pillow or, or, you know,

you say, bring me something back and you mean,

like, I mean, anything and come back with a Porsche.

I mean, things like that.

That's just Michael.

From the standpoint of Mike Tyson, she was like a fairy princess, actually.

And what happened after the marriage, Mike became

thoroughly and completely obsessed with her.

It's an obsession that I've never seen in any hand before of two women.

Very much in love.

He was so in love with him that just sometimes

you could see how this face was the pain there.

After the Sphinx fight, there was the stormy summer of 88.

The broken hand against Mitch Gray.

The affairs in Moscow at the hotels with ranting in the lobbies.

The crack-up of the car in Catskill.

Oh, because Robin is driving Mike crazy.

Michael is a manic depressive.

He is.

I mean, that's just a fact.

It's been torturing.

It's been pure hell.

It's been worse than anything I could possibly imagine.

I think for the first time I can understand abused women.

There's a time when he cannot control his temper.

And that's frightening to me or to my mother.

I don't know what Mike Tyson would be without my mother.

What we would be.

I mean, she's been the glue that's kept us together.

If I was Mike, I would just give her something.

I don't know.

I would give this fool.

Stuck my hands in your mouth a lot.

Gibbons called police to the Bernad'sville House this weekend, claiming the champ was

tearing up the house and threatening her and her mother.

If she went through right now, she'd leave right now.

I think everything I have is leave.

Love can be fleeting.

The soap opera marriage of boxing champ Mike Tyson

and actress Robin Gibbons is coming to an end.

She announced today through her lawyer that she's

seeking a divorce after eight months together.

Robin Gibbons was the jab that set Mike up for the Don King right hand.

I think by the fall of 1988, Mike's life is in the shambles and Don King moved in.

Don King is my man.

He's the best at what he does.

So suddenly there's a whole new cast of characters around the night.

And I think that Kevin Rooney didn't fit into the picture.

He got involved in the fighter's personal life.

Tyson didn't like that.

He probably also had Don King whispering in his ear about

maybe he'd be better off with new people around him.

And he fired Kevin Rooney.

My philosophy was like people basically f***ing.

Because really, they're always trying to f***ing.

Everyone?

No, you're running too.

You have these different occasions where you run to nice people.

But you've been to experience, you know, they

really don't have no emotion towards human feelings.

Hard to trust.

Absolutely.

My Tyson is the most famous athlete in the world.

Fame has even followed Tyson across the sea to Japan.

If Tyson's in Japan to defend his heavyweight

boxing title against James Buster Douglas.

But win or lose that match, Tyson will leave Tokyo millions of dollars richer.

May assemble a corner for that fight, which looks like it was picked up out of

the semi-finals of the inner-city golden gloves.

Tyson felt he had nothing to be concerned about with Douglas.

He obviously did not train.

He had a lot of problems as far as paying attention to business.

This is a kid who virtually lived in the gym in the Catskills.

Now, I don't want to train today.

You know, who's going to tell him?

You know, I started hearing him saying different things.

I'm the baddest man on this planet.

No one can be on this planet.

You never know what's going to happen.

It was great to have confidence in yourself, but don't get overconfident.

Please welcome the challenger, James Buster Douglas!

As your fighter, Mike Tyson was much more than a bully.

He was a fine fighter, but he had reached the stage in Tokyo.

All that was left was the bravado and the aura of a bully.

Mike says, all right, now I'm a man.

Now I'm on my own.

He's thinking the macho thing.

I can handle it.

And if I let my guard down, I go to somebody and say, hey, I need help.

I can't handle this.

I know how to fight.

I don't know how to handle all this other stuff that goes with it.

But then who does he go to to say that he can trust that person?

He doesn't know.

So he has to kind of wing it.

And he starts to kind of get out of sync because

it's not the guy there that says back on track.

Mike, stop.

That's no good.

You shouldn't do that.

That's the wrong thing to do.

You should be doing that.

You should be doing that.

That was going out of his life.

And this kid had to start to fend, start to try to trust people.

He didn't know deal with things.

He didn't ever have to deal with before.

And he's just the kid.

He shouldn't have to.

He's a boxer.

Introducing the undefeated undisputed heavyweight champion of the world,

the one and only hired Mike.

It wasn't Mike who was there.

It wasn't him.

He didn't look right.

He looked like he was in the days.

And he didn't fight when he got there.

It's over.

It's over.

Mike Tyson has been knocked out.

Hey Mike, go over here.

Mike, over here Mike.

Mike, you got the glasses.

Hey Mike, what happened in Tokyo?

Well, it's a bad situation at the time.

But I'll be okay.

Buster Douglas for the great fight.

And I'll be champion again within six months.

Buster Douglas is ill beating Mike Tyson.

You know, that's like a Volkswagen knocking off of Mercedes.

If you know what I mean in a room, you just don't think things like that.

I know, but you know, like I said before, you know, I abused myself, abused my body.

And when you reach a status that, you know,

young age, you know, I mean, they'd be in 2019.

Even though it wasn't a champion at 19, 19, you know, you know, I was proclaimed.

And I was wealthy.

And it was a little too much.

And I don't want them, you know, you're exclusive, you know.

And being 20, though, means channel, you're really too young.

Long before Mike was in any trouble, a guy named Tim Layton, who was not a

sports reporter, but a police beat reporter up at the Albany Times Union.

And he said to me, quote, Mike's biggest problem far and away is women.

That's the problem that's going to wind up nailing.

Someday, Joe Mahoney, another reporter, just said

absolutely women are Mike Pison's, quote, Achilles heel.

So, I mean, this is four years before the Desiree Washington thing.

I mean, you got 200 girls are trying to give your phone number a day.

Not 15, 20, 200.

When I work for him in the china club, the

biggest thing was actually keeping the girls away.

I was like white girls, Spanish girls, Chinese, you know, Asian.

They're all over them.

All over them.

When we had him in our offices for a conference with Don King, and we're on the

7th floor of a building that's 28 stories high, a state office building.

Everybody in this building knew he was here.

They came down from upstairs.

They came up from downstairs.

By the hundreds, they came off the street to

see Mike Tyson, who was sitting on the floor.

And I was standing there watching, as he sat on the floor, signing autographs.

Many times, running his hand, right up the leg of a woman, he never met in his life.

Some of them loved it and let him get away with it.

Some of them pulled back.

One of them even cracked them on the top of

the head, took the autograph and ripped it up.

The world has this impression of us as a guy who

goes around grabbing people and stuff like that.

And that's not true.

First of all, for me to grab you have to be within my reach.

So that says a lot.

I can't grab you from across the street.

I can't grab you from the distance.

You know, your arm is only so many inches long.

First time I met him was quite a distressing circumstance.

I was at Gleason's gym.

He was talking with a group of people, and I

came over so that I'm a reporter with L.D.I.A.

And he made some very odd sexual references in Spanish and started doing

this odd sort of salsa in front of me, like sticking his arms out and waving them.

And I knew those words were from the gutter.

You don't have to know Spanish and know what the meaning was.

And at that point, he reached out and he grabbed my breast.

And I was shocked.

I was stunned.

I didn't know what to do.

So I hit him.

Anytime you bring Mike Tyson up, people would talk about the past.

Or Robin Givens.

Or unbeaten women.

Or grabbing women.

Who is he to grab girls butts?

Girls want to butt scrap.

All right?

People like excitement.

Mike Tyson was excitement.

When I found out that he was staying at the hotel, I mean, before the thought I

called him up, and I said something like really stupid.

I called her.

I was like, Hi, Mike.

You know, I think you're great.

You're awesome.

You know, you're my fantasy.

You know, you have a perfect body.

You're great.

He sees a woman coming at him.

Maybe after he's been drinking.

He's been celebrating.

She's happy.

She grabs him and hugs him and says, Oh, you're great.

And you're my hero.

And I'm so happy to be near you.

She may just mean that.

Not all women who throw themselves at athletes in the interest

of developing a friendship want to be sexual with them.

If you meet him at a club and say, Hey, baby, you know, you look great.

I want to be with you.

I don't think Mike thinks you want to, you know,

have a picnic at Central Park and play Monopoly.

When a woman is handing you her underwear to get

to my boys, I kind of gather what she wants to do.

They don't want to talk about boxing.

That's for sure.

So we basically know what they wanted and how fast and how long they had.

You know, some of the stuff went on in airplanes in between cities.

You know, there's always a bathroom on an airplane.

You know, you had a few that we had to get rid of.

That I had to get rid of with money because it's very

hard at three o'clock in the morning in Los Angeles.

And the limousine, when a girl just finished having sex with him for two

hours, now she doesn't want to get out the car.

And she's telling me that, well, she's not going anywhere.

So now if I put my hands on her, it becomes a police matter.

There was a point, you know, when behind

closed doors, he, you know, he did get rough.

And it was clear that's why he liked.

I don't think he thought he was being rough.

I just thought that's the kind of sex he likes.

So, you know, I don't know.

It was a man thing where if I give it to you, you're going to like it.

I was looking at something, but I heard him close the door.

And I turned around, you know.

I heard this lock, you know.

I'm like, this doesn't sound good.

And as soon as I turned around, I mean, he just came at me.

It was horrible.

At one point, I was on my stomach, and he had my hand back like this.

And he had a hand over my mouth.

So I couldn't, I was trying to scream.

I was moving so much that I screamed.

And one of the women that works for him happened to be up on that floor,

and she came and she knocked, you know, wondering, you know, something was wrong.

What happens between two people in a bedroom becomes something that you never know.

There are some women who enjoy rough sex.

There are some women that like passion.

So there's this all kind of thing.

So it's not what you do, it's what you do it with.

Desiree was a really good cheerleader.

She was everyone's friend on the squad.

And a lot of the girls were afraid to speak up to our coach, because our coach

always seemed like she had to put us in place.

And we were never bringing up what we thought we should do or what we felt.

And Desiree was never afraid to go up to her and

approach her and tell her how we felt and how she felt.

And I think she was almost one of the only girls on the squad that would do that.

She would always go to Miss Bowden and just tell her how she felt.

And she wasn't afraid of the consequences either.

She always told us how happy she was to be in the pageants.

And that she wanted to win.

She was so eager to win.

And she had mentioned like once or twice that she

couldn't wait to go to the Miss Black America Pageant.

She was all excited about that.

Contestant eight, Desiree Washington from Haven Tree Road Island.

So what's it like growing up here?

Boring.

It's not much to do.

It's not a big town.

There's no big movie theaters.

There's no clubs or anything to go to.

You know, wherever we go, we never have to lock a door.

You know, when we leave our house, we never have to lock doors.

You know, everyone knows everyone.

If there's a stranger, you know, everyone knows it.

You know, if there's someone new at the high school or something, everyone will

know, you know, if they're your new student.

Yeah, there's this kind of like a big family.

I really enjoy seeing so many of my people here.

And I'm very proud of my heritage.

And I get a chance to see all of it.

And I bring my two grandchildren so they can enjoy it also.

I've been coming since the first day on it.

When the Black Expo, there's an ongoing agenda in the Napos, Indiana.

It's been supported by my, by Don King for many years.

Mike Tyson has never went there.

Mike Tyson went there to enjoy himself with Angie B.

And to hang out with the festivities that he never done before was relaxation.

He just came off with a tough fight.

Once it, once be able to do what he wants without being scrutinized, once they go

out and do all the normal things, normal, young, red blooded, people do.

If you bring in a hawk in a chicken yard,

well, you wonder why the chicken got eaten up.

If you bring Mike to a beauty contest, and all

these fine foxes just parade in front of Mike,

Mike's eyes begin to dance like a hungry man looking

at him, and win this beef brother or something.

Oh,

I'm in a dream day after day.

Beautiful women touching their way.

What can I say?

Yeah, definitely.

That's better.

And you want to see if this is as good as it looks.

Mike won him show me, you know.

For the first time in three and a half years, Mike is on his own.

And I found it at that time to be weird, and I also remember being scared that if

something happens and when I win him, we were,

you know, we were contracted to be with him.

We were not contracted to be away from him.

But he's left a trail of stories about his behavior in his wake.

It began with these words on WTLC Radio last week.

Tyson said, quote, the people here, the most beautiful women, you know,

I'm a woman's man.

God, I'm in trouble now.

MUSIC

Never ending rehearsals.

One girl said that they were lucky if they got a meal in the morning.

And of course they came there expecting to be shoveled from breakfast, lunch,

and dinner catered to fairs and meeting dignitaries.

And here they were just working all day and all night long.

But as soon as Mike Tyson walked in, suddenly

there were no more sore feet or aching backs.

The girls all sprang to life and there were these

ooze and ahs and squeals of, oh, Mike Tyson's here.

Later, the same day, sources at the beauty pageant photo shoot, tell us that Tyson

met with the women competing in the Miss Black America competition.

Sources say that Tyson and many of the contestants exchanged...

Desiree, I think, came into this, as I say, new to this whole experience.

She had won the Miss Rhode Island Black America pageant,

and I was a little wide-eyed from everything I've been told.

Hello, my name is Desiree.

My idea with me is athletic, and baseball is what he likes to play.

He'll argue his case with specific times and

dates, because I love a man who loves to debate.

He'll reach for the highest star, no matter how far.

And his love for me will be so great.

This is my idea, mate.

Thank you.

She was 18 years old, just graduated from high school, looking forward to going to

college, hoping to go to Brown University, quite bright.

And I had visited the Soviet Union this summer before as part of a leadership

scholarship that she'd won, the Hugh O 'Brien Scholarship.

So I guess the world was sort of just opening up to Desiree, and I also plan to

study politics and be the first woman and black

president of the United States of America.

CHEERING I

can tell you that there has been a rape incident report made, and it's my

understanding that Mr. Mike Tyson has been alleged to have committed the crime.

The official police report, although purposefully vague, clearly shows the

alleged rape victim claims that she was,

quote, forced to submit to vaginal intercourse.

Police are asking questions about Tyson's stay.

CHEERING CHEERING CHEERING All right.

I don't say it on like that, but... I'm innocent.

How are you doing, Charles?

All right.

See, I come through...

For a cure in Indianapolis, what do you want people to know here?

You know, basically I'm innocent.

And do not, um...

Literally watch what will happen.

I know what will happen, and we'll go prove that I'm innocent.

Tyson went down there.

He got jammed up a little bit.

This girl claims that he raped her, so Kate said, well, now, let me get,

you know, let me get a lawyer that I think that I can trust.

So he gets Vince Fuller.

Vince Fuller doesn't know anything about rape.

Anything.

Anything.

Anything.

Within the past hour, the jury has returned four indictments, one for rape,

two charges of criminal DVN conduct, and one charge of confinement.

Tyson says his fame makes him an easy target.

He maintains he's innocent.

I didn't hurt him.

He wanted to do anything.

And I love women.

You know, I mean, my mother's a woman.

I respect them as well.

Tyson's boxing promoter, Don King, stepped in several times during

questioning, raising the issue of what he calls

frivolous lawsuits filed against the boxer.

This woman had no personality to us.

She had no name, no identity.

We didn't know who she was.

Um, and my Tyson had everything to us.

I mean, I'm a long-time Tyson fan, and not even necessarily a boxing fan.

I like what I think Tyson represents to me in terms of where he came from.

I grew up in the South Bronx.

He grew up in Brownsville, so I definitely identify with his level, his ability to

get out of where he was, and basically just run it.

You know, I mean, Mike was the man.

Mike, what do you find a lot of the public say to you when you're out in the public,

right now here in Las Vegas, when you're around town, with all the talk,

all the stuff that has happened in the past recently?

Do you get a lot of support from people?

Do you get jeered by people?

If people would say, I love you.

And we all would, too.

And support you.

You know what I mean?

Greg Garrison was a special prosecutor, brought in, especially to handle this case.

And boy, Greg Garrison was brilliant.

He started from the moment the prospective jurors came in, and he'd say to him,

you know, Sam, you go into, let's say you go into a dark alley some night.

You're wearing a Rolex watch.

You shouldn't be there.

You certainly shouldn't be there with a Rolex watch.

Some guy jumps out at you.

He hits you over the head, takes your Rolex watch.

You're there on the sidewalk bleeding.

Are you willing to say that you haven't been a victim of a crime?

No.

Without fail, everyone says no.

Well, what about the fact that you were there and the middle of the night in a

place in a bad neighborhood, a place you knew

was a bad neighborhood wearing a Rolex watch?

Does that make it any less of a crime?

Is he any less guilty?

No, no.

You know, down the line, the heads were shaking.

Sometimes people he wasn't even talking to were shaking their heads saying,

no, absolutely not.

Greg Garrison was effectively saying, you're going to

hear about a girl who was in exactly the same position.

And yes, she may have exercised a bad judgment, but no means no.

No means no.

No means no.

No means no.

No means no.

No means no.

No means no.

No means no.

Shame on you, people.

He wanted things.

Shame on you for blaming the victim.

Oh, is she a victim?

He's a victim.

Look at that.

You're victimizing you just like she's a victim.

It's the truth.

It's the truth.

And when it comes to rape, a lot of people want the truth to come out a certain way.

In the William Kennedy Smith case, the Tyson case, the Hill Thomas

confrontation, lots of men and women were

rooting for the victim to be telling the truth.

It didn't matter what the facts were.

They wanted it to come out that way.

It would be good for feminism.

It would be good for rape victims.

And on the other side, there were some people who

were rooting for it to come out the other way.

I don't think you can root for the outcome of a case.

We have to know the facts.

Sometimes, well, I'll bet piece basically saying that black women had different...

black men and black women had different kind of sexual styles with each other.

So that, in that case, the harassment was cultural.

And for me to hill to be offended with the admit that she was acting out of culture.

And believe it or not, there are rape cases like that where defendants will come

in and say, well, you have to understand that in the

black community, we're very different about these things.

Vincent Fuller came in with the idea, I believe, that he was going to sell

conservative Indiana jurors on the fact that Mike Tyson was

just as you've always imagined the stereotypical black athlete.

Not only that, he was a fighter.

He's a brutal guy by nature, by design, by habit, by profession.

And he's accustomed to talking to people, particularly women in a certain way.

And it's very crude, it's very gruff.

You know how those black people talk was

essentially what Fuller was saying to the jury.

You know, they talk in terms of making love and sex all the time and rap music.

It just encourages that they all listen to it.

He even asked Desiree Washington on the stand whether she

listened to rap music and who her favorite artists were.

I mean, he really pounded the table on that

one, that she, in fact, knew all about it.

She knew what Tyson was up to, and she was game.

You could trust her with anything.

She was very honest to everyone.

She never lied about things.

She listened to you if you had problems, and she tried to help you.

She never badmuffed anyone.

She always minded her own business.

They wanted us to believe that she was a gold digger, that this 18-year-old girl

who said she wanted to be President of the United

States was really looking for a big payday.

She must have heard the story.

She couldn't be that naive that she hasn't heard about her.

Like, you said, probably her personality was like,

she's so confident that no one would rape me.

No one would have stopped.

Now, I know I'm a big woman.

I could hardly stop him if he wanted something.

You know, I would have to think of that.

There's no way of stopping him.

My saying no would not stop him.

I could not restrain him in any way.

I could not get away from him.

How could she be out one in the morning?

Who did she tell?

How did she get out?

Two o'clock in the morning.

As he was.

The phone rings at 1.45, 1.30 in the morning, and

it's Mike Tyson calling Desiree from his limousine.

And he pleads with her to come downstairs.

He just wants to talk to her.

She says, I really can't.

It's so late.

I'm already in bed.

We don't have any makeup on.

We've got rollers in our hair.

I'm in my pajamas.

And he says, well, you have to come down.

Can't I see you tomorrow?

Desiree asks him, well, I'm leaving town very early in the morning.

I just want to talk.

And maybe we can go to some parties together.

Desiree is reporting all of this back to her roommates.

And Desiree says, should I go?

Should I go?

Keisha and Pasha both say, sure, go for it.

You know, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You'll get to see some celebrities.

You'll hang out with Mike Tyson.

You know, go do it.

Desiree gets downstairs.

The limousine is waiting.

Well, now, you gonna sit with Mike in a limo?

You know, on his mic.

She wanted to get an autograph painted for her father.

Two eggs in the morning.

I don't know for sure if she went with, you know, Mike Tyson just to get the

picture for her father or just, you know...

I think anyone would have gone with him or, like, a celebrity, you know,

just to say that she had been with a celebrity.

And, I mean, she obviously must have felt special that he picked her, you know.

I'm from New York.

I'm from the inner city.

And I would not go to know me this half to your clock.

Especially if he's 25 years old.

So, and I know she's one, even though she's one year older than me, she's 18.

And she's considered her adult at that point, still.

Unless you're really naive or...

Something's wrong with you.

And then Tyson mumbles something she says about having to go back to the hotel.

She thinks he says something about a bodyguard.

So, the limousine simply goes across the street to the

Canterbury Hotel where Tyson is staying in Indianapolis.

It's like this.

A yes is if she coming to everyone at the 3 o'clock.

And it doesn't even matter what she got on.

She wants you.

You're conversatin' and you kissing and after you

got a limousine what she's fallin' you deaf for?

That's a yes.

Or no is.

She's not gonna go upstairs.

Well, Desiree is sitting at the edge of the bed.

Tyson is at the head of the bed.

And they've been talking about their various good deeds that they've done.

Suddenly, Tyson leans forward, whispers into her ears, you really turn me on.

In a seductive voice that takes Desiree aback, she says.

She jumps up because this really has startled her.

She's expecting to go to parties and suddenly, this guy's putting the moves on her.

She gets up and she says to him, a very stern voice, listen, I don't know

what you've got in mind, but I don't want to do anything like that.

You said we were going to parties to see celebrities.

That's what I want to do.

She said no, Mike, no.

I mean, how many times sisters have you said no and you mean yes all the time?

Wait, wait, wait, I'm talking to women now.

We're going to talk now.

See, the day of the BS is all over.

You're not dealing with a man that don't know you.

And the damn deceitful games that you play.

When I was growing up, a young woman could say no to a young man.

And he could believe that she had been brought up not to before marriage or not

to until she was serious about someone or that

her father would be limited or whatever it was.

There was convention behind her, no, and the weight of the community behind her, no.

That's all gone now, so that no in effect becomes, I don't want to with you tonight.

And a lot of men take that very badly.

Tyson weighs over 200 pounds.

Desiree is somewhere between, somewhere between 95 and 110 pounds.

She's a frail little thing.

And she is simply not up to fighting off the ex-heavyweight champion of the world.

She says it all happens very quickly.

He throws her down on the bed and is simultaneously stripping her clothes off,

begins to fondle her, put his hands all kinds of places, is kissing her very

violently, thrusting his tongue down her throat, and begins to attack her.

He grabs her by the ankles, lifts her up.

She's practically naked at this point and starts to perform oral sex.

And as I say, putting his fingers inside her, she's

screaming at this point in pain because it's very painful.

And Tyson continues, tells her don't fight me.

He's about to start intercourse and thrusts himself upon her on top of her.

She's still crying, still screaming, and he says don't fight me, mommy.

That's what she testifies to.

On the news line, they did a flash about Mike

being accused of raping a beauty contestant.

And he never got angry at it.

He was upset because he felt that the reason she was doing this was because he

wouldn't walk her to the limousine that night.

He said I should have got off my **** and I

should have walked downstairs to the limousine.

Maybe she would have never done this.

The rule of groupies is very clear.

You know, you get 15 to 20 minutes of not very good sex from an athlete.

No kiska night, no romance, and bragging rights.

Hey, I slept with the leading scorer in the NHL, the leading scorer in the NBA,

the great rock store or boxing champ.

Everybody knows those rules.

It's tragic.

I wish they didn't exist.

But Mike Tyson shouldn't be in jail or shouldn't be convicted

of rape because of the groupie phenomenon in this country.

I just came here to pray that the jury, after all they would enter in,

they would decide on the evidence of the case and not on race.

Because we

cannot destroy anybody to build up another body.

There's nothing heroic about Michael Tyson.

Michael Tyson does not represent the best tradition of our community.

In fact, as a Ray Washington, a Sunday school teacher, a big sister, a volunteer

for special athletic events for troubled children.

That's more of a heroin or role model calling Mike Tyson the hero and asking for

a lenient sentence after he's been convicted of rape.

And how many black women have been raped in this society?

I think that the most painful thing for me about the trial

is to really learn how expendable we are in our community.

I watched the church.

50 Baptist ministers get together in

Indianapolis and throw this vigil for Mike Tyson.

Not one prayer was said for Desiree Washington.

Not one.

So this tells me that if I'm put in my community against someone who was seen as

a quote unquote hero who has more money than I do, who has more status than I do,

that has more power than I do, that I'm expendable.

She told me that she had went out on a date with Mike Tyson.

And before she could say anything else, I was a Mike Tyson boxing fan.

The man could do no wrong in the ring, knock out some one round, two rounds.

He was great in the ring.

And I idolized him.

I idolized him.

My father was a boxer when he was young.

So we come from a family that follows boxing.

And I said, oh, great.

How did it go?

Did you get a picture?

And she says, Dad, if it wasn't all that great, I've got bad news for you.

He's a rotten man.

He's a dirty man.

He's no good.

And my heart fell down.

I thought, well, gee, maybe he used profanity all night long.

Maybe he didn't have any morals.

Maybe he slapped her.

That was the worst that I wanted to think.

And then she hit me right between the eyes.

Dad, he raped me.

Kids rolled up in my eyes.

My heart sank.

I went and I put my arms around here.

And he used to really give me a real tight hug.

And it was, I put my arms around here.

But her hands were like this against my chest.

And I felt it then.

I knew that there was something... just oddly wrong with her.

And hopefully that this... I want my little girl back.

I just lost her.

And I'm not getting her back.

I'm sorry.

She will try to come back to me.

But I don't think I'll ever have the little girl that I sent down to Indiana back.

Instead of preparing for another shot at the heavyweight crown, Mike Tyson was in

Indianapolis today preparing to go to prison.

He spent 80 minutes with probation officials

who interviewed him for a pre-sentencing report.

When a fighter of Tyson's stature goes down

for rape, the impact is felt by all of boxing.

One of the first to feel the impact, heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield.

He was guaranteed $30 million for his planned fight with Tyson.

That fight, perhaps the biggest of all time, has now been scrapped.

We're out of here.

See you guys in the back.

Mr. Fuller.

Mr. Fuller.

She works at Kmart.

She's going by her middle name.

She tried to... so that no one would see her real name on her name tag.

She's got her hair.

She's very quiet.

She used to go out to college parties or a

few parties here and go out with her friends.

That all has come to a halt.

Because everywhere she goes someone says, I know you.

He's convicted.

He's holding the can.

He comes up.

That's the wrong message.

Don't be proud.

Don't try to be macho.

I know he wanted to go behind closed doors, which he probably did.

Broke down crying his **** off.

You understand?

He had to.

You know what I mean?

Because if he hasn't yet, he will soon.

You know what I mean?

He?

Because it's that.

But he doesn't know who shoulders are they on.

He has none to go to.

He doesn't want to say anything about it.

I'm lost.

I don't know what to do.

I need help.

That's not his image.

His image is macho knockout.

Take your head off.

That's what gets me respect.

Destruction of a young man's dream.

That's all.

I don't worry about him too much.

I really think he'll be okay.

I think he knows that he controls his life.

And this is just an obstacle he has to get over.

And I'm sure he'll make the best of it.

You know, I'm sure even though I talk all these jails, there is a bottom.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in those jails.

You know, the jails, the inmates that love him.

I'm sure he's really nice of them.

I'm just, I'm just mic, you know what I mean?

I'm alone in Mason's Manboy Street.

I don't get caught up into a big, big star.

You know, that's the furthest thing from my mind.

I don't like living like that.

So maybe I don't think I want to be a big star no more.

That's what they call me.

I don't think I want that no more.

Because I don't like living like that.

I don't like living where everybody, which I've found out in here is true.

Everybody's a potential enemy.

Everybody's a potential to hurt you, to want them from you.

I don't like that kind of life.

Because I'm just a normal person.

Extremely to the extreme.