Mike

You got to fight back, baby.

Fight back!

I know, he's a bum, champ. Let's go get him.

Let's go get him, champ, right now.

We got to have it right now.

And fight!

No, no, no. Fuck that shit.

We're not gonna start here.

Listen, there's a lot of fucked-up shit we'll get to.

But right now...

we've got a show to do.

Listen, listen, listen.

So this is interesting.

So I was in prison, right?

I was on the phone talking to my car dealer, like you do,

and he's discussing how he's gonna get him some horses.

I say, "Horses? You can get horses?"

I mean, I'm from Brooklyn, you know, I didn't know.

He's like, "Yeah, man, I can get you anything.

I can get cougars, lions, tigers."

That's a picture of me and my tiger.

It's crazy.

That's how you know you're not in Brownsville anymore.

That's when I was, you know, insane.

I'm not gonna lie about anything in this show.

I'm gonna tell you guys everything.

I'm gonna be completely honest with you guys, you know.

Sometimes I think of myself back then.

I took all those trips to the psych ward and stuff.

What was wrong with me back then?

I was really disturbed back then.

I was a really strange kid back then.

You know, who am I?

Then I come out here.

I'm who you guys want to see.

Who am I?

I'm the most brutal, the most vicious,

ruthless champion that's ever been.

There's no one like me. There's no one can match me.

My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable.

I'm just ferocious. I want your heart.

I want to eat your children. Praise be to Allah!

Is that who I am?

Yeah.

No.

Well, I'm just scratching the surface, man.

I'm Iron Mike.

You mess with my bro, you mess with me, ugly.

Go tell your friends.

You a worthless, weak, crybaby

piece of shit, Michael Gerard Tyson.

You always gonna be that fat fuck that everybody fucks with.

Why?

- Unless you fight back. - I don't want to fight.

You fight, or you die, so what you gonna do about it?

Run?

- Shit, Mike. - Where?

Where you gonna run to? Ain't nowhere to run.

I grew up in Brownsville, New York.

Back in 1971,

they had the highest murder rate in the country.

There was hookers and drugs and murders

on every street corner.

Now, you put a little fat fuck like me in that environment,

I get up in the morning, get my ass whupped.

I go to school, get my ass whupped.

I'd go home from school, and I get my ass whupped.

That's all I knew. I'm not gonna lie.

- A quarter? - Cheap-ass pussy.

I had some issues.

Used to talk to myself out loud.

I was just a weird little kid.

But my mom, she took me to see some doctor.

He's retarded, your son.

So you'll need to be prepared for that.

No. You sure?

I saw him kill any dream she had for me

in that one moment.

I never saw her believe in me after that.

So I was a retarded fat fuck with a lisp.

So, yeah, I took a beating.

But the way I saw it, everyone took a beating at some point.

That was my new gold tooth, motherfucker.

Mike, help me in the kitchen.

Denise, Rodney, under the quilt.

Now!

Time for bed.

I want you to stay out of the way, Mike.

Hmm?

We ain't got nowhere else to go.

But that don't mean we got to take his shit, right?

You want some soup, Eddie?

- Yeah, baby. Yeah. - Thank you.

Oh, now, this move's gonna surprise you, Mike.

Mike, come here. Come here. Now watch.

When he does this right here?

Watch this.

Now, when he gets up on that rope...

They used to beat the hell out of each other,

then have sex.

That was normal to me.

I think they loved each other.

Probably when they weren't stabbing each other.

Before Brownsville, she lived a nicer kind of life.

She'd been a nurse, a dietitian,

was in college studying to be a teacher

before she met the man who was probably my dad.

She always had terrible taste in men.

The last one took all our money,

and we were put out on the street.

Now, there are three types of poor.

There's poor, there's dirt poor...

And there's fucked-up poor.

When a Black single mom with three kids

falls into fucked-up poor, there's no way out.

And she knew it.

We lost our whole community.

It was a life sentence.

We moved from one abandoned building to another.

Every time we moved, it got worse.

Any dreams she had died.

She did things she had to do.

That shit would fuck any kid up.

I stopped going to school because of the bullying.

I was in second grade,

and that was the end of my education.

I'd show up to the school with my sister and leave.

I'd show up again for lunch, and then I'd leave.

- You got any money? - No.

Anything we find, we keep.

Man, he's trying to steal our birds.

You got birds?

We got lots of birds. Shit.

Looks hungry.

I never saw birds like that up close.

Those birds...

They were the only things I loved that loved me back.

They could fly anywhere, but they'd always came back home.

I got to know each one of them.

I learned to love them.

Hey, shorty.

Go downstairs to the pet store and get us some birdseed.

I had names for each one of those 30 pigeons.

The guys still picked on me.

- Jesus, shorty. - You a stinky motherfucker.

Don't you know how to wash yourself?

But I didn't give a shit.

I was happy...

until Gary Flowers fucked with my pigeon, Georgie.

That's the day I became a fighter.

And that's the fucking truth.

Come on, man, give me my bird back.

What bird?

Please, man.

What are you gonna do about it?

What the fuck are you gonna do about it, Mike?

Tell me, why should I give him to you?

'Cause by the looks of it, he's... he's mine.

Maybe...

Maybe I'll eat this fucking bird.

Yeah!

I-I bet he tastes like chicken.

Come on, what do you want?

Here, I'm sorry.

Everything Tyson does is intimidating.

He doesn't wear a robe. He's worked up a full sweat.

He's got a scornful look on his face that says,

"Let's get this going. Let's get it over with."

The heavyweight champion of the world

comes into the ring.

This is why we are all here.

It's Tyson all the way here in round one.

Vicious shot to the body. Down he goes!

That was a body shot that brought him down.

Five. Good? Let's go.

Here comes Spinks again.

Down he goes!

I don't think he'll get up from this.

Spinks is laying flat on his back.

Six, seven, eight, nine.

It's all over. Mike Tyson has won it...

A dramatic first-round knockout.

And now the question is,

who in the world has any chance against this man?

That's when things started to change.

Barkim introduced me to these guys.

We'd steal anything we can get our hands on...

Money, clothes, jewelry.

I chose them over family.

My mom fell into a system rigged to make us powerless.

With these guys, I had power.

I was 8. They were maybe 12.

We called ourselves the Rutland Road Crew.

We only went to school for lunch.

It didn't even have to be our school.

We were just poor Black kids no one cared about.

Hey! Give me that purse back!

By the time I was ten, this is what I knew.

The badder you were, the better.

We lived big and fast and hard