Ebony interview with Mike Tyson

Ebony, Sept, 1995 by Robert E. Johnson

Robert E. Johnson, who interviewed Mike Tyson several times in the Indiana prison, was the only journalist invited to accompany the former champion on his much-ballyhooed return to Harlem. After a tumultuous press conference and a bitter controversy over whether Tyson had been redeemed, Johnson interviewed Tyson once again in the Grand Royal Suite on the 49th floor of the Rihga Royal Hotel in downtown Manhattan.

During the press conference and afterwards, Tyson, who converted to Islam in the Indiana prison, refused to answer questions about the redemption controversy, but his co-manager, John Horne, told the press conference: "Mike Tyson is not going to sit up here and answer silly questions. I'm not going to let him sit here and be disrespected." It was against this background that Johnson, the associate publisher of Jet magazine, conducted this EBONY/JET interview. Here are the highlights: EBONY/JET: Champ, when I saw you yesterday, you never looked better. I saw in you the same spirit, the same composure I saw the last time we were together in the Indiana Youth Center prison. One of the things you said then was, "Trust put me in this jail, and when I get out, Mike is going to be his own man and is going to make his own decisions." TYSON: You have to make your own decisions, you have to trust in your decisions. I heard Dan Quayle say something once. I'm not a Dan Quayle fan, but I listen to everybody in power, even though they got a bad reputation. Quayle said the worst thing that happened to him was that he never trusted his own judgment. That was a powerful statement, and I said from now on I am going to make my own mistakes and go with my own judgment. That's how come I learned to be bumble, so that I don't talk about nobody, I don't get arrogant about nobody. I have the same malice in my heart as far as the fight game is concerned, but outside the ring, I won't say anything a dignified man won't say. EBONY/JET. You didn't react at the press conference when some reporters called you a felon and suggested that it was wrong for the people of Harlem to honor you. TYSON: I just want to be humble at all times. I know why they don't like me, because they want the money I have, you know what I mean? They want to have the money and not kick somebody's a-- and be their own person. And I'm just happy that I'm not a phony. Whatever I do, man, it's not phony. EBONY/JET: You seem to have given a lot of thought to your future and your career. Have you established priorities? Have you said that these things are important to me and that this or that is on my wish list? TYSON: The only thing I do is just pray - pray for inspiration, for a way of thinking, because I don't have any particular goal in sight. I intend to fight and I want to win. But my priorities are basically to be a good Brother and a strong one, and to try to be a good father one day. I wish I did live with my child, you know? ... I don't consider it right that I don't live with them. So I have a war between my own mind and that situation. But I don't have any basic priorities. I just want to do what I do best - and that's fight. I love it. EBONY/JET: You told me once that your three-year-old daughter was a major factor in your refusing to back down in prison. TYSON: Listen, I understand these people. They want to crush me, they want me to cry, to beg on my knees. And evidently it is not in my nature to do that. And that is what people respect most. Not the fact that I'm knocking out everybody, not the fact that I contributed money. That's what people respect, the fact that I wasn't a chump that laid on his back and gave up. That gives people more strength than somebody saying I have done this and I have done that. EBONY/JET: When you got out of prison, was there a particular food or a particular thing that you wanted? TYSON: I didn't want anything. I wanted a bath. I scrubbed myself so hard it was like my skin was coming off my face. I was trying to wash the dirt off. I have scars on my face where I scrubbed so hard. My girlfriend [Monica Turner] said, "Man, you can't scrub any harder." EBONY/JET: Speaking of your girlfriend, are you going to marry her? TYSON: The first time, I wanted to marry my girlfriend right away, soon as I got out, I wanted to do the right thing because I know I was a jerk, and she didn't deserve that." EBONY/JET: Are you moving in that direction? TYSON: She's a good woman, and I just want to be right. EBONY/JET: You're just going to play it by ear? TYSON: I don't know if she will have me, because I have done things, and she is mad at me now for something I've done. I just look around and say, "I'm a mess, baby. I don't know why I do things." She is very strong and fortunate. You know what I mean, to have a child and go to school for 10 years or so and [get her M.D. degree] and be an honor student and everything. I respect women like that, because I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a Black woman. EBONY/JET: The press noted that you didn't have a big party, with champagne flowing and all that, on your first night at home. TYSON: That's typical. You come home, and you party. But after that, what happens, man - if anything, you get a hangover. Everything about that is negative. It doesn't escalate anything. I mean I'm partying every day in my mind and in my heart.... EBONY/JET: You attribute some of this to all the reading and studying you did in prison. TYSON: You know, it's incredible. When I went home I saw these great big banana boxes, and I said this must be garbage, but it was 20 or 30 boxes filled with books. And I said, God, I can't believe my mind stored all the information from all these books .... But you have to understand that the thing that has the biggest impact on a person is the books he reads and the people he meets. That's what Brothers and Sisters should know about reading. Know how to interpret reading. It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading. Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing. Before that Denmark Vesey organized a slave conspiracy in South Carolina. I had a tape of somebody using Frederick Douglass' voice, and he was talking about Nat Turner and all these guys, about a revolt and the wrong way to go about doing it, and that there should be another way. EBONY/JET: My colleague, historian Lerone Bennett, said - TYSON: Oh, he's bad. EBONY/JET: - there should be movies about the great slave heroes. TYSON: The guy that interviewed Nat Turner in prison said he was the most educated and intelligent man he ever met, Black or White. And that reminds me, when we were up in Harlem, we gave people and organizations donations of $25,000 and $50,000, and then historian John Henrik Clarke came up and they gave him, $25,000, and I said, "No! No! No!" Give him $25,000 more, man. That's my man. You got to double up for my man." I was looking at him when he walked up. It killed me that he was blind and couldn't see me. I was trying to explain to my associates who he was. They didn't even know who he was. EBONY/JET: Because, unlike you, they hadn't read him. TYSON: I said, "This man is bad. Ask him about anything, ask him about your mamma land where she and our people came from]." EBONY/JET: One of the things you told me in prison, you said: "I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds." TYSON: Even though this guy [Ernest] Hemingway was a fascist, racist pig, he was right about one thing. He said something that stuck in my head, men are not meant to be defeated, only to die. He was right. As long as we persevere and endure, we can get anything we want. We aren't meant to be defeated. I'm a nut case, but that is what I believe. And another thing that freaks me out is time. Time doesn't wait for anything. It's like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. Here I am talking to you, and you talked to Joe Louis and all those guys who are gone. It's just a cycle, you know what I mean. You interviewed Louis, Ali, Tyson, Frazier. I mean, I'm a historian, and that freaks me out. EBONY/JET: Ali is a historian, too. TYSON: You know who was good, too, Mr. Arthur Ashe. EBONY/JET: Hello! TYSON: He was good. I read some of his books. He knew about everything, but he was real quiet and didn't talk much. I never met him. The one time I could have met him I said, "I don't need that guy." And that was a mistake. He was a good man, that man. EBONY/JET: Prison seems to have deepened you. TYSON: What is really happening is I learned from watching people who are free. I see the little things that they do and I do that, and they don't understand that I really learned from them. These guys give you courage, man, reading about these guys and watching guys - that is what gives you courage. That's what separates the heroes from the cowards with their action. EBONY/JET: Is that what Whitney Houston said, it helps you have both the fame and the fortune? TYSON: I know one day I was at Whitney's house. Right? It was about four years ago, and I'm over there and I told her she had a nice house and that I had a nice house, too. And she said, "Well, you should have a nice house. What's the use of having the fame and not the fortune?" And I said, God, that equals to being a fool, having fame and no fortune. A lot of guys out there have fame doing this and doing that, but they are broke. They are starving to death, especially in Hollywood. EBONY/JET: You talk a great deal now about money and the managing and control of money. TYSON. Money! It's all about money. Before, I had money but no understanding of money - so they didn't care. But now I know I can take money and inspire people on how to use money, how to get economically powerful - and that's a threat. EBONY/JET: How can we use our money? TYSON: Let's buy some cars, let's get some businesses, you know what I mean, and pay for our cars and all that stuff so we don't have to get involved with all this being typical young Blacks who as soon as we get money we buy cars and houses. Get some businesses to buy our cars, get HBO and some of these corporations to help us out with some of this stuff. We shouldn't spend our money, we should save our money and chill out. Our money is bait money, and bait money is not to be used. It's like worms. You catch a fish with a worm, you take the fish off and pull the bait - the worm - out of his mouth and put it back on the hook. That's just bait. Use your money for bait. EBONY/JET: Speaking of money, you told me once that despite the problems you and Robin Givens had, she taught you a valuable lesson. As I recall, you said Robin asked you one day, "Mike, how much money do you have, and where is it?" And you said you thought about it for the first time. TYSON: Exactly. Check this out. [I know where my money is now.] The times are changing. Things work this way now. There's a new rule, the Tyson rule. After the fight I give you what I think you deserve; I give you what I want to give you. It's no more percentage. You get what I want to give - Some people try to get you out of slavery for you to be their slave. But everything happens, God lets everything happen for a reason. It's all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another, because anybody will take advantage of you if you let them. You always have to be tough. You can be humble, but you can't be noble. You have to stand up for yourself. EBONY/JET: The Showtime Televison deal. What does it come down to? TYSON: I don't want to go into details, but since my manager is here I can discuss it with him. The deal that we made with Showtime was, like, six fights, and that was a $300 million deal. CO-MANAGER RORY HOLLOWAY. It could end up being well over or in excess of $350 million. We're not talking about a championship fight; we're talking about a minimum guarantee of $40 million no matter who he fights. EBONY/JET: You're saying this is a new day, a new era? HOLLOWAY. it's a trendsetter. This has never been done in the history of sports, management, entertainment, anything - it's never been done. EBONY/JET: So you're taking it to a new level. TYSON: Once we do what we can do, maybe one day other guys will follow. One day there is going to be a fighter who owns a bank, you know what I mean .... One day some guy is going to get a billion-dollar fight.