Boxing writer Jonathan Rendall presents a series of compelling interviews about Mike Tyson from those who knew him well in Playboy magazine’s January 2008 issue (on newsstands and at www.playboydigital.com Friday, December 7). Following are selected quotes from the oral history:
Johnny Bos (future Tyson matchmaker) on Tyson’s disposition: “I thought he was a bad boy from the beginning, but they made him out to be a lot worse than he was. He was bad but no worse than a lot of people. Where I come from, everyone got arrested.”
Don Majeski (New York fight figure) on possible demons in Tyson’s past: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Tyson was sexually abused as a kid by people in the reformatories. When he was 11 or 12, these 17- and 18-year-old kids may have raped him.”
Majeski on how Robin Givens affected Tyson’s psyche: “All of a sudden Robin Givens comes in and Tyson falls apart. It’s the virgin-whore syndrome. She’s a whore and a virgin at the same time. You look at her as some kind of angelic figure, and at the same time you want to have sex with her. So you’re trapped. That’s what happened to Tyson.”
Frank Maloney (Lennox Lewis’s former manager) on the June 8, 2002 fight between Tyson and Lennox Lewis: “Before the fight, I wanted Lennox to get beaten because of the bitchiness in me after the fallout I had with the new Lewis team. I was watching Tyson on the TV monitor, getting ready in his dressing room, and his crazy antics, smashing the wall like a mad raging bull again. Then I looked at Lewis getting ready, and I went, ‘You know what? I would put my house on Lennox Lewis winning this fight.’”
Maloney on Tyson’s character: “I don’t think Tyson’s a sympathetic character. I don’t know what to make of him. A man who earns all that money and loses it all—you can’t feel sorry for him. He’s either mentally disturbed or just doesn’t put any value on anything.”