Fighting legend Mike Tyson has swapped the boxing ring for the cabaret stage, in a new one-man show which pulls few punches in recounting the ups and downs of his roller-coaster life. In a stand-up act he hopes to take to Broadway and beyond, the ex-world champion tackles head on the most controversial episodes, including his jailing for rape — he insists he was wrongly convicted — and his struggle with drugs.
Talking in sometimes frenetic bursts for almost non stop for two hours — and showing some nifty footwork to musical numbers from a jazz-rock ensemble — he also recalls the good times when his talent brought him fortune and fame. “Welcome to my living room,” said the 45-year-old, opening the first night Friday in an intimate 740-seater theater in the back of the MGM Grand casino complex in Las Vegas, where the show runs through until Wednesday.
“Many of you are wondering what the hell am I going to do up on the stage tonight,” he joked at the start of “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, Live on Stage. “To be honest I’m wondering the same thing too.” The answer is a blow-by-blow run through his life story, starting with his birth in Brooklyn and not knowing who his real father was, his early brushes with the law, and how his mother died when he was 16. It was then that his his boxing mentor, Cus d’Amato, helped him turn his back on crime and detention centers and refocus his life around his awesome fighting talent.
“I had a lot of emotional problems,” he said, evoking a theme of show, in which Tyson uses an array of expletives to describe stupid things he has done over the years.