Mike Tyson says the ‘Undisputed Truth’ is he’s changed

LAS VEGAS — Spend a sunny afternoon at home with Mike Tyson and if the erstwhile Baddest Man on the Planet is in an expansive mood, he may indulge his cherished pastime: letting loose the performing pigeons he raises in his backyard to flap and somersault in the skies over southern Nevada.

And if the mood strikes him, the former heavyweight champion of the world may lower his guard enough to talk about something close to the bone: personal metamorphosis.

As a function of this discussion, the self-described piece of garbage from the sewage system in Brooklyn will address his killer instinct. It no longer compels him to be his own worst enemy, to alienate loved ones or lash out at all perceived slights. He’ll tell you how the chest-beating, “I’ll eat your children” Tyson — the knockout phenom who defended his title nine times and famously bit off a piece of opponent Evander Holyfield’s ear during a 1997 comeback bout — has ceased to pose any threat to public safety.

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And he may even confide how his raging id, “Iron Mike,” has been effectively defanged through focus on family life and sobriety. “Iron Mike is dead,” Tyson said, sprawled across a white leather sofa in his mini-mansion in a gated development on a bluff overlooking Sin City. “That guy tries to come out every once in a while. But I’m not him. I’m trying to be Michael Gerard Tyson now.”

This power-puncher-turned-self-reflective vegan, a rebooted and seemingly rebranded version of modern boxing’s hardest-partying Tyrannosaurus rex, is on conspicuous display in “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,” Tyson’s warts-and-all one-man show that’s hitting more than 30 cities — including Los Angeles’ Pantages Theatre from March 8 through 10 — on a national tour through the spring.

Directed by the fighter’s longtime buddy Spike Lee and produced by the live entertainment powerhouse Nederlander Organization, the stage performance documents Tyson’s roller coaster career and well-documented personal turmoil with an added dimension that comes as a surprise from a guy whose fists did all the talking for most of his adult life: a clarity that allows him to own the most sordid chapters of his past.

The show debuted in Las Vegas last year and ran for 10 days on Broadway to mixed but generally positive reviews. “The results are weirdly fascinating, and actually in keeping with a long tradition of pugilists retreating to the stage after their fighting days are over,” Frank Scheck wrote in the Hollywood Reporter. USA Today, meanwhile, called “Undisputed Truth” “equal parts stand-up routine, sentimental journey and self-pity party.”

But Tyson, 46, remains emphatic that cataloging his litany of chaos — including his stormy marriage to Robin Givens, compulsive cocaine abuse, squandering an estimated $400-million fortune and his 1992 rape conviction that led to a three-year prison sentence — in front of an audience does not represent some splashy attempt to rehabilitate his image. With his none-too-subtle Maori face tattoo and unapologetic demeanor, Tyson isn’t asking to be taken as a sympathetic narrator.

“My job is not to change anybody’s mind about me,” he said. “I’m going to talk about the issues that vanquished me. That’s the whole thing: I’m in this to win it from a moral perspective.

“And I don’t care if people like me or not. My job is to entertain — to put the data out there in a delightful way. I want people to say, ‘When can I see him perform again?!’”

All over the place

Hanging out with the man formerly known as Kid Dynamite, the youngest heavyweight champ ever to win the WBA, IBF and WBC titles, necessarily involves any number of freewheeling conversational zigzags, emotional sidebars and ponderous digressions.

As with his onstage monologue, Tyson is apt to careen from heart-rending tales of woe — how his mother was an “alcoholic drunk” who “slept with anybody who would give her a dollar” — to childlike remembrances of a string of outré predicaments. He claims he was kidnapped by Chechen mobsters during a promotional trip to Russia, stole a World War I military assault rifle at age 12 to rob and menace his Brooklyn neighbors and got rid of his pack of pet tigers because one “ripped somebody’s arm off in Texas.”

After retiring from boxing in the mid-’00s, the former champ’s weight ballooned to 360 pounds. And despite having dropped around 130 pounds from that peak weight, Tyson’s gusto for food remains undiminished. Midconversation, he invited a visitor to join him for an all-you-can-eat special at the local Indian restaurant. “I’m a buffet guy,” Tyson said with a barracuda-like smile.

Now four years sober — with the sunken bar in his home functioning as teddy bear storage for his 2-year old son ,Morocco — Tyson doesn’t flinch from recounting episodes from his days of sex addiction and substance abuse.

He recalled a weekend binge in a Las Vegas hotel room a few years ago when, hopped up on cocaine and Cialis and hooked up to a morphine drip while swigging on a $3,000 bottle of cognac, he claims to have physically assaulted seven prostitutes.

“I’m doing cocaine … so I had the Cialis to keep me pumping,” Tyson recalled. “I had to get the morphine to get me into that zone! And of course the Hennessy is just to be profiling. I started beating the …out of these women. My mind just started playing those tricks. I don’t have nobody to tell me to stop.”

Even with two breakout cameos highlighting the former champ’s cuddly yet still carnivorous side in the blockbuster “Hangover” movie comedies, Tyson never considered dramatizing his life events until he happened to catch actor-writer Chazz Palminteri’s one-man stage show “A Bronx Tale” in Las Vegas in 2011.

That autobiographical performance — about a boy from a working-class family lured into the web of organized crime by the Italian Mafia — was a revelation to Tyson. He saw a direct parallel between Palminteri’s immediate rapport with the audience and the type of paid meet-and-greet engagements Tyson routinely books in Ireland and the U.K.

“He said, ‘Baby, I want to try this. I believe I can do this,’” recalled Tyson’s third wife, Kiki Tyson, who attended “A Bronx Tale” with the fighter. “‘This is what I do when I go overseas: I’m telling stories. Why don’t we put something together and tell my story in a scripted way?’”

Kiki Tyson cut her teeth as a writer with a 2011 FunnyOrDie.com comedy sketch and was installed as an executive producer on a TV series based on Tyson’s life called “Da Brick” that moved toward production at HBO with “Entourage” producer Doug Ellin before losing momentum last year. She began writing “Undisputed Truth” in earnest in early 2012. But after an initial draft, her husband ordered her back to the drawing board to deemphasize his hardscrabble upbringing.

“I said, ‘No, baby, that’s not who I am,’” he said. “I explained to her: ‘I hurt people. I robbed people. Some people died, and some bad stuff happened. I can’t lie.’”

As the Tysons worked the untitled project’s script into shape, Las Vegas producer Adam Steck (most famous for the Australian male stripper revue “Thunder From Down Under”) independently envisioned mounting a one-man Tyson stage show. He left a business card at a local spa that Kiki and Mike were known to frequent.

Speaking by phone, the boxer and the producer quickly realized they were on the same page. And within months, Tyson found himself installed for a two-week run of “Undisputed Truth” at the MGM Grand’s Hollywood Theatre.

In spring 2012, in Poland to endorse a caffeinated energy drink days after the show’s two-week Vegas run, Tyson got a call from Lee. The firebrand “Do the Right Thing” director had been discussing the fighter’s show with Broadway stalwart James Nederlander of the Nederlander Organization. And the two pitched Tyson on his dream outcome for the performance: to bring “Undisputed Truth” to the Great White Way.

Down to the basics

Before Lee’s involvement, the show — which Tyson initially wanted to title “Boxing, Bitches and Lawsuits” — was more grandiose, with a backing rock band, a singer and an elaborate light show. But in keeping with Tyson’s no-nonsense ring demeanor, the director stripped the performance’s staging to just a few basic elements: a couple of video screens, a spotlight and the boxer’s recollections of the stories behind the headlines he made.

In “Undisputed Truth,” Tyson addresses the unresolved emotional fallout from his 4-year-old daughter’s death caused by a tragic 2009 treadmill accident. As well, he disputes reports of lasting enmity toward Brad Pitt caused by Givens’ supposed affair with the actor. “I wasn’t trying to beat nobody up,” Tyson said. “They say I walked in on Robin and Brad in bed. No! Me and Robin were already getting a divorce, but we were still sleeping together.”

Most controversially, the fighter uses the show as a high-profile soapbox to deny that he raped Miss Black America contestant Desiree Washington. In Tyson’s view, his 1992 conviction and prison sentence are hardly proof of his guilt.

“How many people do you know who serve time for murders they didn’t commit? Suddenly they’re overturned. But nobody came to save me because I had money,” said Tyson, who filed for bankruptcy in 2003. “I’m not crying over spilt milk. They’re going to call me a rapist until the day I die. But when somebody questions me, I’m always going to say I didn’t do it.”

Kiki Tyson calls her husband a “pure, sensitive soul” and stands by his assertion of innocence. “I don’t believe he has to apologize to anyone for anything,” she said. “Whatever he’s been through, he’s paid for. He beats himself up more than anyone could beat him up.”

Blake Ross, editor of Playbill magazine, points out that Tyson is not the first boxer to hit the Broadway circuit as a performer, an honor that belongs to Muhammad Ali, who logged a five-day run in the play “Buck White” in 1969. Still, unlike other athletes-turned-thespians who have been stunt cast in stage shows — Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath’s 1983 bow in “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” comes to mind — “Undisputed Truth” is all Tyson talking Tyson for nearly two solid hours.

“He certainly has an interesting life, such a tabloid life. Whether or not the people who come to see it are boxing fans or voyeurs, they know who he is and are interested,” Ross said. “Part of it is to simply find out if he can do it — sustain a monologue for 90 minutes.”

In Los Angeles, “ring-side” seats for Tyson’s three performances are selling for as much as $614 a piece, a testament to his and Lee’s combined drawing power.

But since kicking off in Indianapolis on Feb. 13, the “Undisputed Truth” tour has not been without financial hiccups. Last month, dates were canceled in Dallas and Phoenix because of sluggish box office. “Unfortunately, ticket sales in certain markets did not support the scope of the tour originally planned, and we’ve pulled back in a few markets,” producer Nederlander said in an email.

Not that Tyson is sweating it. By his own account, the pugilist is unafraid of falling on his face, having humbled himself so publicly and frequently in the past. Toward the end of his boxing career, Tyson’s withering self-contempt threatened to eclipse his sense of accomplishment. He regularly referred to himself as a “savage” and a “pig” and a “pathetic case” in interviews.

But on the heels of a six-episode Animal Planet pigeon racing series, “Taking on Tyson,” his widely praised “Hangover” appearances and a recent guest spot as a death row inmate on NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU” (for which some 7,000 people signed a petition entreating the network to keep Tyson off the show), “Undisputed Truth” has given him a new outlook.

You could sum up his current worldview as: Iron Mike is dead, long live Mike Tyson.

“I’m a schmuck. I blew money. I did time. But I’m still a human being,” Tyson said. “Maybe I am this: the bad guy who’s seen the light.”

chris.lee@latimes.com

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