ESPN's Mark Kriegel Talks His New Mike Tyson Book! | Fight Freaks Unite Podcast

With another light weekend of action (or lack thereof) in the ring, we decided to go to a "heavyweight" in the boxing media outside of it. This, as ESPN's Mark Kriegel joined our coverage on Youtube and hear on the "Fight Freaks Unite Podcast."

On this special video/pod we have an extended conversation with the ESPN broadcaster and noted columnist/author for over 35 years, Kriegel, who has written a new book on Tyson's rise from trouble as a teenager into the fearsome heavyweight champ he became at just 20 years old.

It's called "Baddest Man... The Making Of Mike Tyson" and our insider Dan Rafael with T.J. Rives enjoyed reminiscing with Mark about the dominance of Tyson in the mid to late 1980s. Get tremendous insight on the early days of Mike Tyson's seemingly invincible dominance.

Make sure to like and subscribe to our "Big Fight Weekend Podcast" feed on Apple/Spreaker/Spotify, etc, !

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, folks, welcome into a very special conversation. We
have been looking forward to this as part of the
Fight freefs Unite podcast series, but we're also doing this
on our YouTube page here at the time that we're
doing this on this September evening in twenty twenty five,
I am merely the somewhat competent host TJ.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Reeves.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Our insider is Big Dan Rayphiel and look who's with
us on the YouTube video. Hello to Mark Kriegel, who
you know from the ESPN top ranked boxing coverage. Obviously,
he has authored a ton of books off all kinds
of different sports. We're most interested in the Mike Tyson
book that he has written, which is called Badness Man

(00:44):
The Making of Mike Tyson. And Mark is our guest
for the full show here. This seven great to have you.
Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Mark, uh, it's my pleasure to be thanks fellas.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Big Dan.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
You've known this guy for a long time and he
still returns your call and your text message. And that's
Mark that you still do that for him, Big Dan,
say hello to your guy.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Absolutely. I mean when I met Mark, we were I
was working at USA today, Mark, I think at the
time in two thousand, you were at that time still
the daily news.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Maybe I was in the news. That was it.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
We were, uh in two thousand, Yeah, we were. I
think we met at the gym watching Fernando Vargas work
out a couple of days before.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
We find that that was the debut of the Ferocious Mobile.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Well, I was gonna say so to let the audience right.
It was right before Trinidad. We met at the gym
and and he had bought this stretched green escalade that
he told us. We asked him, like, you know, where'd
you get where'd you get this from? And he told
us that Ike Quarte bought it for him, meaning he
had made so much money in his previous fight or
a couple of fights earlier against i Quarte, that he

(01:48):
bought this beautiful car. And then he didn't come with us,
but the driver took Krigel and me for a ride
in the in this stretch escalade around like the trip
area I got.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I gotta say, this is already delivered in terms of nostalgia,
and we're a minute into this and we haven't even
gotten to the Mike Tyson stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
A bathtubbing there. It was a bar which was not
good for Fernando quite impressive.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
So that was back in the day when we worked
for competitors, you know, and then years later we were
for several years colleagues. A.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, that was back in the day when there were
newspapers and newspapers had boxing writers.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Sure, which was a losing, that was an extraordinary Uh,
it was real loss for the sport.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
No, not a good not a good turn up events.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
But YouTube it persevered on. We appreciate you being here.
We thank the YouTube audience for finding us on video.
If you're hearing us on podcast later on Sunday, come
find the video on the Big Fight Weekend YouTube page.
Podcast audience is hearing us as well. So we love
all of this, all right. So before we get to

(03:00):
the book, we can't have you on and not talk
about Canelo and Crawford, which has just happened in the
recent with Terrence Crawford pulling the upset of Canelo Alvarez.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Mark, I'm going to tee it up to you.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Your your thoughts on what he was able to do
in defeating Canelo and becoming undisputed in the four belt
era in a third different weight class, moving up two
more weight classes to get this.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
One, and Mark working on the broadcast.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yes, and you were part of the broadcast as well.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
I just looked it was kind of nice for me
to actually being on the broadcast and picking it right
for a change. You know, I thought Crawford was going
to win from the beginning. I never really waivered. I
think that Crawford's analysis was was pretty much spot on.
What he told me in the lead up to the

(03:51):
fight on fight week was most of Canelo's recent opponents
were more than happy to go the distance. You know,
their victory was in signing the contract. And I think
that you know, the we talk a lot about the
silk pajama stuff. It's become it's become a cliche. I
think that it is relevant in the case of Canelo.

(04:13):
He he just had a diet of guys who weren't
particularly ambitious. I also think that if you turned down
the big guy in ben Vete's when the when the
ostensibly little guy has offered to you, you're obliged to
take him. And I think, you know, Terrence knew exactly
what he was doing when he was getting him. I

(04:35):
thought it was really interesting the way he calibrated the risk,
no rehydration clause, no catchweight, none of that stuff. If
you want Turkey's money, this is what you're going to
have to do. And what it did was to me
ensure that Crawford goes down in history, which is what
he wanted. He wanted an antecdote for being underpromoted for

(05:00):
many years, certainly as a welterweight, for not being not
having Al Hayman's one hundred and forty seven pound champions
available to him, and you know, all all the and
I think even going back to Omaha, being an outsider
all those years, he wanted a corrective for all of that.

(05:22):
He saw it, identified the target, and he beat the
hell out of it.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
M in the building that night, you were there with Dan.
Give us your thoughts on that scene. First ever world
title fight in Allegiance Stadium, the home of the Raiders. Again,
fans love this. You've been to many a big event,
But how did that raid? How did that compare?

Speaker 2 (05:45):
What did you think?

Speaker 3 (05:46):
I've never seen anything like that in the States. I mean,
I have, you know, I was in Wembley for Tyson Fury,
but I haven't seen anything like this in the States.
I thought it was great, just that they could, you know,
fill that place up. I like the undercard, I liked
the Lester Martinez and yeah, good fight, really really wonderful.

(06:10):
I'd like this. I think that it was right. Uh yeah,
I don't think that there was at the WBC.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
They don't get too much right. But I think the
calling for an immediate rematch was was certainly the right call.
I think it was that that was the kind of
lead up that fans needed to see, and I thought
that I guess it was an upset. I didn't really
think it was, but to see a smaller guy do

(06:38):
this to someone who is common deer boxing and whose
whose economic min was was so powerful for so many years,
there was a great night. Really, we don't get that
many Wow, that was a great night night, but that
was one.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Of them, except that the main events started at twelve
thirty three am.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
I didn't like. Look, you know, I don't like the
bands and I'm not the producer, but I mean the
fights themselves. Look, I mean you could judge many of
our shows and the gutty quibval with it.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
I want to ask you one thing about that, because
I've been criticized personally about it a mill a million
times since the fight happened, and I don't remember hearing
what your thoughts were in terms of how you scored it,
or who you thought was ahead, or how it went.
One eleven, okay, so you had it for Crawford somewhat.
Why so I had it one fifteen, I'm sorry, yeah,
one fifteen to one thirteen, having it even after ten rounds,
as did two of the judges, and giving Crawford very

(07:32):
obviously rounds eleven and twelve. Uh, And so TJ and
I speak many times on this show about what we
consider the range of acceptable scores, and for me, the
range of acceptable scores on Terrence Crawford's win against Canelo
was anywhere from what you just said, one seventeen to
one eleven to one fifteen to one thirteen, So anywhere
from nine three to seven five. There were two rounds

(07:53):
kind of swinging because there were some close rounds seemed
reasonable were what do you make of people that think
that this for somebody to say it was seven rounds
to five with him closing up so strongly that somehow
you must be on the take and the in the
tank for Canelo. If you had it that close.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Look. I mean, I think that we all know that
almost everyone's default position in boxing is the insult you're
a liar, you're on the take, you suck die okay.
Thanks that for some reason, that's like the acceptable position,

(08:32):
you know, you suck okay. Great. I mean, I'm surprised
Dan like one fifteen thirteen is a little a little
too close for me. But I've done some hair brain things.
I'm not saying that was necessarily a hair brain I
thought it was. Look, here's the thing. Canello never had
him in trouble. Canelo never hurt him. I don't think

(08:54):
that I saw a punch that really caused Terence to
pause and go, oh wow, I can't press forward. You know,
his confidence grew as as the fight went on. What
we do agree on was that the separation came in
the latter round, right.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
For sure, And he was walking them down the last
who rounds the small guy.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Him? And that's and and and that's Terrence, And I
think that he got. What was interesting to me is
that this is a calculated orchestrated attempt to get everything
back in one night, everything that he was denied. You know, Omaha,
top rank, PBC, everyone who screwed him, everyone who thinks

(09:42):
screwed him, all of it, lawsuits, the whole bit. I'm
going to get it back in one night. And I
can't recall a night that worked out more perfectly for
a fighter.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Maybe the night that the fight Errol Spence.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, we were there for that night. Dan and I
were both there for that night, and he destroyed Spence.
So maybe he got a measure of it that night,
but certainly the remaining portion he got an Allegiance stadium
with Canelo.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
The difference is that the I stand correct and the
Spence fighter is more dramatic because he knocks him out
and he physically dominates a guy who had been a
physically dominating champion. But going up, it's not really two
weight classes, it's basically three. And by the way, what

(10:30):
he told me about Madumov going into the fight I
think turned out to be largely true, is that I
understand Magiumov was not his most impressive night. Magiamov was
big and long, and he had a kind of unique
rhythm and Canelo was not going to duplicate that. And
that's what Crawford told me. It's like, what what what

(10:51):
Madumov did is not applicable here, and I think that
with that fighting, that's pretty much true. But his analysis
was so right, and h the idea that he asked
for it and he asked to go up that much
was extraordinary to me.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
And then he didn't do a catchwaight or the other nonsense.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
No, none of the I mean no unlike, no rehydration
like you know, tank and none of the catchweights, none
of that crap. And because he wanted and I think
that he knew that if there were any of that stuff,
people would have said, oh, you made Canelo come down.
He's not. He's not in a place to dictate to
Canelo anything. So he goes, Okay, you can have everything

(11:34):
you want and you get all this this big, this
big lump sum paint from Turkey. How can you say
no now? And remember remember where Canelo had been going
into this fight. He was about to do a deal
with Jake Bull and that I think that goes to
my silf Pajama's argument.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
You know, But the way I described that when I
spoke to Crawford and the lead up but to the
fight now is that you, as a singular person essentially
willed the fight to happen.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Agree, We absolutely we were there for one reason because Crawford.
And I know that Crawford told his representatives, don't come
to me with anything. Don't come to me with Virgil,
don't come to me with boots. Don't come to me
with anything if it's not Canelo. And he told the
same thing to Turkey. That was a year ago. What
I didn't know. First of all, apparently Bill Haney put

(12:31):
this idea firmly in his head. I don't know when
the conversation was, but you know, you got to give
some props there. But in twenty twenty three, he had
a he had a conversation with with Paco and the
president of the WBO, and he says, I want Crawford,
and Paco Basserel says, oh, no, he's too big for you.

(12:55):
Wait a little while. No, I can't wait. It's not
the time of my career. I can't wait for an
anything anymore. And you know it didn't happen, but he'd
been actively asking for behind the scenes since at least
twenty twenty three.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
Well he got it, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
So Ray big Dan's a historian. I'm a historian. We're
of similar age, you're of similar age. A couple of
fun ones, and then we're gonna move on to Mike
Tyson because it's in this era, Sugar Ray Leonard prime
welterweight against Terrence Crawford.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Who does Mark Kriegel have I made him pause? We
made him.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Pause, dramatic pause. I mean, I'm gonna answer.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
You already answered, you already answered. We're in the bag
for Leonard Ray and I. Rayfiel and I are in
the bag for Leonard.

Speaker 4 (13:45):
We're in the bag for all respect to Terrence Crawford.
He's a great fighter. A lot of these guys are
great fighters. But I'm not going against Sugary Life. Is
any welterweight in the history of body Do you.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Make it unanimous?

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Or would you take Crawford welterweight prime against welterweight prime Life?

Speaker 4 (13:59):
Maybe Sugar Ray Robinson if we have the video to watch.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Him and ask him about Sugar Ray Robbs.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
I'm saying who I would pick Leonard to lose to it.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
I'm not as smart as you guys, but here, okay,
here's the thing. All right, you're right with what you
say about about Leonard, But I could imagine either scenario.
And because I mean you, Crawford doesn't switch much anymore.
But you just see, you just saw a guy handle

(14:30):
a great one hundred and sixty eight pounder. By the way,
before we go away from this, and I'm not I'm
ducking only a little bit, but what what what Canelo
did do at one sixty eight was historic and he
does deserve as props to that. So it wasn't like
he beat a chump, And it wasn't just like he
beat a guy who'd been wearing silk pajama. That kind

(14:54):
of weight jump with his frame, you couldn't. It's too
easy to say just because he's Ray Leonard.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Well, Ray did go up two way classes and beat Hagler.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yes, he did off a three year layoff when Marvin
looked indestructible.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
We're just saying, we're in the back.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
From seven forty seven to sixty is different than basically
forty seven to sixty eight.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
Here like this, maybe you don't want to make a
pick mark, but how about this, can we agree.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
That he did it at thirty eight years old? I
think that I think that I think that when when
Leonard beat if, I'm not if I'm not mistaken when
when Leonard beat Hagler he was what thirty two?

Speaker 4 (15:36):
No, he was thirty and Hagler was thirty two.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
But I think we'll.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Agree a guy to jump up and wait to created
completely different physique at that advanced age. That's without pressing.
So I'm talking to like, you really do have an
encyclopedia thirty eight jump up cheese.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
But the thing is, how about this Because of the
style that they both fight in and the way they.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Cross, I'm leaning Leonard is that that's good.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
But I would say this it would be a hell
of a fight obviously. Oh yeah, tremendous.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
And we love the nostalgia, and that's now going to
work our way to being nostalgic about Mike Tyson and
Mark Kriegel's book, which is out Rayfield, Holding it up,
Get it closer to the camera, Bad Man.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Of Mike Tyson. There it is from Mark Krigel.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Sent this to me in the mail with a beautiful inscription.
Thank you for this, Mark. I can't wait the Delvin
and Love page.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Okay, So I begin these conversations the same way. What
led you other than the obvious iconic heavyweight champion from
the what led you to want to write the book? Go?

Speaker 3 (16:52):
And editor called me and I owed the publisher a book,
and he goes, would you be willing to do Mike Tyson?
And the first thing I thought it was like, the
last thing I want to do is like Tyson, Like,
there's no way I want to do Mike Tyson. I
covered him in my formative years as a columnist. There's

(17:14):
a there's a newspaper reporter. But what he was really
asking me about was, like about the the current iteration
of Mike Tyson? How you know this was? This was
not far removed from his I guess his first comeback,
not the Jake Paul thing, but uh, I'm blanking. Was

(17:37):
this the.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Expedition when he bought Roy Jones?

Speaker 4 (17:40):
And after it was after the Roy fight, so still
in the pandemic was going on.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
It was just after the pandemic, and I just actually
this is he says, Hey, you know the money's due.
I didn't want to give back the money, but I
owe the publisher of book. How about Tyson? I'm like,
I just tore my hamstring, like ripped it up. I'm

(18:10):
waiting to go into surgery and I'm on the Viking
Ends and I'm like, like, I'm thinking, like what body
part would I rather stick like a nail and go
revisit all the crap that I wrote about Tyson in
the nineties. I'm like, nowhere. A friend of mine says, like,
what are you talking about? Like, it's your duty as
a writer. You can't get money back. So I started

(18:34):
to actually think about it, and I thought about I
saw him in twenty twelve, Okay, and this guy was
like the designated villain in my column, like, no matter
what happened, Tyson sucks. Are you need to talk about
your default position? And he made it very good villain

(18:54):
and you know, for a young for young columnist, it
was kind of it was kind of perfect. But I
remember seeing him in twenty twelve at the previews for
his one man show, I'm just Beauty Truth, and I'm
watching him this guy I just savaged, and I start
like weeping. I weep easy. But I meet him after

(19:18):
the show and we start to talk, and it really
stayed with me.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
You at Mark, at this point, you hadn't seen him
for a while, right, Yeah, And I have to believe
with all the things that you wrote, about If anybody
goes back and reads your copious amounts of copy from
your stints at the Daily News and the New York Post,
a lot of what you wrote about Tyson was not
exactly nice about him. So I can't imagine he had
a positive view of you at that time. No, I

(19:43):
mean it was.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
I mean I wrote, I wrote well, but horribly of him. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
No, your writing was good, but you savaged him, savage
him daily practically.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Well never I had a chance. Okay, right, and uh,
I'm crying about thinking about this guy. So I run,
I run an idea by the by the editor, and
he goes, oh, it's great, right, And the book was

(20:16):
The book was intended. It started as a kind of essay.
I said, I don't want to write a biography about Tyson.
His life is too well known, the bar is too high.
What am I going to What am I going to
tell people? But I did want to write a book
about what I thought at that time was looking at

(20:40):
his life probably the greatest single comeback I've ever seen.
And I'm not like guiding up the guy for the
hell of it, but I do think that there's some
virtue in what he has survived. And you know, you
get older, you're not as much of an asshole as
you were when you were in your twenties and your thirties,
and you knew everything in the whole world as a
young columnist. And you know, I start to catalog the

(21:04):
thing that that he survived, which is booze cocaine, found Brooklyn, molestation, incarceration,
two stretches of incarceration as a juvenile and an adult,
don King going broke, and the kind of fame that
was basically a form of insanity. And here he is.

(21:28):
And one of the sources I have in the book
opening see is watching Tyson watch his kid play tennis
in you know, somewhere in Orange County of all places.
Now I think about this, That's not anything I could
have imagined. And the idea that Tyson has has outpaced

(21:50):
even my imagination or anyone's imagination. His own imagination is
to me extraordinary. And the one thing that even the
haters like me and the acolytes on the Tyson side
could agree on, and I think, Daniel, you'll bear me
out on this. The one thing that everyone agreed on
was like the over under on his survival, his mortality.

(22:13):
Take the under because he was going and and there's
a million ways he could have gone, but here he is.
And then that you have this other idea which no
one expected, which is, holy shit, he's beloved. So this book,

(22:34):
this book is an attempt to figure out what went
into the making of him. I should say, because I
didn't want to write a biography. There was no way
in help it. But Tyson generates so much damn story.
There's so much story that it became more and more

(22:55):
and more biographical until I got to the point where
I meet with my editor. I think it was like
March of twenty three. I say, I'm glad you like
the manuscript. But you know, I'm glad you like the manuscript.
But we got about eighty ninety thousand words here and

(23:16):
he's still like sixteen or seventeen. You know what he
wanted to do. He goes, there is there a place
that you can break it and do a two part?
I said, there's no way in hell.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
But of course the other is the other is I.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Mean because the way that I I mean. So it
started as an essay and it was about Tyson, it
was about New York, and a lot of it was
about writers. And fighters and the narcissism that the boxing
hinges on. Like to me, one of the things this
book taught me was that reinforced boxing is the greatest

(23:57):
symphony in narcissism anywhere. And it's it's not just the fighters,
although you need you need to be absolutely crazy with
yourself to walk into the ring and then walk into
the ring and fancy yourself a heavyweight champion. But this
is also about the promoters narcissism, the promoters egos, the writers,

(24:21):
as we well know, especially when the days when part
of the engine here was the writers from different papers,
particularly in New York. And then what this is about,
as much as anything, is the ego of the trainer.
In this case it's custom model who made him. My question,

(24:45):
My question to Mike, and he pushed back on this
was at what price? At what price? I mean he
was brilliant, he was charming. He had seduced a generation
of really accomplished writers, and I think that was the
basis for Cuss his great pr and there was something
to it, it really was. But like if you're if

(25:07):
you're putting a kid who was just out of a
juvenile lockup under hypnosis at the age of like fourteen
or fifteen, and you're telling them like you're a scouraged
from God. You're you know, every punches of bad intentions
and take you know, intended to like decapitate somebody. What
did you think you were going to get? Like really,

(25:29):
what the hell did you think you were going to get?

Speaker 4 (25:32):
What he got?

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, And but Tyson talks about this too, and he
in the way, Tyson's even more insightful than he knows.
You know, his his idol wasn't all.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Lead d right, it was Durant.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
It was the street guy, was the guy who was
you know, said I'm going to do unspeakable things to you.
But but he's the most potent engine all of this stuff,
this custom model, custom models and ambition, custom Model's ego.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, but you

(26:09):
got to you gotta look at it. I mean, can
you imagine, you know, the normal progression is, let's say
you get a kid out of like, you know, a
juvenile prison or juvenile lock up, and you said, we're
gonna give you another chance, and the kid's great, okay, wonderful,
And the first thing is that we'll put you in
the gloves or you know, we'll get you a trainer,
we'll work with you. Maybe one day you'll be turn pro.

(26:33):
We'll call you a champ kid. But from the beginning,
Tyson was there to avenge Ali's lost homes. Tyson was
there telling them, you're going to be the greatest, the biggest,
the youngest, the baddest. You're gonna go down for all time.
And so Tyson, when I mentioned this to Tyson gets
a little pissed off and he says, well, what are

(26:55):
you talking about. He says, didn't die, Yeah he did,
but like again, what price? And this is all about
Cuss and Cuss. I can't tell you how many times
Cuss came across a kid and said, he's the next champ.
He's the next this, he's the next that. And he
did it first with Floyd Patterson, who basically wasn't much

(27:18):
more than a middleweight, and he did it with Mike Tyson.
And the idea that this crazy old guy, this brilliant,
crazy old guy, created the two youngest ever heavyweight champions.
It's kind of extraordinary. And looking on this, the first
part of Tyson's career, which is where this book ends,
it ends with the Sphinx Fire is actually underrated. You know,

(27:42):
we just kind of like, oh, it was great, you know,
you see the knock us, but what he actually accomplished
there is without precedent. It'll never that will never be
equal that first part of his career the last part.
I think that we became addicted to him for you know,
many of the wrong reasons because you're watching like the
Freak Show and it never read.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
And that that's, by the way, where I joined the
party when I started to write about boxing when Mike
was already The first Tyson fight that I wrote about,
I believe was the Savaast fight overseas, but I did
not go to the fight. The first fight I covered
was later that year when I went to Detroit to
cover him against Galata and then I covered.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
So he was really like, so that was after both,
the right.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yes, it was after both. I covered the tail end
of the career. I covered the losses to uh, you know,
Danny Williams and when he answer.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
A question, well, no, it's all it's all good in
the nostalgia. But I want to bring it back to
what you were saying, because again Dan and I are
of similar age.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Dan was in New York.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
I was here in Florida, and the phenomenon that was
going on with him fighting at times a couple of
times a month, sometimes three times a month, and sometimes
he would fight maybe twice in ten days, knocking people
out left and right, and then nationally he's on the
cover of Sports Illustrated when that really meant something. And

(29:04):
then suddenly he's on a fight on ABC's Wide World
of Sports and the whole country is now seeing the
New York phenomenon. That's when I think of the excitement
around Mike Tyson that built to Trevor berbick in the
knockout and the youngest heavyweight champ ever that that is
so nostalgic to me eighty five early eighties.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Orchestrated, Yeah, it was perfectly orchestrated. I think that, you know,
I don't think that Jimmy Jacobs, who was Custom Models protege,
and Tyson's manager, and Bill Cayton, where you know, the
holy men that some of the media made them out
to be, and you could see the media factions in this.

(29:49):
I mean to go back to the newspaper stuff to
me was fascinating because it really it reconstructs, and it
deconstructs where everyone's allegiances were, who was playing one angle.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
I have to say, by the way, you mentioned that
one of the first things I did, because I haven't
wrote a chance. I just got the book like the
day before yesterday, so I haven't really had a chance
to truly delve in other than the beginning. But I
went and I looked like I do with any book,
and I looked at the acknowledgments and the index, and
then the bibliography. And the first thing I did in
the index was look up the Tyson writers that I
knew and I worked with at the beginning of my career,

(30:21):
to see how much how many times Michael Katz is
in there, to see how many times Wiley Matthews is
in there. All these guys I first covered fights with,
and sure enough they're all in there a lot. So
I look forward to hearing and seeing what they had.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Cats is my Rabbi, God blessed.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
Kats was my rabbi too at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
He wouldn't he wouldn't admit to that. He was just
rumbling curse.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
I got. I have to ask you though about I
have got some questions about this thing. You talked about
how the book came into being. You met with the editor.
You want to do a biography again, you had done
biographies and other.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
I don't want to do this biography.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
Right, you were No, You're good to doing biography. You
did the great name of Bio and and Pistol, p
Marivich and ray Mancini. So they come to you with
the idea of Tyson. You don't want to do the biography.
I fast forward. You did a Tyson biography because that's
what this is essentially.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
No, But when you finally decide to take the editor
up on that position, Okay, I own the book. I
don't want to give back the money. I'm going to
do the Tyson book. Now you've made that decision, and
you're sitting here like, Okay, I'm writing a Tyson whatever
it's going to be. And I think to myself as
a writer myself, when you go to tackle a subject,
even just in like, you know, a fifteen hundred word story,

(31:30):
forget about a four hundred and thirty four page book,
which is what this clock's in at. How in the
world do you get your arms around such an overwhelming
topic when there's so much to do so many things,
you could write, so many people to talk to, Like
where in the world do you even start? You sit
down on the first day and you're like, Okay, I'm
writing a book on Tyson. Where do you start?

Speaker 3 (31:53):
I got a system, I'll type it. I want to
I want to get back to something that TJ said
before Get Cad. You remember, I want to go back
to Jimmy Jacobs and the idea of video and VCRs
and knockouts. But I started like everyone has his her
own system. And I remember us talking back in twenty eighteen.

(32:18):
I was I was completely flummoxed. And it's not a
luxury you had, Dan, because you're like knocking stuff out
all the time by a Crawford story. And I reported
this shit at it. I really did. I was really
proud about so much stuff on Crawford. And I was
determined to like write the ultimate Termans Crawford story and

(32:40):
you know, by his mother, him and omaha. And I
wrote that goddamn lead. I swear to god, I wrote
it like forty times. And I remember telling you, like
in between broadcasts.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
I remember this, like Dan, I tried, I.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
Wrote this lead blah blah blah, blah, I did seven,
I don't remember what it was. And you're like, what
are you nuts? And I did say that, like are
you I got and and and the answer is yes.
But I do think, even if the book suck, to
try to do them adequately, you gotta be a little
bit nuts. You have to be like, this is my

(33:19):
white whale. I think that. I think that Canelo and
I'll say it all wait, Crawford looked to Canelo is
his white whale. But you have to you gotta you
gotta be that nuts to do this thing. Probably how
do you start on dare? So here's how I do it.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
M h.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
It's always been the case. Whatever the prologue is, the
prologue is the most difficult thing and the thing that
everything's supposed to start from.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
In this case, it's that scene of him playing tennis,
and it's a complete right. I did read that part
of it.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
It's a it's a different kind of prologue, but that
was left over from when the book was still an essay,
and I still think it's one of the finer scenes.
And I kept it in there for that for that reason,
because I think it's a it's a good hook and
it asks the question, what the hell do we get here?
My technique for the for the body of the biography,

(34:17):
I establish a file like a hanging file, for every
year of the subject's life, sometimes for his parents' lives.
So there, and then a file for the genealogical stuff.
In this case, a lot happens before Tyson is born
that you'll see in the I don't think I'm giving

(34:38):
too much a little bit of it. In the second chapter.
I find he he has he has a brother, a
half brother, and and he's really smart guy. And you
can see where a lot of stuff runs through the
family tree, and his analysis of Tyson and the family,

(34:59):
and and the break make up of his of Tyson's
parents marriage and who the father was is really on point.
You could see again why certain things happen. But I
go through and I establish a file for every year
of the person's life, some of it because the technology

(35:21):
change has been a long time since I wrote a book,
So there there are these extraordinary digital archives. You know,
sometimes you can get loaded down with this stuff, but
if you want, you have a real time record of
what was said every single goddamn day, especially beat up

(35:42):
for fights, but not only that, but it's also it
allows you, in my case, to excavate a great deal
of Custom Model's life, because so much had been written
about custom Motto, and he was an object of fascination
for so many really prominent great writers, Norman Mail or
Gay to Lease, the guy who was my rabbi in

(36:05):
the business, Pete Hamill. And that's an it's an extraordinary perspective.
So I mean, I spend I spend a lot of time.
I spend a lot of time on Listen. I spend
a lot of time on Patterson. I spend a whole
lot of time on Cuss and I spend a lot
of time, you know, on Patterson listening. Because the writers

(36:27):
to this, the fable making you're dealing with, Tyson, came
up in a world where the writers still matter. Maybe
that's a good thing that we don't anymore. I personally
think it's not. I think I think that that Dan
the world we came up and was better for journalism
than when we passed for journalism or being a boxing

(36:50):
writer was sticking up your phone just saying like, Hey,
talk about this.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
Don't get me started, don't get me started on that ship.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
This is not a Hey, talk about. That's not a question, man.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
The I had the I had the.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Shape the fable that that shaped the fable. And because
there were these high end writers were so entranced with Cuss,
and Cuss was saying, this kid is going to be
x Y and Z. It got over and and at
that time, particularly in New York, you know where all
the broadcast power was headquartered, they all took their cues

(37:28):
from the fancy writers. People are saying, holy ship, we
got to get this kid, we got to sign them up.
Seth Abraham was particularly appreciate and what he saw Entyson,
and he you know, without knowing it.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
Well, first of all, I'm gonna interruptcause a lot of
people listening might not know who he is.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
He was running.

Speaker 4 (37:44):
He was running HBO Sports at the time.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
And and what what he what? What seth Abraham was
able to do by signing Tyson was what Tony Soprano,
a fictional character, did for HBO a decade and plus later.
You know, they conquered the eighteen to forty nine year
old male demographic, the idea that a fighter could do that.

(38:10):
I mean today, I don't know what the hell Tyson
would be worth, but you know they created a character.
And that's my argument is that in addition to being
a sport, and we can argue about all sorts of stuff,
but boxing is the most organic form of storytelling. Storytelling
is conflict, right, and the story of the first ingredient

(38:31):
you need is conflict. Boxing is a ritualized conflict that
works well on television when you don't screw it up.
The fighters come in basically naked, and what distinguishes either
a guy or girl is their backstories. So all the
crazy shit that made them fighters in their first place
is coming right with them into the ring. They bring

(38:51):
all their personal history, all their dysfunction, all their ambition,
and you're putting everything on the line there, and you're
willing to risk everything if you're going to screw that
story up. You know good as a writer.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Well, I'm glad that you wrote this, And I'm going
to say why, because number one, you're a great writer.
We know that that's not even up for debate. But
what I found interesting, and I'm like fifteen pages into
the book, I'm already reading stuff that I didn't know
about now, Mike Tyson, as you just said, by so
many writers for literally since the mid eighties has been
dissected and written and written and written every which way

(39:25):
a thousand times.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Tough to have anything original that.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
You haven't already finding stuff that I never knew about.
Like you mentioned a little while ago your file about
his parents. There's already stuff in there, Like I heard
some things from Mike over my years of covering him
and from others about his mom, but I never really
heard anything about his father or read anything in detail
about the dad. I'm fifteen pages in, I'm reading stuff
about the dad, Mark, How are you the only one

(39:50):
that's able to put that in this form? And nobody
else did that before you.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
I'm the only one. I took the assignment, you know,
and I worried too much. You know, I don't know,
you know.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
I think we're forty years into the Tyson experiment and
no one's written about his father. And tell you that
I'm aware of.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Uh, well, I will say that Mike Marley God his dad, Okay,
And back in eighty eight, I mean, no one got
the brother. But they there you go, they but they
did have but they did have the dad. You know,
it's you got to be obsessed. You gotta be you
gotta be nuts. You got to be willing to like,

(40:27):
I'm glad you're obed wrote the lad you want to lead?
How many times? What are you schmock back? I know
you didn't say that, but you're thinking that, and I'm
thinking that too.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
Well, I'm gonna I'll explain to the people that understand
this and you have had this conversation. We both have
been boxing writers for a very long time, but we
do it in a much different manner. You you write
these beautiful pieces that delve into the the mindset, to
the personality, to what they're thinking, and you agonize over
every single word the hents that takes you, you know,

(40:56):
two hours or two days to write the lead to
a story. And in that period of time, I've in
twelve notebooks. We come at it a different way. They're
both good in their own way, I guess, but it's
completely different.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
So I have a nervous breakdown writing twelve.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
I exactly. I think I wanted doing what you do,
and you think I'm nuts for doing what I do.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, no, I don't.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
I don't think you're nuts at all. No, not at all.
I just couldn't keep track of it. You gotta have
like tunnel vision to do this. And I said this
before I didn't. I haven't been a boxing writer for that.
I mean, I've been in boxing full time since late
twenty seventeen. But before that, I was a columnist, and

(41:36):
I there was no reason for me to be a
sports columnist. I got the job because I wrote about basketball.
I like writing about basketball. I was good at writing
about it, and that the Post had bought out all
the sports writers they needed, they needed, they needed a
columnist would work for next to nothing, and I would.
So I got the job by accident. And some of

(41:58):
it I liked. Some of it I thought was little ship,
you know, like covering the regular season baseball game and
you know July like okay whatever, or a k next
game and in February. But I love boxing. I love boxing,
and you know, I came up covering a lot of

(42:20):
organized crime like boxing, crack tailers, mafia trials, well you know,
stuff that was going on in the late eighties. Boxing
is where show business meets organize crime. And for my purposes,
it might not be good for the fighters, but for
the writers it was great. And I say this again
and again. Boxing made me a little bit better writer.

(42:41):
Than I actually am so wait. I gotta let this dog.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Out because I was gonna say I could see the.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Dog for the last sixty seconds.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
We'll edit this part, very distinguished group. Okay, thanks fellas,
we'll edit this.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
They got to leave that in.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
So hold on, Rayfield, Rayfield, you've taken this for like
the last eight minutes away from how I started.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
I got good save it.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
In the mid eighties, he became a phenomenon nationwide where
everybody got introduced with the knockout against Marvus Fraser and
they saw him beating Quick till Us on national TV,
that kind of stuff. Pick it up on the phenomenon
of Tyson. They're nineteen eighty five and leading eventually to
Trevor Burbrick in nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Dan, we did detour, but it was we did. But
you know, I know it's your your but I asked TJ.
Please let me get back to that. Thank you here.
I think there are a couple of components that no
one had seen before. First of all, people wanted the
heavyweight division back, and it was a great deal of

(43:58):
horrible prejudice director against Larry Holmes, merely because he was
not charismatic merely because he followed Ali. But Tyson comes
along and Jimmy Jacobs figures out, who had been a

(44:18):
producer with Bill Cayton, another of Tyson's ex managers. Jacobs
is a great PR guy, not a great producer, but
a great PR guy and relentless. So you take this
new technology with VCRs. You make a tape of all
these knockouts, and the knockouts are visually spectacular. The most

(44:42):
famous early one is Bourbon because Bourbert falls in every
damn corner of the ring. You take a knockout, you
splice it, You send it to every news director, sports editor,
sports right around the country, and they play on local news.

(45:05):
The sports editor starts asking about it, but you have
you have a way to play it now in the VCR,
So it's the knockouts themselves. The Marves Fraser knockout was
absolutely terrifying. But then you stick the mic in front
of his face and it's like a wrestler and you're

(45:27):
trying to reconcile not just the crazy shit that he's saying,
but the quality of his voice, the pitch in his voice,
and you're going to wait that the guy with that
voice just did that and trying to reconcile those two
things is absolutely nuts. You know what he's saying, like

(45:49):
I wanted to push the nose blowing up to his brain. Wait, holy,
I haven't heard that before. I haven't heard that before.
And in point of fact, you've got that particular thing
from Cuss like, oh but the bone up hit him
on upper cutting. Okay, great, And they fired the publicist,

(46:10):
they fired Tyson's pr guy after the fight because he
said that. In point of fact, it helped him get over.
It made people they were addicted to him. The most
famous Tyson monologue I think is after is the fight
in Scotland, right that you covered. I'm gonna when it's
a lead up.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
This is before Lewis. He wants to get Lewis in
the ring.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
He wants to get Lewis someone you meet your children at.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
A time when Len didn't have any children.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
But but it's it's the greatest wrestling promo that ever
was ever was done, was ever taped?

Speaker 4 (46:48):
Would you it's definitely up there.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
I mean, there's nothing to Hulk Hogan or any of
those guys ever said that got over that way. And
remember something Ion's career was a real at the top fight.
It was already done.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
And those those those wrestling promos, if you will, they
were in essence scripted. This was not scripted. This was
Tyson thirty seconds after he just.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
It was like the first experiment in reality TV or
tabloid culture, whatever the hell you want to call it.
I mean, I remember I remember as a as a
city side reporter covering. My first Tyson assignment was go
up to Harlem. It's like four in the morning, went
up to Harlem. He just got into a fight with
Mitch Greene. Where dapa dance. It's like a club. No,

(47:39):
it's a clothing star. Get your ass up there. Stop
what do you mean? And it was a goof at
the time, and his marriage to Robin Gibbons was imploded.
When I look back on it now as a grown up,
I realized that I'm watching a young man's life implode
because he can't deal with this insanity.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
People have to remember, he's like twenty two years old
at this point, something like that, twenty three years old.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
He's twenty one, he's twenty two, then he's twenty one
when he fights Sphinx. By the way, like, wasn't the chump.
You know, he did beat Larry Holmes, and the idea
that he decimates him, he destroys him in ninety one seconds,
is really rather extraordinary, and again it crystallizes this idea

(48:28):
of the knockout and the destroyer. But I want to
go back in Scotland with the I want to eat
your children's speech. He's really he's at that time, he's
grieving for a kid that he did time with as
a juvenile. That's what's really going on there. So underneath
what seems there's one level of Tyson which is like

(48:50):
the surface and you go, oh my god, it's whatever
comes in the surface with Tyson, it's like holy shit,
oh my god, I can't believe it. He knocked this
guy out. Can you believe what he said? And then
underneath it there's this other layer that that's that's more subtle.
It's usually more painful. You know. I have a theory

(49:13):
that I developed in the book about about Holy Fields
in the ear and there was a cuss his favorite fighter.
Apparently there was a guy named already Diamond. You're familiar, Dan,
Not really, No, you don't know Artie Diamond.

Speaker 4 (49:31):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Artie guy who was actually was said to be Cuss's
favorite fighter and the only guy who when they asked
Cus who who didn't feel fear? You know, Cuss his
whole theology was everybody feeling fear and it's okay, it's
how you deal with being scared. Okay, great, But the
only guy Cuss would have didn't feel fear was the

(49:53):
guy already diving, but like he was already punching. You know,
early in his career, a couple of legendary he fights
but didn't have you know, it wasn't nothing like a champion.
This is the late forties, early fifties. Leaves boxing does
what he does best, which is like he's a violent guy.
He gets busted for some on robbery his first day

(50:14):
in the yard. Guy comes up to him and says, hey,
you know, you know you can have anything you want here,
but you know you're going to be my wife. This
is a really scary con Okay, so what does lady
Diamond do? Come on, Dan, I.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Think the punchline has to be he bit his ear.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Off of spit it out. And remember if this is
applicable to box, and it's not just you and the
other guy, it's you the other guy in the audience,
and that sent a message that's and no one ever
messed with Already Diamond. Now what I am really proud
of that I got a guy who did time with
already Domond here and and the way he recalled already

(51:02):
with the kind of yeah, the kind of sensitivity that
he did, and he knew cuss and knew the whole crew.
What I'm me, I'm most proud of in the damn book.
But in Tyson's own book he goes on and on
about Arty Diamond and cuss. You. You know, like you know,

(51:25):
you go away to sleep away camp, you get like
scary stories or whatever, Mary Poppins or bedtime story, whatever
the hell. You go away to catskill and custom Models
fight camp, you get Arty Diamond stories like that's how Okay,
well it's a little nuts, right, okay, right, But but
that was held up to these kids as as as

(51:47):
virtuous behavior. That's how you get the bullied not to
take advantage of you, not to violate you. Okay, Remember
Tyson's a kid who had done a lot of time.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
Yeah, this is really German.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
This You have to make a statement now when he's
when he's locked in with the Vander and he gets
to a point where this ain't going any other way
and the Vander's fouling him or not. We get that's
a separate argument, okay, but I am throwing it out there.
I do think that the two, the two things are connected.

(52:23):
This this was the stuff that This was the stuff
that that Tyson got a steady diet of that that
he absorbed as a kid under custom models tutelage. And
I think that, you know, I try not to bullshit here,
but I do think it's exceedingly germane those stories.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
I think you're probably right about that. How when you
were writing the book, how how cooperative was Tyson with you?

Speaker 3 (52:49):
I didn't ask him for much because I never I
knew that, you know, he's not going to go through
his life story for Mark Kriegel, Who is you know,
the ship out of the print for I don't know
how long.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
But that was the only question, if he's going to
help you out?

Speaker 3 (53:04):
No, he was fine, he was he was actually it
was actually great.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
But but he did keep The point is he did
cooperate and help you to certain parts of.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
What he was. He was greater than I ever had
to write for him.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
To be Well, how much did you interview him for
the book?

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Two conversations. It was basically to establish ground rules. And
the only quote I used from those conversations was when
he pushed back on the idea that that that the
Mottel it wasn't necessarily like the greatest thing in the world.
It was more complicated, you know, And he has a
lot invested in in the deification of custom model and

(53:44):
I understand that, I really do. That's not my job
as the biographer. So the only line I used from
from from those sessions was, we will deny as long
as as long as I'm here, you know, he'll he'll
be glorified or something like that.

Speaker 4 (54:02):
Have you heard back from him about his like what
he thought of the book? Not that you necessarily care,
but did he think you did?

Speaker 3 (54:07):
You know what I do care? I always care.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
Do you think does he think you did him justice
in this book?

Speaker 3 (54:13):
I heard from his wife. We've emailed, and and she
was I think it's safe to say she thought I
was fair. There were some parts that you know that
did he he wasn't crazy about and we both knew that, and.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
That's the nature of the beast.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Though but but I think that she said I was
fair and it was good and it was complete, and
so I'm taking that. I don't want to. I can
remember the trying to remember what you wrote, but it
was very complimentary and more made me happy. But this

(54:51):
is also I can't write to please the subject, of.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
Course, But it's not like you're not like you're doing
his autoography, as as told to Mark Kriegele, you're writing,
but let me you're you're ready historical.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
But you asked about process here in this case, this
is your man. He has written, you know, one autobiography
which is luminous and really well done. I actually think
it's a little long, but it covers so much, and
another memoir about his time with costs. Then there are

(55:21):
like countless pieces, newspaper pieces, magazine pieces, broadcast pieces done
in real time. And I think that you know, when
you're a biographer, you know that what people are saying
in the moment tends to be more accurate than what
they remember because the memories are self serving. You forget shit,
you know, memories are corrupted, not necessarily by design, but

(55:46):
just we're fallible, we're human. So I didn't It's like
Joe Namath. I didn't need Joe Namath. That was a
more antagonistic situation.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
But you're talking about the biography you did on Joe.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Correct, But like typically what would happen is the source
would call Keiky Mike's wife and says, okay, speak to
this Kriegle and she would say yeah. And for that alone,
I'm grateful. That's all. That's all I ever. All I asked, like,
don't shut me down, and I'm great with that. And

(56:24):
I think that here's what I here's what I do think.
It wasn't my it wasn't my goal to guid him
up or to tear him down. But it was my
goal to be empathetic, to like to really understand who
is the real guy here? Because there's so many layers.
You know, you're you're that famous, there's so many layers
of of craziness and bullshit and what's the real guy?

(56:51):
What's the real kid? Who is he? Where? What does
he come from? Yeah? I think that we have some
answers here. I'm sorry, teacher, you do.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
Have some answers, but you didn't you you only got
to like you mentioned and now I didn't realize this
until I started to look at the book that it
only goes it concludes after Sphinx, that's only the he
fought for you know another. You know, that was nineteen
nineteen eighty. He fights another you know another, fights another
twelve years after that, you know, and then he has

(57:23):
obviously all the things that happened is in his one
on more than twelve years. He retired in five. He
had many more things that went on in his life.
He had, like you know, talking about the things he
went through, the death of his daughter. He went to
prison again on the road rage thing. You know, he
came back after tons of substance abuse. He became sort
of a movie star. All the different things that he's
done in that period of time. Are we seeing a

(57:44):
part too? Did you? Are you doing a second part?

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Oh, that's the plan.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
Okay, you don't want to give back the money?

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Well, I don't want to. I don't want to make
it sound cynical.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
I'm joking about that. No, no, no, no, what I'm saying there
needs to be part two.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
It's a legit question. But I want to. I just
want to go back. I didn't want to write a
Tyson biography. I didn't want to write about Tyson. When
I started thinking about it, I gradually started like to
see the possibilities of it. But I thought when I
started it, this was an essay about what I've learned

(58:20):
covering fighters.

Speaker 4 (58:22):
The four hundred page essay, I know, but that wasn't
what it was supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
And then it became biographical, and then I'm like, holy
and a lot of the interviews, a good many of them,
I did when the book was still one book, because
for instance, that the story I just told you about
Artie Diamond really doesn't pay off until you get to

(58:50):
the holy Field fights. And by the way, holy Field,
from the time he was a teenager was one of
the maybe the only with the exception of Lennox Lewis,
who wasn't scared of Tyson. I mean, Vander just like
my mom loves me, I'm chosen by God. I'm going

(59:12):
to beat his ass and he believed that from when
he was a skinny light heavyweight whatever.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
I think Lewis thought the same thing.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Lewis learned something and there's a scene in there, you
know Lewis. The Lewis was really effective in the book.
He talked with great candor and he's talked about it before,
but he spends the better part of a week in Catskill.
I think they're both seventeen. And it starts out, it

(59:42):
starts out really friendly, and the first day Tyson beats
his ass and sparn The second day Lewis begins to
catch up. In the third day, Lewis begins to catch
up some more. But he does walk away with the
sense of how to handle him that and unlike so
many guys, so many guys, he didn't allow his fear

(01:00:05):
to get carried away the abandoned I don't think was
ever scared period. Lennox had to learn that he wasn't
terrifying by dealing with his fear in the ring.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
And you know, so they weren't friendly though at that point,
Mark because and I mean another book. I'm thinking like,
when I talked to Lenox about these types of things,
he told me stories. I went to visit him in
training camp when he was preparing for the Tyson fight,
and he was telling me about how they sparred and
you know, there was pure blood in his mouth when
he bloodied him up. And you know, but in the
evening they would go, you know, because Kuss had this

(01:00:39):
amazing fight library that that Jimmy Jacobs ended up having,
and they would take a white towel or a white
uh like bed sheet and throw it over the the
clothesline and they would put the films up and they
would watch these videos together in the evening as just
like teenage guys. You know that we're that were boxing
competing in the friendly afterwards.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Yeah, but I mean I think that once the bell
rang on the first day, it runs across the ring
to just tear them all. And there is an element
there is a question, and there always is with fighters
in camp, like how much are you my friend? And
how much are you playing me? Now? They're not Those

(01:01:21):
are not mutually exclusive positions there, right, And you can
be friends with guys you know you're going to fight
the next day. You're looking for an ad or not
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
But not saying they were best friends, saying they enjoyed
each other, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Know, they definitely did. And and but but in Cuss
his mind on the third day, he's like, hey, stop,
you're going to fight this guy one day. Everything with
Cuss was with an eye toward the future, was with
an eye toward Tyson's immortality and his own And you know,

(01:01:55):
I think that I think that my suspicion is and
I think Lennox would bear me out on this. Those
three or four days made him advanced them immeasurably as
a fighter and his confidence.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
And are you already starting to put all this in
your files for the second part? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
No, I mean there's a lot of interviews I couldn't stuff.
You know, people I interviewed. I don't want to give
it away now, but a ton of stuff I have
I couldn't get into here. TJ.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Well, I just got to say this. But first of all,
we promise you this wouldn't take two days. So we've
done a bunch here tonight.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
See already, right, I love it bathering for an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Please emphasize to the audience because Dan and I talk
about this all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
We're now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I hate that we make us out to be old.
We're now forty years on from this era that we're
talking about in the mid to late eighties, thirty five
years on. Convey to the people with what you wrote
in this book. He was seemingly so indestructible in that era.
We cannot convey it enough to the younger fans, the

(01:03:02):
sub thirty year olds, et cetera. He seemed to be indestructible.
That's a big part of why it's so compelling thirty
five forty years later.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
It was in the knockouts. I don't maybe there have
been knockouts like that before, but the regularity and the
sort of terrifying quality of the guys falling the way
that they did, and the action was typically so compressed
because most of them were early knockouts. What you don't

(01:03:37):
get today, this sense of menace. He fought I think
fifteen or sixteen times in the year the year going
back a year from his first title in November of
nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Yeah, from day from like early eighty five tol eighty six,
he fought like almost twenty times I think.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Right, So, can you imagine, like, get a kid today,
like they get a fight, they need a year off,
or they got to go on sabbatical, they need a
social media break, or they got to like check into
whatever sixteen times fifteen sixteen times in the year leading
up to his title fight, and they weren't all bumped,

(01:04:21):
you know, contrary to you, just because there wasn't a
charismatic champion. But the matchmaker Ron cantsid something really interesting
to say to me. I literally had to push guys
out of the dressing room they were so scared. And
these were not contrary to the way we like to remember.

(01:04:44):
They weren't all tomato cans like Okay, he had some
tomato cans coming up. Everyone does. But a lot of
them were trained American heavyweights. They weren't guys who had
washed out in basketball or football. They knew what they
were doing in their ring, they knew how to handle themselves.
And there was scared shitless of Mike Tyson. That's just
the bottom line of it. And that type of fear

(01:05:06):
had never been broadcast before. It was never that palpable.
Maybe we didn't have the technology, maybe there was Maybe
maybe guys were that scared of Marciano. I don't know.
Maybe guys were that scared of our lead. I don't know.
I doubt it, but we know that they were that
scared of Tyson. And and that's an interesting phenomenon because

(01:05:26):
because boxing makes all the stuff that you're not supposed
to see available to see, it becomes intimate. You can
almost smell it, even though it's on television and you
get so damn close to it. And when you see
a knockout like Trevor Berbick or where you see him
just torture a guy, an Olympic gold medalist who was
supposed to be the next all lead in Terrell Biggs,

(01:05:48):
the one guy he really really wanted to hurt. When
you see a Marvis Frasier, when you see Marvis just
crumple in front of his fall, those those are things
that you cannot see in other sports. And you probably
watching television network TV TJ's you said, ABC of the markets. Yeah,

(01:06:10):
you're seeing something you probably, like in life, you probably
shouldn't see, but you know you cannot take.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Your eyes peract away.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
And that's and that's why, to this day, the only
guy that Jake Paul could have done that number like
one hundred and three live streams or whatever the hell
we're old guys.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
There, and eight I believe it was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Okay, one hundred and eight What is a one hundred and eight?
What is it? What?

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
One hundred eight million worldwide viewers?

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Okay, one hundred and eight million views. The only guy,
and Jake's a really smart guy. The only guy he
could have done that number with. It ain't Tank Whatever,
it ain't Tank Davis, Mike Tyson, It's Mike Tyson. It's
only Mike Tyson. He can be sixty, he can be seventy.
And that's why the seeds of that, and and and
by the way, Netflix was only asking him to do

(01:06:58):
the same thing for them in twenty whatever it is
that he did for HBO back in the eighties, he
remains the most potent economic engine in the history of
this or any other sport.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Now, I'm looking forward to seeing what you write about Jake,
Paul and Mike Tyson in the second volume of your
Tyson series.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
All right, so anything else big Dan here as we
wrap it with Mark Kriegel for the video in the
podcast audience. Besides get the book, I mean we're going
to say that again. Get the book, obviously. I can't
wait till support Mickey. Here's the way. I just have
this a very easy question. Mark from the time you
sat down, once you decided on doing this and started
putting your files together, until the time you turn in

(01:07:39):
the completed manuscript, how long did this take you to do?

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
I mean, writing the whole thing from you you sit down,
I'm going to do this until you turn in the manuscript.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
I started in, uh, and again I just torn a hamstring.
I was like really high on vicoting right now that
I'm like, what do I really wanted to do this book?
June of twenty twenty one, okay, and I handed in
handed in the manuscript the very beginning of twenty twenty work.

(01:08:17):
I worked on the manuscript through twenty twenty three.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
So it took you a year and a half basically, No, no.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
No, it was. It was long. I mean, that's a
first draft and you work on that manuscript, still take
it down, edit it. I could call me back, I'll
give you a date, But I mean it took about
two years to hand in the first raft.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
It wasn't six weeks, as we like to sarcastically joke
it took them out, but I mean it was.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
It was. But I only agreed to do it in
two years because I thought it wasn't a biography. Biography
is a different animal man, you know, and it's one
of the reasons I didn't. I was like, oh, I
read and that's kind of cheated.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
And I keep thinking though, like with this book, like
I watched Ken Burns do the biography, the phenomenal documentary
that is like I don't know four or six hours
about Jack Johnson, but a staff no, no, no, I
get that. And then I watched later which is amazing
where he did.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
It is the definative thing on Ali that he did.
I could see your your book or books on his
life with the stuff on the dad and through the
whole thing becoming the basis for like that type of
legitimate journalistic historical document of a documentary about his life,
which there's been tons of things produced, but I still

(01:09:42):
don't think there's been anything that you could say. Is
that the definitive history of Mike Tyson that covers all
the bases the way that the types of books that
you write do with your subject. Well, I'll look forward
to that too.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Again, we plugged the book one more time. I hold
it up. Mike Tyson very better.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
I got better.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Here is man?

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
There it is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
That is man.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
The making of Mike Tyson is out there. Hey, one
more before we're done here on the video in the podcast,
A lot of people are eager to know when are
you back?

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Where are you back?

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
We saw you on the Netflix broadcast of Canelo and Crawford.
You want to tease us a little bit when we
might see you again, and what else you're up to?

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
What else is up?

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
I'm still working for ESPN, but I don't. I mean,
you'll see me the next time I write for ESPN,
which is Dan knows it could be, could be months
from now, who knows. I don't. I don't know when
the next broadcast or what the next broadcast or anything
about You probably know more than I did.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
I probably do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Actually, Hey, we love you, We love your work, and
we look forward to seeing more of you as well
as reading the book and reading.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
More of you as well. So big Dan.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Other than that, I think we're good on this conversation
here about the book with Mark Kreeble. We wish you well,
We wish you success with the book. It's out where
if you get books through Amazon digitally everywhere, right, so
the actual story you can walk into and buy yes
by Amazon.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Guess next day you don't go listen.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Love it, love it that, Mark Prigel, thank you for
being with us on this special on this special live
show here that we did on the video on our
YouTube page and also on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
We appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
Thank you, guys so much. I have a great, great evening. Huh.