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I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. The motto continues to be one of the foremost fight managers in the business. His stable of past pugilists includes former champions Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres. And now, his seasoned eye for talent has spotted a fresh up-and-coming young heavyweight named Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson has an exceptionally good record.
He had maybe a dozen fights in the Junior Olympic championship, and he knocked out every fighter he fought to win the national championship twice. Tyson not only has a very hard, terrific punch in either hand, but he has developed elusive qualities and has the most important qualities, the will to win. He has the desire to win.
He wants to be the best. Custom model weighing in, the legendary custom model weighing in on Mike Tyson, the teenager en route to becoming a heavyweight champion, which I don't think he was able to see because he passed away. Basically raised Mike Tyson in a group home up in Catskills, New York. Mark Kriegel knows all that and more, boxing analyst, essayist for ESPN. He's got a brand new book out called The Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson. What are your thoughts, Mark?
Great to see you, by the way. Daily News, New York Post. He writes for us. Mark, your thoughts. You remember that?
Yes, of course. Your thoughts hearing custom auto speak. It began with CUS, the push to make Mike Tyson. I mean, it was the greatest marketing push certainly in the history of combat sports, and it began with this fable of CUS and the kid. CUS had been responsible for getting Floyd Patterson, who was basically not much bigger than a middleweight, to be the youngest ever heavyweight champion.
That in itself was improbable. And then CUS found himself essentially in a state of, it's almost a self exile for many years. What CUS had done while he was developing Patterson was he became a darling of all the writers. Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, guys are really substantial presences. Pete Hamill, guy was my rabbi. And by the time he found Tyson, there was already a kind of ready made script and it was pretty much irresistible CUS and the kid.
It's almost like CUS had been absent for all these years. He was coming back down off the mountain and he had this kid who was going to be the youngest and the greatest and the best. In some senses he was, but also that fable kind of missed the nuance.
Right. He was a man child, right? I mean, do you think that he was using performance enhancing drugs or was he legitimately that big coming out of juvenile hall, right? He really didn't have that stuff at like Spofford or Tryon, the places where he was in detention. I mean, they had like street drugs and Mike was essentially raised on the street. All sorts of dysfunction came to bear on him. It wasn't particularly unique to fighters, but I think in Mike's case it was more intense. So you had a guy in Bobby Stewart, probably the only one in the whole story who's entirely selfless, who sees Mike in Tryon upstate.
There's an infamous New York juvenile detention center, Spofford, the Bronx since closed. They sent him upstate and he sees this kid wants to fight. So he starts working with him and then he brings him to tomato. Because he knows he used to fight for tomato. He used to fight for tomato and tomato had been, tomato had an almost theological sense about fear. I mean, it was a beautiful construct that he had about overcoming bullies and dealing with your fear.
The irony is that Bobby Stewart brings him in and day one CUS says, oh my, he's heavyweight champ. And what I think, Tyson pushed back on this when we spoke, we had two sort of phone sessions just to sort of establish rules of engagement. But I said, you know, Mike, I'm not sure CUS did you every favor in the world. He wasn't asking you to, he wasn't saying we're going to turn you pro or we're going to put you in the golden glove to see how you do kid and get you a GED. From the beginning it was, you're going to be the greatest and the best. And I think that what he was asking Tyson was make me immortal, make me custom motto immortal. And this is, you need a huge ego to be a fighter, whether it's UFC or boxing. What makes you think that custom motto felt that way?
Oh, because I think that he wanted very much to leave his mark on the game and he had been in exile and I think it bothered him deeply. And there were two kinds of fighters. There are fighters, you don't know their stories and there are fighters who have stories. Mike's story was spectacular.
It just, you know, it wasn't the full truth. So, right. So Bobby Stewart brings me to custom motto, custom motto develops him. He almost makes the Olympic team. He famously has a meltdown with Teddy Atlas before because he's so nervous. What if I lose?
Is everyone going to leave me? Teddy Atlas was the, Teddy was the guy who CUS entrusted with much of the training. Right. Who do you think is one of the great personalities in sports, right? I think that Teddy was a great trainer.
He was certainly a very formative influence on me. He informed a lot of my thinking on Tyson when I was a newspaper columnist, which was uniformly negative. Because they had a huge falling out. They had a huge falling out. Tyson, I mean, Teddy's problem with CUS was CUS, I think it was CUS's ambition. The one word that Tyson never heard was no. So he'd always get bailed out if he got in trouble. He made apparently a pass at Teddy's wife's sister and Teddy got really upset about it, pulled a gun on him.
And that was the end of Teddy in camp. Then he was given over to, Tyson was Kevin Rooney, which is why for most of his career, the early part of his career, he's on with Kevin Rooney. So here he is, this 19 year old gets a shot at the championship. He fights Trevor Burbick, who's a big guy who beat Mike Tyson famously in Barbados.
And I think Ali's fast, excuse me, beat Muhammad Ali in his last fight in Barbados, cut 51. 20 years old, Mike Tyson, on his way to becoming one of the youngest heavyweight champions of all time, bangs the body, wow, we got up against Tyson, catches him with a light left hook, and he goes down. He goes down. He should be able to get up from this. His legs may be shut. As Trevor Burbick falls back in the rope, I don't know if he's gonna be able to continue.
He's got the heart, but his body won't let him do what his mind wants to. And he's counted out and will be scored as a knockout. Mills Lane counting him out to ten. It's all over. We've got a brand new heavyweight champion in the world.
What does that mean to him? It wasn't just that Burbick went down. He fell in every corner of the ring.
He fell like three or four times. And one of the things it crystallizes for America is how devastating a puncher Tyson is. This was not a normal knockdown. It was not a normal knockout. Again, it crystallizes the notion of just how destructive a puncher he was.
What changes after that? Fame. Tyson was famous in a kind of American way that killed Elvis or Marilyn Monroe or conceivably Tupac. It's a form of insanity. And again, he never heard the word no.
In a peculiar way, I'm ashamed to say this. Throughout the 90s, I started writing a column. My first Tyson assignment was covering cops in court.
I was running around for the news and later for the Post. He was like, run up to Harlem. He just got into a fight with Mitch Green at Dapper Dan's. Was Dapper Dan's like a club?
No, it's a clothing store. Get your ass up. Come on, hurry up. And what I was seeing without knowing it was a young guy falling apart. You know, the fights with Robin Givens, throwing stuff around the mansion in Bernardville. And I was really caught up in the rush of it.
I mean, it's my first run. It's a sensational story. And then I was very friendly with Teddy at the time. And it informed a lot of my thinking on Tyson. And Tyson was not behaving particularly well. So it was easy for me to make him the villain in my column. That too lacked some nuance.
It wasn't necessarily wrong. But it wasn't until years later, 2012, I'm writing a column for Fox. And I go to see his one man show in preview.
And I find myself in the unlikely position of holding back tears. And he's not at all polished. You know, it was before Spike Lee got a hold of it and put it on Broadway. It was still raw. And I meet him after the show. And he's like recently sober.
I think he was like a vegan that month or something like that. And he asked me, I tell him about Dapper Dan's and the rest of it, running around chasing him. And he says, how did that make you feel? Which is not the question I was expecting. And he goes, how did it make you feel?
Thought about it. It was a rush. It was like a drug.
That kind of story, the heat, the adrenaline that story generates. And he just kind of nods. And he wasn't disapproving, even though I was picking apart pieces of his life, as a lot of us were. And to me, that was the first time he became actually human, not an abstraction, even though, you know, I'd had interactions with him at the fights during his trial.
But it wasn't until that moment that he became real to me, if you will. Here is Mike Tyson with his, probably he was at a zenith, I would argue, against Michael Spinks, cut 52. And we're just about ready to go. The opening bell, let's see what happens. Tyson attacks immediately, cuts off the ring, throws a wild right hand. It's Tyson all the way here in round number one. Body shot, down goes Mike Spinks for the first time.
The count is up to four and five and six and seven and eight. That was a body shot that took him down. Here comes Mike Spinks in.
He leads to the right hand. There he goes. I don't think he'll get up from this.
Mike Spinks is laying flat on his back. The count is up to five and six and seven and eight. He won't be able to do it.
It's all over. So people should understand, Michael Spinks didn't lose anything in the Olympics, didn't lose anything as a light heavyweight, beat Larry Holmes twice, disputed the second time. So when he gets in the ring, he's undefeated and unbeatable, and I don't think he's ever been knocked down. Never been knocked down. And then Tyson knocks him down in 90 seconds.
Ninety one seconds. That thing is over. And that's the highlight. That's the high point of Tyson's professional career. It's hard to imagine how how keenly anticipated that fight was.
It was essentially promoted by Trump. He wanted to make a big show of it and he did a did a pretty good job of that. But ninety one seconds and people talk about Spinks, who had been through every kind of test, not just in the ring, but in life, appearing frightened on the on his way into the ring. And he tried. He actually tried to press the fight because his his manager at the time told him, you've got to run across there and you've got to get your respect. That didn't do that.
Didn't really do much good. But the interesting thing about Tyson for all the stuff that of D'Amato's theory of fear and conquering bullies was that Mike did just the opposite. He projected fear onto the opponent. He made the opponent scared. And some of these guys are pretty seasoned guys like Bruce Selden got hit at the top of the head.
Bruce Selden, I think he got hit like in the hair and he just fainted or something. Right. And these are different if you or I are in the ring. But I mean, these are trained fighters.
That's all they do. And if they're scared to death of a guy that many people, they're bigger than. But it also explains to me why he remains this type of attraction. I think this thing with Jake Paul did like one hundred and eight million views or live. Totally ripped off by that. But as a business proposition, Jake Paul could only have done that dance and Netflix could only have had it with Tyson. But if you look at the cumulative effect of all those early knockdowns and how devastating they were, it becomes part of his brand.
Then you stick a microphone and that voice doesn't work with those knockouts. What's going on? You stop. So Mark, Mark's book is out. We have a few more minutes on the other side of the break. It's called The Baddest Man. The making of Mike Tyson.
Mark Kriegel in studio. Don't move. Redfin makes it fun to search all the homes for sale and apartments for rent in your neighborhood. You can filter for price, for bed, for bath, square footage and so much more. So if you find a place you love, Redfin makes it easy to go see it in person.
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Download the Redfin app to get started. Grandpa's here! Hank's always helping out. Grandpa style. Now he's treating his prostate cancer with help from Xtandi and Zolutamide. Xtandi 40mg tablets treats men with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and responds to a medical or surgical treatment to lower testosterone. Xtandi may cause serious side effects, seizure, a brain condition called press, allergic reactions, heart disease that can lead to death, falls and bone fractures, swallowing problems or choking that can lead to death. Stop Xtandi and get medical help at once if your face, tongue, lip or throat start swelling. Tell your doctor at once if you faint, have a seizure, quickly worsening headache, decreased alertness, confusion, vision problems, chest pain or discomfort or shortness of breath. Xtandi can cause harm to an unborn baby or miscarriage. Use birth control during and three months after Xtandi. Common side effects include muscle and joint pain, feeling unusually tired, hot flashes, constipation, less appetite, diarrhea, high blood pressure, bleeding, falls, fractures and headache.
Talk to your doctor and visit Xtandi.com. What is it about Mike Tyson that brings people to him? Why are they drawn to Mike Tyson?
Well, there's a certain charismatic way that Mike has that I haven't seen in very many people. I mean, it's beyond even as a fighter. He's an incredible fighter. He's a great machine as a fighter, really.
That's all you can say. He's just an incredible fighter, but he's got a magnetism and it's a personal magnetism and he's fantastic. This is why everyone's here. And that is Donald Trump then, back in the 90s, talking about Mike Tyson, and he did promote some of his fights. And of course, Donald Trump was a dominant figure in Atlantic City.
Mark Kriegel's here. His book is now out. It's called Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson. Mark, Trump played a role with Tyson, right? One of the things that Trump wanted from Tyson was, I mean, it was a pretty astute business move. He was the piece that Trump needed to take boxing away from Las Vegas and move its center to Atlantic City.
It didn't ultimately work out like that, but that was the calculation. There's always this huge economic imperative with Tyson, the same way that Netflix wanted him for all the live streams and to establish themselves in live sports programming. So did HBO need Tyson in the same way that a decade later they would use Tony Soprano to establish their primacy in the 18 to 49 year old male demographic. There's always this, he's an incredible economic engine and it's because of the knockouts, the Genesis story. And wrestlers call it a promo, but as soon as he touches the microphone, it's like, wait, what did he say? And how did he say it? It's not like anything else you've heard before.
So you go through this book. If Mark Kriegel was sitting there in the 80s, there's no way Mike Tyson's alive in 2025, right? The one thing his haters like me and his acolytes and Tyson himself could have agreed on in the late 80s, 90s was that he was not long for this world. That day when I met him in 2012, I asked, could you imagine being this old? He was 45. He says, no, never, never even occurred to me.
His life was apocalyptic. And for me, part of me needs to love the subject, even if I don't like him. And when the publisher broached this idea, I said, no way, I can't do Tyson. I've written more bad stuff about Tyson than anybody. And I started to think about it.
I'm an older guy. I've been through my own stuff. And I started to think about what he had survived. Boxing, which is a pretty treacherous thing to survive in and of itself. The death of a child. Booze. No dad. Cocaine.
No father. His family was the street, as one of his next door neighbors told me. Incarceration.
All of it on and on and on. And I started to, it made me, it made me respect the guy. And I think that there is some virtue in having survived. And there's this, finally, there's this idea that this guy who was a villain is now pretty much universally beloved.
How the hell did we get here? He's got movies. He's mainstream. The other thing is he did go to jail, paid his time, and he paid his debts back. So he basically paid off, worked his butt off to pay off back all these debts, didn't he? Yes. I mean, he paid his debt to me, I'll tell you that.
I don't mean that as cynically as it sounds. Well, by the way, the book is great. The Making of Mike Tyson by Mark Kriegel. Mark, congratulations. And look forward to volume two.
Thank you so much, Brian. Yeah, if I survive. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes.
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