Mark Kriegel, Author of ‘Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson’ Interview

 Mark Kriegel talks to Mendte in the Morning about his new book on the life of boxer Mike Tyson.
 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Take a moment and think about who is the most
fascinating figure in sports and the answer, I'll save you
the time. The answer has got to be Mike Tyson.
I mean the fact that how he grew up, what
he became, how he fell again and kept getting back up,

(00:20):
and now he's gotten to the be this mythical figure
that is loved around the world after all he went through.
It is a fascinating story and somebody needed to tell
that story, and there's nobody better than Mark Krigel. He
is a former sports columnist for The New York Post
and The Daily News. He's a boxing analyst, an essay

(00:43):
for Says for ESPN, author of a couple of books before,
one of which I read, The Pete Maravich book, Nameth Biography,
Pistol The Life of Pete Marrivich, and The good Son
The Life of Ray Boom Boom Mancini. And we're very
proud to have more Krigal with us right now. Mark,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk

(01:04):
to us today.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thank you so much, Lie, I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, the story is a fascinating one. It is a
story that if you were to do a novel on
this story. Nobody would believe it. But the fact of
him getting to where he is right now from where
he became one is unfathomable.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, it's certainly not anything I could have imagined him.
I mean, like he was the designated villain in my
column at the Post in the News back in the nineties,
and when the when the publisher first broke to the
idea of would you do a Tyson bio? My response
was absolutely not. In no way, I'm not revisiting all
of that stuff. I started thinking about it. Why is

(01:48):
he beloved? Why is he here? I mean, I don't
think that. You know, whenever you were considering Mike Tyson's mortality,
the one thing that everybody agreed on back in the
day was that he was not long for the world,
including Tyson himself. And when I started really considering the subject,
the man the topic, there's got to be some virtue

(02:10):
alone in him having survived, and that I looked at
it a little closer, and I think what he actually
did survive the death of a child, the kind of
fame that that can really kill you boxing itself, prison
as a kid, prison as an adult. Again, there's got
to be something to there's some kind of virtue in

(02:31):
having survived. And also I think he's he is a
better guy. The question is what went into that fame?
What are the ingredients, what are the knicks? Why are
we addicted to him? This is my attempt to answer that.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Did you find virtue in him? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I find I mean more than virtue. I think. I
think our attraction to him, or a fascination with him,
has something to do with empathy. You know, he's he
can be crazy, he can be all sorts of things,
but there's something human and humane that brings you back.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
I have.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I had this odd experience with him after running around
covering you know, first as a police reporter, like the
implosion of his private life eighty eight, his marriage to
Robin Robin Gibbons, and and and later later on there
was a great trial, and then as a fighter. I

(03:35):
went to see his one man show and it was
still in preview in Vegas, and I found myself holding
back tears. And I meet him after the show and
we talked about it, and I said, you remember when this?
You remember when that? He's like, yeah, he says to me,
how did it make you feel? I really wasn't prepared
for the question, what do you mean, how did it
make me feel? And I thought about it and it was, Uh,

(03:58):
it was a rusher, was kind of like a drug.
And he sort of acknowledged that and uh, and we
went on. But I was taken. I was taken with
the question itself. And I think it's one of the
reasons why we're all addicted to him. Yeah, what what
fueled his anger? Because he seemed to be always anger, angry,

(04:22):
and then he lost that. There was a there was
a point where he took a turn, completely took a turn. Look,
I think that not being a fighter helped him lose
some of that anger. I think that his when you
were a fighter, especially the kind of fighter the Tyson was,
when you rely on fear and you rely on intimidation.

(04:46):
It's it's not only that you can't let yourself be
seen as as vulnerable, you have to make yourself be
seen as scary. That takes a lot of energy. And
I think you know, the you saw you saw the
effect of that in his persona. When he stopped being
a fighter, he probably became a nicer guy. That's that's

(05:09):
part of the answer. But the I mean the rage
it comes from comes from not being able to you know,
his mother died young, he was impoverished, he was surrounded
constantly by violence. There was no dad there, you know.
I went back to the history of Brownsville, and to me,
especially in that decade of the seventies, you know, writing

(05:32):
an off as of ghettos seems sort of woefully insufficient
to me. It's like it was a dystopia. It was nothing.
But he lived in a kind of shelter for single women.
But around him or you know, block after block of
rubble strewn lots, abandoned buildings. In the middle of this,
you have the greatest like concentration of housing projects anywhere

(05:54):
outside the Soviet Union. So it was, it was, it was.
It was a nutty way to grow up.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
I get it. You know, this might be too simplistic,
but I remember his reputation and how it changed, and
it was amazing how how it switched. And I thought
that the movie The Hangover was a big turn for
him in the way the public saw him. Do you agree.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
I think I think it was a turn in the
way the public saw him. I think it was a
big turn, and unanticipated turn, and probably a stroke of
comic genius from from the producers or the directors of
the movie that had introduced him to a new generation.
But I don't think that was a turn in him.

(06:39):
I think the turn in him had to do I
think that my book ends in eighty eight. It really
deals with what went into the making of Tyson. But
to answer your question, I think the turn came when
you hit a kind of rock bottom. He lost he
lost a daughter through and just crazy a crazy accident,

(07:03):
and he got married. And I think that that the
combination of hitting rock bottom and a relationship that actually
sustained him or fortified him, that that had to do
with with his transformation, not the way that people saw him.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
We all want to read the book Mark Kriegel, and
the new book is Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson.
And by the way, Mark's book launches tonight at Saint
Joseph's University, which is a two forty five Clinton Avenue
in Brooklyn, New York. You can get tickets to that.
He'll be interviewed by Rosie Perez. You just go to
eventwright dot com. Mark, thanks so much for your time.
Can't wait to read the rest of the book. Oh no,

(07:43):
I really appreciate it.