By Tim Bahlberg
The urge struck me about halfway through Mike Tyson’s latest adventure, just after he told the audience about how his mother loved the bottle more than she loved him. Or maybe it was when the big video screens showed a young Tyson serving as a pallbearer for Cus D’Amato, the man who molded his boxing career and the only man he really loved.
The former baddest man on the planet once made opponents and anyone who came into his path shake with fear. On this night, though, it was all I could do not to run up on stage and give him a big hug.
Surely a lot of those gathered in a hotel theater just down the hall from where Tyson had some of his biggest fights felt the same way. How could they not after watching him bare his soul for assorted VIP’s and anyone willing to pay $117.49 to hear his story?
It was billed as “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth” and there’s still time to catch it if you have the cash and can get to the MGM Grand hotel before Wednesday’s final performance. Beware, though, because this is more about Tyson’s greatest misses than it is about his greatest hits.
“Many of you wondered what the hell Mike Tyson was going to do on stage tonight,” Tyson said at the beginning of the show. “I was wondering the same thing.”
Actually, I had a good idea because I’ve been listening to it for years. So did Tyson, because the show is mostly scripted — credit is given to wife Kiki — and he knows the subject material because he’s lived it.
That he’s still alive at the age of 45 after all that living is remarkable enough, a fact Tyson himself acknowledged on stage. Any combination of the women, the fights, the drinking and the heavy cocaine use could have done him in at any time.
“I’m coked up and fat,” he said at one point, gazing up at a Los Angeles police booking shot of himself on the video screen. “I’m a fat cokehead.”
That he’s transformed himself into something far different than his fearsome former self is even more remarkable. He’s now America’s Guest, a comedian/actor/storyteller who finds it both therapeutic and financially lucrative to talk about a time gone by, when he mesmerized the world with his wild and crazy ways.
You can read the full story here. Source Suntimes.