Okay, so. If you have time, please go over to the New York Magazine site and read this excerpt from Undisputed Truth, Tyson’s autobiography with Larry Sloman that comes out next month. If you don’t have time, we wanted to take four choice pullquotes from the piece and present them here, context-free, just so you can have a little soupçon of what we’re dealing with.
Mike Tyson’s autobiography is insane
New York Magazine just published an excerpt from Mike Tyson’s upcoming memoir. It’s the most Mike Tyson-y thing you’ve ever read.
Vittorio Zunino Celotto
Bill Hanstock is a writer, author and Emmy Award-winning producer. He began writing for SB Nation in 2011.
Ready? Here goes nothing.
On fighting someone over stolen pigeons:
“Give me my bird back,” I protested. Gary pulled the bird out from under his coat. “You want the bird? You want the fucking bird?” he said. Then he just twisted the bird’s head off and threw it at me, smearing the blood all over my face and shirt.
On the dangers of streetfighting for money at age 11:
But we didn’t follow the Marquess of Queensberry rules in the street. If you kicked someone’s ass, it didn’t necessarily mean it was over. If he couldn’t beat you in the fight, he’d take another route, and sometimes he’d come back with some of his friends and they’d beat me up with bats.
On motherly love:
I never saw my mother happy with me or proud of me doing something. I never got a chance to talk to her or know her. Professionally, that would have no effect on me, but emotional and psychologically, it was crushing. I would be with my friends, and I’d see their mothers kiss them. I never had that. You’d think that if she let me sleep in her bed until I was 15, she would have liked me, but she was drunk all the time.
Seriously, though. Read it.
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