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BlackAthlete Sports Network-www.blackathlete.net BASN BLACKBOX
MIKE TYSON
Are you in Cannes for this year's film festival Mike Tyson sure is he's staring in his own film again Credit must be given Mike Tyson knows how to survive. Correction Mike Tyson knows how to PROSPER no matter what. He was World Heavyweight Champ long ago. Ripped through hundreds of millions and declared bankruptcy with all kinds of bill collectors still pursuing him. He's been involved in any number of brawls outside the ring. Tyson's been repeatedly married and had far more "girl friends." He has kids here there and everywhere. He's been a drug addict. Served time for rape. Attempted a disastrous comeback including eating an opponent's ear. He's been sued and sued again almost as much as Don King and yes of course those two have sued each other. You'd think Mike Tyson would be a complete mess as he reaches 40 think again this is Iron Mike If you remember our last Mike Tyson Box turns out he became Best Friend to a hedge fund Zillionaire in fact Best Man at the rich guy's wedding. In fact he met his now wife at a glitzy Mike Tyson Party while Mike was deep in the depths of Bankruptcy. NO good reason not to party hardy is it. Not if you are Mike. While it has never been stated that the ZIllionaire has made all Mike's financial woes go away and then some. Indeed a lot of some $$$$$. Mike is now on to yet another Rebirth as Film STAR. One of those directors maybe not known to the general public but BIG inside the industry James Toback took a shine to Tyson a very big SHINE doing one better than the Zillionaire, Toback has taken Tyson's troubled turbulent life and turned it into an Epic of sorts and Mike into Mythic Hero of sorts. His life in this Documentary becomes a gateway into our times and his troubles a reflection of a complex larger than life Everyman. What's the title of the film what do you think it is TYSON of course Even better the Times Magazine reviewer writes this might be the best Sports documentary maybe ever so why don't we reprint the Time review for you ..... " The trick of any one-man documentary is the personality of the subject: a powerful voice that brings perspective to an unusual life story. Tyson has all that. A poor Brooklyn kid who was led early by childhood friends ("Very few of them are functioning adults right now"), he was a 12-year-old in a detention home when trainer-manager Cus d'Amato became his surrogate father, raising Mike with the d'Amato family, giving the boy focus and purpose as a boxer ("He broke me down and rebuilt me"). Tyson was an apt pupil: he obsessively studied old films of boxing legends, learned the spiritual side of the warrior mentality and, he says, "restrained myself from having sex for about five years." He tore through the amateur ranks, knocking out one opponent in a record eight seconds, and was heavyweight champ before he was 21." " Toback, who for 30 years has directed movies about extreme characters seeking Nirvana through self-destruction, has always been fascinated by athlete-studs; his memoir of football icon Jim Brown still curdles the memory. So Tyson can't help but hit Toback's sweet spot: the fighter is smart, reflective and scary, even as he reminisces about his time in the ring. There he was a terror, an implacable mix of speed and strength. "Once in the ring," he says, "I'm God." Or a more satanic force, giving the evil eye to his adversary as he enters the ring, then devastating him with "One, two, three punches. I'm thrown in� punches in bunches." A long line of opponents surrendered to his lasered rage; they toppled like Wooden-Soldier Rockettes in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Pageant. More than Joe Lewis or Marciano or Ali, Tyson seemed set for an uninterrupted 15-year reign." " But how to stay hungry when you're dining on caviar, sycophancy and willing women? Everyone wanted to spend time with the champ. ("I met the President of Istanbul.") Raised by a prostitute mother, deprived of his father figure when d'Amato died before Tyson won the title, he dreamed of creating his own family, but his marriage to actress Robin Givens — and her relating of his supposed brutalities in a joint interview with Barbara Walters — was his first sensational humiliation. The teenage celebate needed to dominate women by the dozens, the hundreds, though he says that what he really wanted in a woman was "loyalty, companionship, friendship, ferociousness." He sees himself as essentially selfless in bed: "I don't like being loved; I like loving. I have too much love to give; I don't want to accept it." That sounds more like the need to control, dominate, set the terms for sexual combat." " He's not so chivalrous toward the young woman whose testimony in a rape trial sent him to jail for three years: "that wretched swine of a woman, Desiree Washington." Nor does he have fond memories of manager Don King, whom he accused of stealing millions from him, and he beat up and stomped down at the Beverly Hills Hotel: "a wretched, slimy, reptilian motherf----r." Nor of the entourage a kid from the streets attracts when he becomes a rich dude with no sense of fiscal moderation: "They suck my blood and suck my blood, then sell it back to me and suck it again." " After prison he returned to the ring with facial tattoos of a Maori warrior, and images of Mao and Che on his body. But those were only emblems of the focused ferocity that used to be inside him, of the burning concentration that made him a champ. Tyson lost his last chance at a championship by notoriously snacking on Evander Holyfield's ear. A couple years later, he ended his boxing career in the most humiliating way: not on his feet, or on his back, but on a stool, refusing to come out and fight for the seventh round against a nobody named Kevin McBride." " These days, professing paternal joy in his six kids, Tyson says, "I have to live on the top of the world or the bottom of the ocean, but I don't know how to live in the middle of life." Now twice the age he was when he became champ, Tyson sings the sad, familiar refrain: "old too soon, smart too late." Not too late, though, to offer a hard-won perspective on a hard-fought life, in a movie that's a contender for best sports documentary, heavyweight class. "
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