Original subtitles

It was a great, great story.

My passion at that time was robo.

He's by far one of the most compelling figures we've ever had.

I don't care about living a diet.

He was used as the vessel for other people's desires.

You'd think they were struggling for control of a country.

Very difficult to fight when you're in that kind of situation.

He was very, very insecure.

I'm not gonna change my way for nobody.

He could never control his emotions.

People don't realize what God is.

He goes on and they fight his mind.

He should have went down as the greatest heavyweight ever.

Just Mike.

I'm a peasant, man.

I'm here to entertain the people.

I'm no elite person.

Even though sometimes you may think I am because at one stage I have my little

jewelry and my little girlfriends and my big cars.

But I realize as life goes on, at one point

I thought life was about acquiring anything.

I was explaining this before.

But as I get older, life is totally about losing everything.

Because as life goes on, we lose everything.

We lose more than we acquire.

The puzzle of who is and what is Mike Tyson, you know,

to me, I could tell you what the strength is all about.

A lot faster than I could tell you what Mike Tyson is all about.

Mike Tyson was once the richest, best-known athlete in the world.

Yet he remains the hardest to understand.

There's a lot of mythology that surrounds Mike Tyson.

He was always a guy that physically and technically when he was going good was also.

But he was also a guy that was always very hollow.

There were several conflicts in Mike's life.

Most of them from outside, which he couldn't deal with well.

This guy was gold.

He was gold, gold.

And then his whole career started to slide down.

If you come from where he was when he was eight, eleven, fourteen, how could you

expect that person to have become so self-possessed as to control his life?

Mike Tyson grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn,

one of the toughest neighborhoods in New York.

After being sent up state to a reform school at age 13,

he was brought to Customato, a legendary boxing trainer.

Michael Street by the difficulty you had before,

they weren't customed to using your leg properly.

It was like it must have been at Sutter's Mill in California

when some guys saw this windy stuff in the stream.

And he said, you know, that could be gold.

Mike began to learn everything about boxing.

And everything at Customato might want to know.

This way.

Catch him here.

That's what you aim and idea.

There was no more ardent students of boxing

history and boxers that I knew of than Mike Tyson.

He went professional at just 18 and won his first 19

fights by knockout before Mike had a shot at the title.

Customato passed away.

But one year later, on November 22, 1986, Mike fulfilled his dream,

knocking out Trevor Burbig to become the youngest

heavyweight champion in the history of boxing.

He had the world on a string, had all the money he

needed, even though he still slept on Mike Cowich.

Beautiful women dating all the time.

And then there was Robin Gibbons.

Mike Tyson had seen Robin Gibbons on television.

He was very taken by her beauty.

Gibbons was everything Mike was not educated, sophisticated, a budding young actress.

But Robin was part of a package deal.

Anybody who was around knows, Tyson was married as

much to his mother-in-law as he was to his wife.

Before the honeymoon was over, Mike and Robin's marriage was on the ropes.

They wanted to control Michael.

And they only wanted to control Michael for as long as

they could set up a situation where this is a sick guy.

Why should my daughter be married to him?

He needs help.

And by the way, we'll take care of the money.

What's it been like this rollercoaster?

It's in torture.

It's been pure hell.

After just eight months, Mike's dream marriage had ended in humiliation.

Don King, the flamboyant and ever-present promoter, swooped in.

Don was a man on a mission.

Now that mother-in-law and the wife were out of

the picture, it was King's chance to move in.

It wasn't more than six or eight months.

Between the time when Mike was totally cocooned in that effective system,

and when he became an utterly free man capable of making every mistake known to

man and having every excuse continually made for it.

All right.

When Tyson and King arrived in Tokyo in January of 1990, to defend Tyson's title

against underdog Buster Douglas, Noah, including the challenger himself,

expected Tyson to have any trouble.

Mike Tyson worked out in Tokyo.

You had a thousand people from the media, a flash bulbs, TV cameras, ever.

Now Buster Douglas worked out 10 minutes later in the same spot.

Three reporters stayed for Buster Douglas' workout.

And I'll never forget, Douglas looked at the ground and he

said, man, I just hope I can make it through the first round.

As soon as the first round began, I saw that Mike had no confidence.

He walks into the ring and I say, he's got the same.

He is not the same.

It was like the Earth had been pulled from its axis in boxing.

And then suddenly, if you looked up Vinceable in the dictionary

and find Mike Tyson's picture, they're after this fight.

I mean, it is a traumatic experience.

Out of the ring, things weren't much better.

Without his wife, his title, or any of the people who helped build him up,

Mike Tyson slid into an abyss of harassment lawsuits, assault charges,

and eventually, a conviction for the rape of an 18-year-old beauty contestant.

We've seen so many times recently where it doesn't matter what a superstar does,

it's okay.

He can brag about it in his books, he can demonstrate it in the public eye,

and as long as it's him, it's all right.

After spending three years in prison, Mike was

no longer the feared heavyweight he once was.

Boxers who are well along the way and go to jail,

they're nothing when they come out generally.

Now Mike Tyson became fair game for everybody.

So how do you mask that?

Ask it by living bigger and better all the time.

Spend more money.

Buy more Bentley's.

Be on more magazine covers.

Become a bigger and bigger public icon with all of that.

Maybe you could mask the fact that you were gradually slipping as a fighter.

By the time he fought Lennox Lewis in his final title bout in 2002, those who knew

boxing knew Mike Tyson didn't have a chance.

I will never watch that fight because I want to

remember Mike Tyson as the great great fighter he was.

I just don't have it in me no more.

I could be there every day.

I don't believe I couldn't be the father time.

I don't have to deny it and discipline to do this stuff anymore.

I guess he didn't know that his life was no

longer his own, that it would be the IRS's agenda.

Everybody else who had some hold on his bank account at that time.

And he would have to go back into the ring against Danny Williams, Clifford ATN,

Kevin McBride until finally he could sit down and basically say to the world,

one last time, let me go.

I'm done.

But Mike is still trying to fight his way out of debt.

20 years after winning his first championship, he is performing boxing

exhibitions to keep himself from becoming yet another tragic boxing story.

I think I'm very useless to society.

I don't think I'm worthy of the people that come out and see me, but they do.

If I don't get out of these financial quagmites, it's a

possibility I may have to be punching back to somebody.

His fall is famous, but the reasons are as complex as Mike Tyson himself.

Nobody's gifted.

If you was gifted, wow, man.

You'd be somebody very special.

You'd be a born that way.

Some people said if born that way, then I'm born that way.

Mike Tyson overcame incredible odds just to step inside a boxing ring.

By the time he was 12, he was involved with street gangs.

Chances were, if he ever made it out of Brownsville,

Brooklyn, it would be in a prison ban or a horse.

After more than a dozen arrests, Mike was

sent up state to the try-on school for boys.

It was there that he heard about a special program run by

a counselor and former professional boxer, Bobby Stewart.

He said, I wanted to come and see you.

I'm Mr. Stewart.

I want to work with him.

I wouldn't even hear.

I said, all these kids want to be fighters.

I said, they don't have the nerve to work and something and stay in trouble.

He can't be in trouble and be a fighter.

But let's see our behavior.

Let's see how things happen.

Well, two weeks go by, and not a problem.

Mike turned himself around.

He went from a fourth to a seventh grade reading level in three months,

and he practiced boxing every chance he could.

And the third shift staff would tell me where he knows leaving notes the next day,

said, I'm going to do something with his kid.

I asked him a three o'clock in the morning, and he

said the kid is still practicing what you showed him.

In the dark, lights are out.

With that work ethic, he would have succeeded at whatever he took up.

Mike Tyson was still only 13 years old, but Stewart knew he

would have to find someone to take Mike to the next level.

He arranged to take him off the school grounds to meet the legendary boxing

trainer, Customato, at his gym above the police station in nearby Catskill, New York.

So then Bobby calls up and says, I got a guy you got to take a look at.

And that's Mike Tyson.

So they start sparring.

Bobby kicks the heck out, but Tyson takes it the whole way.

Tyson was obviously trying to impress us.

He understood what was at stake.

He wanted to ace his audition.

So we have to do like two rounds because I've seen enough.

Oh, no.

He says, Mr. Stewart says, we got to go three rounds.

If you start, you got to finish.

So we went the third round.

I walked in the corner and Cuss was taking my gloves off.

He said, what do you think?

Cuss says, this is the next seven-week champion in the world.

But despite Demato's prediction, the odds were still against Tyson.

Demato was a successful trainer, having produced two world champions.

But for a boy who had accomplished nothing at this

point in his life, it was a long shot at best.

Most of our kids didn't end up going to places like that.

They didn't end up going in the wrong direction.

Probably 80% of them.

This kid was making it.

He was going to make it all for me.

He was very raw.

He didn't know much.

He didn't know how to fight.

But you could see the physicality.

You could see the clay that could be worked with.

Only Customato had the vision of what Mike could do.

There wasn't one trainer, not one professional boxer who saw Mike in the

amateurs and said, wow, that guy's going to be the next great headway champion.

No one except Cuss.

Now I knew there were a lot of occasions when Customato was full of crap.

But when he would talk about something like this, he meant it.

The only question was, was he right?

And boy was he right.

When Mike was released from Tryon just after his 14th birthday, Demato arranged

to have Mike live with him and several other boxers

in a large house he shared with his companion.

It could be Ewald.

I brought him down to Cuss's house and the first time he saw the house he said,

what am I going to do here?

This is where you stay.

He said, what am I going to do?

Take the garbage out?

Probably.

I said, there's things you're going to have

chores to do just like you like kids to do.

He couldn't believe it.

He gave us a hug again and stuff.

Just remember, it's up to you, nobody else working.

I always had to be the tough guy.

Or try to be.

And that's where we started.

I was living there and he wouldn't say nothing.

Mike would just watch all the old fights, watch

them all and talk to Cuss or Cuss would talk to him.

Over the next four years, Mike was in the gym, training every day, absorbing

everything that Cuss and his crew would teach him.

He proved to be an apt pupil.

He had physical ability, but he had to be taught how to use it.

I was there with him every day, he depended on me to teach him technique.

He was killing the sparring partners and I couldn't believe the ferocity of this guy.

Mike comes out, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

He goes like this.

He puts up his hands.

So, oh, nope, nope.

He climbs right at him, reclined right on him, and walked right out that door.

Didn't even, didn't even look to get paid.

He walked right out.

After blasting through the amateur ranks, Mike turned pro at 18.

Cuss brought in his friends, Jim Jacobs and Bill Capen to be Mike's managers.

To better the odds of Mike's ascension, they lined

up a steady stream of carefully selected opponents.

His first pro fight against Hector Mercedes lasted less than one round.

It made for a spectacular highlight reel.

It was like a cartoon.

I mean, guys were flipping through the air and flying onto their backs.

And, you know, it was just amazing to watch.

By the time Customato died in 1985, Tyson was well on his way to the title.

He spent the next few years sweeping up all three boxing association titles,

fighting all comers until only one challenger remained.

Michael Spinks, 10 years older than Tyson, also undefeated.

Their fight would be the richest in boxing history.

Mike's Barra of Menace, suffused Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

There was a delay before the fight because Spinks

didn't want to come out of his dressing room.

Butch Lewis, Spinks' manager, went as you would go into in every championship fight,

the dressing room of your opponent to watch their hands being wrapped.

I had just finished taping his hands, and so

butch Lewis tried to make a thing about it.

Which so aggravated Mike, who was already on

edge, that he threw his hand out through a wall.

Spinks had heard that and that it was the sound of Mike punching the hole through

the wall, which had prompted Michael to be reticent about coming into the ring.

You see, he was like a little nervous.

And then what happened happened, he just destroyed it.

It comes by Spinks' head.

He leaves it right in.

There he goes.

Six and seven and eight.

He won't be able to do it.

It's all over.

The Michael Spinks' fight was devastated.

He had taken out an undefeated, what, 90 seconds?

Mike had beaten the odds and fulfilled Customado's prophecy.

He was an incredible 35 and 0.

The undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

But in boxing, that's a difficult place to stay.

Now Mike was surrounded by money and celebrity, formidable opponents for a

21-year-old kid who eight years earlier didn't even have a dream to his name.

There's a famous quoted boxing history.

I think it was Jack Dempsey that it's hard to get up at 5 a.m.

and go out and run through the snow when you're wearing silk underwear.

That's what happened to Mike Tyson.

January 1990, Mike Tyson and Don King, his new manager and

promoter, arrived in Tokyo, Japan to fight Buster Douglas.

Few considered Douglas a worthy opponent for Tyson.

I have to be in the best state that I have ever been to be

able to do all the things that it would take to defeat Mike.

One of the boxing writers, Ed Schaller from the AP, was going through Customs in

Japan and the Japanese official said how long would you be in Tokyo, sir,

and he said, I don't know, rounds or two.

I never look at any play fight.

He said, I'm confident no one can beat me.

I don't have to watch them fight.

They thought that Buster Douglas was just a clown, a tomato can.

But he was about 6'4".

He was athletic.

He could move.

He could jab.

And in the first minute of the fight, suddenly it was apparent.

Uh-oh, there's a style problem here.

My girlfriend said, such move for Douglas.

Wait a minute.

I don't move for Douglas.

I want Mike to win this fight.

Two thirds of the way through the eighth round.

He came off the ropes with a punch from Hell.

The referee began counting.

Two, three, four, Mike, great performance.

You know, you've got a tough time, but you won and you still have which have you.

Now Douglas is on the floor.

Nine.

The guy gets up at 9.99.

What makes him get up at 9.99?

Then we'll go back out.

And around later, knock out Mike Tyson.

Now, that's fate.

Three years and two months after overcoming incredible odds to win the

heavyweight title, the odds had already caught up with Mike Tyson.

His future was anyone's guess.

I love boxing, too.

And I like doing it for myself.

But, you know, I feel so bad, you know, like, if anything goes wrong, I look sloppy.

So many people that, you know, help me and everything, get me up here.

I just don't want to let them down.

Mike Tyson faced the streets of New York without a father to guide or protect him.

Mike has spent the rest of his life going from

mentor to mentor, trying to fulfill that role.

Before Mike met Cuss, it's really tough to say if there was anyone in Mike's life

that gave him that consideration, that care, that loving,

that great deal of effort to say, I want to make you better.

What made it so beautiful at that point was, Tyson was an incredible pupil.

So what Cuss taught him, which was legitimate, stayed with him.

Customato wrapped Mike in a cocoon of stability and structure and gave him the

strong paternal influence his life had lacked.

Inside the domato system, Tyson thrived.

As a teenage boy, he matriculates in a situation where everything is about

supporting him, focusing him on the one thing that Customato

and his surrogates know that Mike can do, which is to fight.

We would come to the gym every day.

Cuss only gave him a Christmas day.

If you're around Customato, if you don't learn anything, more than you're an idiot.

And Tyson learned.

You know, Cuss turned him around.

Mike, it's like catching a ball.

Guy throws a hot ball at you and you catch in your hands.

You go like this, see, you break the force of the blow, right?

Same with that.

The punches come with me.

It's moving with me.

It's just you're moving with it.

The Mike Tyson 1984 was a billion miles away

from the Mike Tyson who met Customato in 1980.

That was five years of Customato tuteling.

That person was a young, terrific young kid.

Mike was also developing into a terrific boxer.

Cuss kept him on a rigorous fighting schedule, facing opponents every few weeks.

Customato wasn't just a guy that showed you how to jab, how to slip a punch.

He knew that every fighter has fear and you have to control fear.

If you believed in what he preached, well, it certainly served Mike Tyson very well.

Keep him busy and that's the one thing that Cuss said.

If you don't keep him busy, he's going to get in trouble.

Cuss said that.

Mike was carefully and calculatingly taught by Cuss.

That Cuss would not be there forever.

You've got great people around you.

You'll trust them.

You'll find that they love you like I do and you'll be fine.

On November 4th, 1985, the man Mike looked to for guidance, passed on.

I was coming out of the hospital and Tessa was coming in.

And I thought, I thought, I thought that Mike, more than I was Cuss.

I started to cry right away.

As Cuss had planned, the team around Mike protected him and kept him focused on

fulfilling Cuss's prophecy that he would become heavyweight champion of the world.

One year later, against WBC champion Trevor Burbank, Mike finally got his chance.

He couldn't disappoint himself.

He couldn't disappoint Cuss.

He couldn't permit anybody else to improve on this journey he was on.

Yeah, he definitely knew he was going to win that fight.

When I was a fighter, I was a leftover.

And that's why I started out, you know, just, you know, I used to tell Mike,

throw the left hook, throw the left hook, throw the left hook, throw the left hook.

Burbank, Scott!

And when he hit Burbank with that shot and knocked him down three times, I was like,

he didn't see me coming and I was like, wow, I was smiling on everything.

Because that was, to me, that was awesome.

I mean, boom, really that fight was for Cuss, because he won the title.

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

And I'm sure he's up there and he's looking and he's

talking to all the great fighters and saying his boy did it.

And smiling.

Everybody came in, everybody was surrounding him, including Don King.

If you ever watch any fights, any heavyweight fights, that Don King is a promoter.

He always puts his face with the winner.

Don King, the renowned boxing promoter, was aware

that Cuss's death left a void in Mike's life.

After biting his time, he made his move.

Don King had the habit of talking to fighters, and I thought that he went to Tyson.

Tyson was waiting for someone like that.

If he went out and played in the street and everybody

knows there's a tank coming, a block and a half away.

All these people would come running and say, get up, get up, get out of the street.

You're going to get killed.

You're going to get killed.

Don King would say, do what you want to do.

It's okay.

You burn your own freedom.

Then King shoots down his side street, runs, stops the tank.

He never told Mike Tyson, no.

If King would slip on 10,000, 20,000, you know, and then he'll build.

Don had Mike, and that was the end of our relationship with Mike Tyson.

Oh, man, hey, there you are.

Oh, free at last, free at last.

They got on by his free at last.

King's words couldn't be more ironic.

With Tyson all to himself, King employed his own methods of fathering, a sharp

contrast to the regimented guidance cuss and his team had provided.

Somewhere he lost the focus on boxing.

Instead of running eight miles, he ran two.

Instead of sparring, you know, eight rounds, he might spar three.

His life now was at least equally about the things he was doing outside the gym as

opposed to the monastic lifestyle which had brought him to that point.

I don't know if it was having too much money, having too many Lamborghinis,

having too many women.

It was a case of having too much of too much, too much of everything.

The effect of the distractions in Mike's life became evident in Tokyo, where Tyson

would defend his title against Buster Douglas.

He had to take off like 20 pounds two weeks before the fight.

And I said to myself, I said, he would, he'd been out there doing the potty thing.

So he got his button.

The world had changed.

Mike Tyson was not, you know, sitting the top and throwing anymore.

His whole life was in disarray.

What Mike needed now was a strong father figure to help turn things around.

Unfortunately, what he had was Don King.

King was more like an uncle to him, an indulgent uncle with his favorite nephew.

Mike's life devolved into a sorted angry world of lawsuits, assault charges,

and eventually, in 1992, his conviction for the rape of a beauty pageant contestant.

Everything he does is not on the sports page anymore.

It's on the front page.

Hopes that three years of jail might encourage Mike to turn over a new leaf,

lasted as long as it took Mike to step out of jail and into Don King's limousine.

King made millions of Mike's comeback, making sure his

route to the title was the path of least resistance.

Now, let it be.

No, he didn't look like a Mike Tyson of old.

But some of his opponents were human bowling pins.

When I wrapped Mike Tyson in a cocoon of horror.

Despite the lackluster competition, Don King was making

Mike Tyson the richest boxer in history on paper.

Don believes in one color and it's cold green.

Whatever he can make off like he does.

Don King was trying to protect the best interests

of Don King in his relationship with Mike Tyson.

Disagreements over money finally caused Mike Tyson and Don King to part ways.

With Tyson suing King for $100 million, despite having earned more than 300

million over the course of his career, in 2003, Mike Tyson filed for bankruptcy.

And what goes back to King?

King controls the promotion, controls the money, controls the money.

He always short chains the fighter.

What Don had did to financially really was a horrible financial pitfall for Mike.

So he's in that hole and he's going to stay in that hole.

With the loss of DiMato and now King, Mike Tyson once again found himself as

fatherless and alone as he had been as a child.

I like being a little arrogant.

That's the way I am.

Always been that way.

A little bit spoiled.

It's not, you know, I don't bother nobody.

Nobody bothers me.

They won't have any, you know, say so about it.

Since his childhood, Mike Tyson has always wrestled with the rules of society,

even when protected in the custody of DiMato.

His story that he had problems in the school, and he did have a problem in the

school, because some teacher, you know, was like being too bossy to him or

whatever, and Mike, you know, turned over a table or something.

Mike was not exactly growing up in a suburb of New

Jersey, which was very nice and calm and peaceful.

Mike was a bad kid.

It was being said that he was basically pushing girls in the hallway, you know,

orphans to the bathroom and, you know, having his way or trying to have his way.

And there were things we were getting out of control.

And, um, apparently, Cuss was aware of a lot of it.

Mike Tyson could break eight rules and stay in the House in Catskill.

Joe Jones might break one or two rules and have to hit the highway.

I was very angry at Cuss for allowing this to happen, because I felt that they were,

they were being tolerable of this, and maybe

they didn't realize what it was going to lead to.

It was always a tenuous threat, the connection between the kid from

Brownsville, who was not civilized, and the civilized world in which he needed

the function to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish.

That's a cheat.

Ain't no way he's going to hit you that, right?

And remember, it's always good to throw the punch

where you could hit him, they can't hit you.

That's what the science of boxing is all about.

I think Cuss loved Tyson.

In a way, Cuss just wanted to preserve this

one shot to prove the whole world was wrong.

The whole world is wrong.

I haven't lost it.

Social graces, social development, any additional education to develop his

personality and make it like Tyson, a smoother guy.

It just never happened.

He was a child who had to be nurtured and taken

care of, or else, all hell was going to break loose.

As his entrance into adulthood coincided with his entrance into fame and celebrity,

Mike found himself ill-equipped to deal with the pressures of his new lifestyle,

most notably in his relationships with women.

He always felt that, you know, the women who were coming after them,

and he was right about 99.9 percent, were only coming

after him because now he's heavyweight champion.

Now he's got plenty of money.

He needed someone or something to serve as a mooring, as a touchstone in his life,

to make him feel whole.

The long came Robin Givens.

You know, it's seen this raving beauty on television.

She had a measure of fame.

Mike felt that she had a genuine love for him.

I thought if Mike gets married, it would make him more calm.

He'd have the family he always wanted.

Robin's a superstar, not like she needs the money.

But even his newlyweds, their relationship was anything but normal.

Robin came as a package deal, and her mother, Ruth Rover, moved in with them.

Suddenly, there was a new team calling the shots.

Givens is really the mother.

The mother, they just turned it, they just flipped his head.

She told Bill and Jim, she's Mrs. Mike Tyson, and she's taking over.

Things just started to unravel.

I remember they called me up, and they wanted me to

sort of train Tyson in the mansion he had in New Jersey.

And I said, no, no, I want him to stay here, and cross his gym.

He was, you know, cross his spirit as far as I was known as in this gym.

Tyson always did that.

But at this point in time, all of a sudden, he became a pre-medana.

I want to see him in Atlantic City.

We're talking about different things that Cuss did, how crazy he acted, and he said,

and then suddenly he turns to me, and he says, he used to be fun then.

Now, all it is is about the money, the money, the money used to be fun.

There's nobody in the world I can talk to, and then he leans

forward and puts his head on my chest, and he starts to cry.

But I don't mean sob.

He starts to cry.

Now, you got to remember, he's just gotten married.

He's got a mother-in-law who is omnipresent.

The women now are ready to make a big move.

The maneuvering intensified, and the consequences were explosive.

Mike began to show the rage that until now had been reserved for the boxing ring.

Everything hits the fan during the barber-walter show.

In an exclusive prime-time interview with Barbara Walters, Robyn

dropped a bomb that would send shockwaves across the country.

Michael is a manic surprise.

Yes, I mean, that's just a fact.

Why do you think this is that nobody saw it before?

The customer didn't see it.

I can't imagine that anyone could live with Mike

Tyson and not recognize that there was a problem.

So why was he treated?

I think he did exceptionally well in the ring, and the way

that they chose to handle it was to keep him in the ring.

Why embarrass Mike in front of the entire world, the easiest thing in the world,

who realizes that if Mike himself says on TV he's ill mentally, this sets the stage

for Robyn to do whatever she wants to do to end the marriage and go on her own way.

I guess that illness is daring, it has to be taken care of.

It all culminated with this big blow-up at the mansion in Mernensville, where Mike

Tyson supposedly took the instruments that

go with the fireplace and threw them around.

Suffice to say that the next moves were made by the divorce lawyers.

After Robyn Gibbons left him, Tyson's relationships

with women started down a dangerous course.

He goes to judge a beauty contest in an Indian average.

Mike was invited to the 1991 Indiana Black Expo,

joining Jesse Jackson and other honored guests.

At a cultural celebration of African-American achievement, the

centerpiece of the event was the annual Miss Black America pageant.

By the time he gets Indianapolis, Mike is on

his own, there's nobody there to help him.

But Mike does what Mike does, and Mike is attracted by women.

And they, in turn, ex-everyweight champion at this time are attracted by him.

Mike stayed only two days, but in his wake, he left a trail

of accusations that would change his life for years to come.

Two contestants would file harassment lawsuits, one for 100 million dollars.

The organizer of the event sued him for 21 million dollars, claiming he had groped 10

different contestants, and one contestant, 18-year-old Desiree Washington,

and accused Mike Tyson of rape.

I love women.

I mean, I'm always a woman.

I respect them as well.

And of course, I mean, every time I first want to get involved

in one certain way like this, that happens, I'm confused.

I'm just, I'm just lost on the whole issue to happen today.

Fair play is really all we want to level playing for you.

The trial began a public debate on Mike Tyson, especially when Mike's defense

lawyers invoked his troubles with women as his defense, portraying him as an

aggressive womanizer, so notorious, that Washington

had to have known what she was getting into.

The legal decision to put Mike on the stand was absolutely crazy to do,

to say that he does this to all the women he sees.

It's something that never should have transpired.

I don't know what happened in that hotel room in Indianapolis, only Mike Tyson,

and the woman that was involved, they're the only two people

on the planet to know what really happened that night.

The Indiana jury, however, was convinced that Tyson was guilty of rape.

He was sentenced to six years in an Indiana correctional facility.

For the first time, Mike was held accountable for his actions.

Up to this point, nobody here to ever hold them accountable.

Tyson earned an early release for good behavior, but he

returned to a world where he was no longer welcomed as a hero.

Now Mike would be walking on the street after these instances, and instead of

hearing people say, wow, there goes Mike Tyson.

He's so fantastic, he says, now he hears negative

news in any situation where Mike was under pressure.

There was no stability anymore.

There was no deep inner belief that he had to control himself.

Finally, Mike began acting out in the one world where

he had always respected the rules, the sport of boxing.

And you think I give a damn about you and then y'all?

I don't care about living or dying, I'm not no... I'm a dysfunctional motherf***er.

That's the right way of a f***er.

I'm killing you.

And he's kind of big.

He makes me nervous without his gloves in his shorts on.

So if you ever try to intimidate me again, I'm

gonna implant a bullet in his motherf***ing skull.

And I'm just tired of him.

I don't really wanna fight him.

I'm just tired of all this f***ing feeling.

Because I'm in pain.

I want them to see pain.

I want that kid to see pain.

Letting glue it.

I want his kids to, oh, daddy.

Are you okay, daddy?

Yeah, I don't care about them because they don't care about me and my kids.

Mike, by now, has begun not to like boxing if not hated.

And a fight between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield is actually made.

I was in the ring the night Evander Holyfield's year was at my feet.

Tyson was winning a fight, in my opinion.

And then Holyfield was going after him and head-butting him.

So Tyson got a cut.

So now they come together again and Holyfield dips

down and comes up with his head aiming for the eye.

So Tyson goes, oh yeah, he bites the head.

And Mill's going, he says, you do that again.

And I'm gonna just bonfire him.

Mike couldn't take the pressure of being under that spotlight.

Knowing that everybody hates him.

That he's disliked.

Coming from where he did of being a hero in a champion.

So they come together again and Tyson, now

the first time he ripped Holyfield's ear off.

This time, he just nibbles on the ear.

Holyfield turns around and goes to the right.

He just, he just bent me again.

He doesn't even want to be in that situation.

He doesn't want to even be in the ring.

He wants to wait out.

I really think of him.

If Mill's laying it, not stop the fight after the second bite.

I think Tyson would have bitten him.

Mike was fined three million dollars and suspended from boxing.

Officially polluting the last place, he had held in high esteem.

People treat me well.

I treat them well.

But I'm not gonna, you know, change my way for nobody.

If I am, I'm gonna stay that way.

I don't care who they are.

Mike Tyson's life offers plenty of explanations for his downfall.

Odds so great, they were bound to catch up with him.

The death or desertion of anyone he trusted to give him guidance in his life.

An inability to function within the rules of society.

But perhaps what brought Mike Tyson down was a conflict deep within himself.

One that he could never overcome.

Then Browns fell, he used to hide in between vacant walls.

And in some ways, he was always that kid.

He was very, very insecure.

So insecure, he would not look in the face and look in the eye and talk to him.

He started becoming very first with him, very aware of some of his shadows.

You know, some of the, some of the wolves that bark at everybody's door.

Now remember, anytime you feel tension, motion, remember?

Motion you lose tension.

You feel tension is shadow box.

People don't realize what goes on in a young fighter's mind.

A lot of doubt, a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty.

We went to Denver, Colorado at the National Junior Olympic Championships,

and Tyson started putting things in perspective a little bit at that moment.

You know, I have something that's good, and I have to win this fight.

If I don't win it, I won't have it anymore.

And all of a sudden, he just started crying.

Just relax.

Just relax.

Just relax.

Just relax.

Just relax.

Just relax.

If you have the roots that he had, a boy literally wept prior to going in and

knocking out some poor amateur opponent in 20

seconds, because he was frightened of the experience.

How could you expect that person to have become

so self-possessed as to control his life?

He never really believed in himself the way that you would think that it should be

for a guy with that much ability and with that much accomplishment.

He wanted to show the world that nothing

lasts, that you will eventually be abandoned.

No matter how much money you make, no matter how much fame you achieve,

no matter how great you're seen to be, ultimately you will be destroyed.

I think that Mike believed that, knew that from the beginning, and

unconsciously constructed it throughout his whole career.

The anticipated end came in 2002, 16 years after Mike Tyson won his first world title.

Now, deep in debt, Mike Tyson's final championship fight was less a shot at the

title than an opportunity to get out of boxing.

Mike Tyson was going to fight Lennox Lewis, and in

this major presentation they bring out Mike Tyson.

And now... Tyson gets off his and marches over to Lewis, and it's out of control.

It made the earbiting music almost look civilized.

I'm saying to myself, this is beyond a freak show.

I'm looking at the dark side of the moon.

I don't know what I'm saying here.

That was Mike Tyson, just devolving and devolving.

Doesn't matter what I say, you guys, it doesn't affect you

guys, because you guys don't care about nothing but money.

So every now and then I kick your f***ing stomp on you and put some kind of pain in

the flick, some kind of pain on you, because you deserve

to feel the pain, some of what of the pain that I feel.

What I witnessed during that period was the last public persona of a tortured show.

Even then, at the end of his career, make no mistake about it, that was

whatever happened afterwards is a footnote.

Mike Tyson, interestingly enough, was the attraction for that fight, not Lennox.

The night of the Lewis fight, June 8, 2002, Lennox routinely destroyed Mike as I

had expected and told everybody would be the case.

He wanted to get knocked out.

He didn't want to run out of the ring because he's a coward.

He wanted to get knocked out, and he kept coming forward.

He threw no punches.

That was the cynical fight that all these great

champions, or most of them, wind up having.

Tyson knew it was going to be a beatdown, and told it Lennox Lewis.

That's right.

You're fighting for the heavyweight champion, so I'm going to go out again.

Do you understand?

I'm not going to sit out there and just let you do this.

Do you understand?

You have to throw your punches.

Do you understand?

For God's sake, you have two hands.

Do you understand?

Just let your hands go.

Let your hands go.

No, let your hands go.

The last we saw of Mike Tyson in his real career was lying there almost in a

quasi-crucifixion scene and bloodied and out.

After the fight, I stepped into the dressing room, and here was Mike sitting

alone on a chair in the center of the room with

a baby on his lap, and then he looked up at me.

And he said, I missed you.

Now, he wasn't saying that he missed me personally.

He was saying, I think that he missed being the Mike Tyson he had been,

that he missed being the Mike Tyson who was devoted to

his craft, that most of all he missed not being a fraud.

But the Lewis fight didn't free him.

Mired in bankruptcy, Mike returns to the ring today, not for cuss, not for a title,

but to pay the bills.

It's hard for me to fight, you know.

Me starting out, you have to understand, I'm from Brownsville, Brooklyn.

I had nothing.

You have to have wealthy children.

I'm broke, but my children are wealthy.

They have a great life.

It's just, it's very difficult to fight when you're in that kind of situation.

And so the career of one of our greatest sports heroes will end, not with a bang,

but with a whimper.

People, their memories are short, what they have to remember.

He was 35 and 0 with 31 knockouts, 19 in the first round.

Now that's awesome.

Mike Tyson just should have went down as the greatest heavyweight ever.

Never in history has there been an athlete for whom so many excuses have been made to

explain away shortcomings, to explain away defeat, as is the case for Mike.

But at the end of the day, Mike's career is a

graphic reflection of who he was and what he wanted.

He wanted to self-destruct.