Tyson's spending saga is pathetic

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Feb 12, 2004

MIKE TYSON, depending on what figure you choose to believe, has earned anywhere from $300 million to $450 million in the boxing ring over the past 20 years.

But gee, sorry, I hate to tell you this, it's time to pass the hat and take up a collection for poor Iron Mike. According to disclosures made to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York this week, Tyson was down to his last $5,553 as of Dec.31.

That's if you don't count the estimated $10.2 million he still owed creditors and the IRS.

Boxing history is full of pitiful tales of broke, broken-down boxers, but all of them combined pale in comparison to Tyson. You think for all that money he's made, he could have socked away $10 million or so for a rainy day and somehow tried to stretch the remaining $440 million over two decades.

Nope, couldn't do it. He's flat busted, folks, even after spending three years in prison when he couldn't storm the auto mall on a whim. His most recent disclosures said he spent just $85.50 in December after earning just $5.83 in November. Lesson: Even on an ultratight budget, Tyson can't come close to making ends meet.

I have to say, though, for as reprehensible a character as Tyson has been at times, you really have to admire a dude who can fritter away more than $400 million and not have anything to show for it except a lock on infamy. With the remaining five grand, maybe he can have that lock gold-plated, eh?

Tyson's publicly recorded expenditures are something right out of Mother Goose. He once spent $600,000 on a birthday party, for god's sake. Even in the Bronx, that kind of jack will buy clowns and jumpy- houses

for the entire neighborhood.

Over the course of two years, Tyson spent more than $300,000 on limo rides around the New York metropolitan area. That's outrageous in itself, but particularly when you consider this is a man who owns - - or at least has owned -- more than 100 luxury automobiles.

He spent close to another $300,000 during the same period on cell phones and pagers. I don't know who set up his long-distance calling plan, but those are some kind of serious roaming charges. Who does Mike know in Somalia anyway, which is where you'd have to call on a daily basis for 10 years to run up that kind of bill?

Tyson spent $60,000 on rugs. Simple Persian throw rugs. Don't ask. Geez, for that price, he could get wall-to-wall carpeting through just about any house in America.

Of course, in one of the several palatial estates he has since vacated or been foreclosed upon, he managed to run up an $800,000 gardening bill, $100,000 of which was simply for mowed lawns. Hey, who knew Mike was such a nut for horticulture? It doesn't appear Tyson used one of those guys who list their services inside a plastic bag with a rock and throw it in your driveway.

Until recently, Tyson was spending $12,000 a month on the care and feeding of two Siberian tigers he owned and kept in Las Vegas. He only visited them when he was in town, which, considering his fight schedule there, doesn't appear to have been all that often.

Last year, even though he had been facing increasingly dire straits, Tyson had a monthly bill for clothing of more than $18,000. Has the man ever heard of Ross? And even if he may have trouble finding his neck size in the shirt rack and require certain things to be tailored, doesn't he ever wear anything twice?

The list of wild expenditures goes on and on -- $82,000 for assorted men's mink wraps, a $100,000 platinum bracelet with the inscription "heavyweight champ," a gold necklace with 80 carats worth of inset diamonds for $175K. And in perhaps the most insane expenditure publicly disclosed, Tyson once paid a guy who went by the moniker "Crocodile" a few hundred grand to jump up at his press conferences and shout, "Guerrilla warfare!" How'bout that one, Robin Leach?

Of course, for that kind of cash, Tyson could have hired his own platoon of guerrillas. Or for that matter, gorillas.

We won't even get into Tyson's alimony, child support and income tax payments. That's a long chapter unto itself, one best left briefly described as ugly and exorbitant.

Tyson has an explanation for being so debt-ridden, of course. He said he was swindled out of more than $100 million by promoter Don King -- look, weren't we all? -- and will try to win it back in court. This fails to explain how Tyson made $53.9 million between 2001 and 2003 alone, well after he'd split with King, yet somehow has misplaced that, too. Maybe he should check the lint trap in his dryer, you think?

Naturally, you have to give Tyson credit for being the kind of box- office draw that would allow him to make such an outrageous fortune to squander. But just think, this guy basically has blown through what it would cost to build a new A's ballpark in downtown Oakland on cars, women, big-screen TVs and jewelry. You know, all the important stuff.

The good news is Tyson's still only 37. He can still fight the Lou Savareses of the world for a few more years and earn enough millions to possibly pay his debts and retire happy and wealthy. As long as there's an audience gullible enough to fall for his eat-your- children schtick, it's very possible. At last check, rather amazingly, there still was an audience.