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Speaker 1: All right, folks, welcome into a very special conversation. We

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have been looking forward to this as part of the

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Fight freefs Unite podcast series, but we're also doing this

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on our YouTube page here at the time that we're

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doing this on this September evening in twenty twenty five,

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I am merely the somewhat competent host TJ.

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Speaker 2: Reeves.

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Speaker 1: Our insider is Big Dan Rayphiel and look who's with

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us on the YouTube video. Hello to Mark Kriegel, who

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you know from the ESPN top ranked boxing coverage. Obviously,

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he has authored a ton of books off all kinds

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of different sports. We're most interested in the Mike Tyson

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book that he has written, which is called Badness Man

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The Making of Mike Tyson. And Mark is our guest

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for the full show here. This seven great to have you.

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Thank you for doing this.

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

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Speaker 2: Big Dan.

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Speaker 1: You've known this guy for a long time and he

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still returns your call and your text message. And that's

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Mark that you still do that for him, Big Dan,

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say hello to your guy.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely. I mean when I met Mark, we were I

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was working at USA today, Mark, I think at the

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time in two thousand, you were at that time still

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the daily news.

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Speaker 3: Maybe I was in the news. That was it.

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Speaker 4: We were, uh in two thousand, Yeah, we were. I

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think we met at the gym watching Fernando Vargas work

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out a couple of days before.

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Speaker 3: We find that that was the debut of the Ferocious Mobile.

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Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say so to let the audience right.

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It was right before Trinidad. We met at the gym

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and and he had bought this stretched green escalade that

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he told us. We asked him, like, you know, where'd

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you get where'd you get this from? And he told

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us that Ike Quarte bought it for him, meaning he

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had made so much money in his previous fight or

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a couple of fights earlier against i Quarte, that he

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bought this beautiful car. And then he didn't come with us,

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but the driver took Krigel and me for a ride

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in the in this stretch escalade around like the trip

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area I got.

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Speaker 1: I gotta say, this is already delivered in terms of nostalgia,

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and we're a minute into this and we haven't even

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gotten to the Mike Tyson stuff.

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Speaker 3: A bathtubbing there. It was a bar which was not

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good for Fernando quite impressive.

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Speaker 4: So that was back in the day when we worked

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for competitors, you know, and then years later we were

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for several years colleagues. A.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that was back in the day when there were

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newspapers and newspapers had boxing writers.

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Speaker 4: Ye.

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Speaker 3: Sure, which was a losing, that was an extraordinary Uh,

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it was real loss for the sport.

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Speaker 4: No, not a good not a good turn up events.

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Speaker 1: But YouTube it persevered on. We appreciate you being here.

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We thank the YouTube audience for finding us on video.

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If you're hearing us on podcast later on Sunday, come

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find the video on the Big Fight Weekend YouTube page.

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Podcast audience is hearing us as well. So we love

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all of this, all right. So before we get to

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the book, we can't have you on and not talk

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about Canelo and Crawford, which has just happened in the

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recent with Terrence Crawford pulling the upset of Canelo Alvarez.

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Speaker 2: Mark, I'm going to tee it up to you.

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Speaker 1: Your your thoughts on what he was able to do

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in defeating Canelo and becoming undisputed in the four belt

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era in a third different weight class, moving up two

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more weight classes to get this.

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Speaker 4: One, and Mark working on the broadcast.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and you were part of the broadcast as well.

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Speaker 3: I just looked it was kind of nice for me

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to actually being on the broadcast and picking it right

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for a change. You know, I thought Crawford was going

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to win from the beginning. I never really waivered. I

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think that Crawford's analysis was was pretty much spot on.

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What he told me in the lead up to the

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fight on fight week was most of Canelo's recent opponents

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were more than happy to go the distance. You know,

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their victory was in signing the contract. And I think

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that you know, the we talk a lot about the

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silk pajama stuff. It's become it's become a cliche. I

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think that it is relevant in the case of Canelo.

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He he just had a diet of guys who weren't

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particularly ambitious. I also think that if you turned down

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the big guy in ben Vete's when the when the

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ostensibly little guy has offered to you, you're obliged to

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take him. And I think, you know, Terrence knew exactly

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what he was doing when he was getting him. I

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thought it was really interesting the way he calibrated the risk,

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no rehydration clause, no catchweight, none of that stuff. If

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you want Turkey's money, this is what you're going to

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have to do. And what it did was to me

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ensure that Crawford goes down in history, which is what

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he wanted. He wanted an antecdote for being underpromoted for

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many years, certainly as a welterweight, for not being not

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having Al Hayman's one hundred and forty seven pound champions

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available to him, and you know, all all the and

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I think even going back to Omaha, being an outsider

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all those years, he wanted a corrective for all of that.

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He saw it, identified the target, and he beat the

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hell out of it.

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Speaker 1: M in the building that night, you were there with Dan.

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Give us your thoughts on that scene. First ever world

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title fight in Allegiance Stadium, the home of the Raiders. Again,

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fans love this. You've been to many a big event,

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But how did that raid? How did that compare?

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Speaker 2: What did you think?

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Speaker 3: I've never seen anything like that in the States. I mean,

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I have, you know, I was in Wembley for Tyson Fury,

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but I haven't seen anything like this in the States.

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I thought it was great, just that they could, you know,

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fill that place up. I like the undercard, I liked

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the Lester Martinez and yeah, good fight, really really wonderful.

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I'd like this. I think that it was right. Uh yeah,

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I don't think that there was at the WBC.

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Speaker 4: I don't.

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Speaker 3: They don't get too much right. But I think the

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calling for an immediate rematch was was certainly the right call.

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I think it was that that was the kind of

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lead up that fans needed to see, and I thought

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that I guess it was an upset. I didn't really

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think it was, but to see a smaller guy do

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this to someone who is common deer boxing and whose

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whose economic min was was so powerful for so many years,

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there was a great night. Really, we don't get that

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many Wow, that was a great night night, but that

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was one.

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Speaker 4: Of them, except that the main events started at twelve

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thirty three am.

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Speaker 3: I didn't like. Look, you know, I don't like the

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bands and I'm not the producer, but I mean the

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fights themselves. Look, I mean you could judge many of

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our shows and the gutty quibval with it.

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Speaker 4: I want to ask you one thing about that, because

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I've been criticized personally about it a mill a million

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times since the fight happened, and I don't remember hearing

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what your thoughts were in terms of how you scored it,

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or who you thought was ahead, or how it went.

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One eleven, okay, so you had it for Crawford somewhat.

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Why so I had it one fifteen, I'm sorry, yeah,

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one fifteen to one thirteen, having it even after ten rounds,

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as did two of the judges, and giving Crawford very

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obviously rounds eleven and twelve. Uh, And so TJ and

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I speak many times on this show about what we

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consider the range of acceptable scores, and for me, the

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range of acceptable scores on Terrence Crawford's win against Canelo

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was anywhere from what you just said, one seventeen to

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one eleven to one fifteen to one thirteen, So anywhere

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from nine three to seven five. There were two rounds

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kind of swinging because there were some close rounds seemed

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reasonable were what do you make of people that think

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that this for somebody to say it was seven rounds

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to five with him closing up so strongly that somehow

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you must be on the take and the in the

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tank for Canelo. If you had it that close.

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Speaker 3: Look. I mean, I think that we all know that

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almost everyone's default position in boxing is the insult you're

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a liar, you're on the take, you suck die okay.

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Thanks that for some reason, that's like the acceptable position,

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you know, you suck okay. Great. I mean, I'm surprised

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Dan like one fifteen thirteen is a little a little

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too close for me. But I've done some hair brain things.

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I'm not saying that was necessarily a hair brain I

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thought it was. Look, here's the thing. Canello never had

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him in trouble. Canelo never hurt him. I don't think

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that I saw a punch that really caused Terence to

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pause and go, oh wow, I can't press forward. You know,

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his confidence grew as as the fight went on. What

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we do agree on was that the separation came in

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the latter round, right.

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Speaker 4: For sure, And he was walking them down the last

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who rounds the small guy.

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Speaker 3: Him? And that's and and and that's Terrence, And I

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think that he got. What was interesting to me is

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that this is a calculated orchestrated attempt to get everything

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back in one night, everything that he was denied. You know, Omaha,

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top rank, PBC, everyone who screwed him, everyone who thinks

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screwed him, all of it, lawsuits, the whole bit. I'm

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going to get it back in one night. And I

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can't recall a night that worked out more perfectly for

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a fighter.

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Speaker 4: Maybe the night that the fight Errol Spence.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we were there for that night. Dan and I

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were both there for that night, and he destroyed Spence.

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So maybe he got a measure of it that night,

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but certainly the remaining portion he got an Allegiance stadium

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with Canelo.

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Speaker 2: I agree.

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Speaker 3: The difference is that the I stand correct and the

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Spence fighter is more dramatic because he knocks him out

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and he physically dominates a guy who had been a

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physically dominating champion. But going up, it's not really two

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weight classes, it's basically three. And by the way, what

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he told me about Madumov going into the fight I

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think turned out to be largely true, is that I

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understand Magiumov was not his most impressive night. Magiamov was

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big and long, and he had a kind of unique

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rhythm and Canelo was not going to duplicate that. And

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that's what Crawford told me. It's like, what what what

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Madumov did is not applicable here, and I think that

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with that fighting, that's pretty much true. But his analysis

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was so right, and h the idea that he asked

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for it and he asked to go up that much

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was extraordinary to me.

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

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Speaker 3: No, none of the I mean no unlike, no rehydration

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like you know, tank and none of the catchweights, none

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of that crap. And because he wanted and I think

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that he knew that if there were any of that stuff,

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people would have said, oh, you made Canelo come down.

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He's not. He's not in a place to dictate to

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Canelo anything. So he goes, Okay, you can have everything

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you want and you get all this this big, this

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big lump sum paint from Turkey. How can you say

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no now? And remember remember where Canelo had been going

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into this fight. He was about to do a deal

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with Jake Bull and that I think that goes to

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my silf Pajama's argument.

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Speaker 4: You know, But the way I described that when I

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spoke to Crawford and the lead up but to the

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fight now is that you, as a singular person essentially

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willed the fight to happen.

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Speaker 3: Agree, We absolutely we were there for one reason because Crawford.

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And I know that Crawford told his representatives, don't come

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to me with anything. Don't come to me with Virgil,

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don't come to me with boots. Don't come to me

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with anything if it's not Canelo. And he told the

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same thing to Turkey. That was a year ago. What

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I didn't know. First of all, apparently Bill Haney put

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this idea firmly in his head. I don't know when

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the conversation was, but you know, you got to give

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some props there. But in twenty twenty three, he had

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a he had a conversation with with Paco and the

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president of the WBO, and he says, I want Crawford,

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and Paco Basserel says, oh, no, he's too big for you.

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Wait a little while. No, I can't wait. It's not

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the time of my career. I can't wait for an

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anything anymore. And you know it didn't happen, but he'd

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been actively asking for behind the scenes since at least

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twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 4: Well he got it, that's for sure.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: So Ray big Dan's a historian. I'm a historian. We're

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of similar age, you're of similar age. A couple of

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fun ones, and then we're gonna move on to Mike

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Tyson because it's in this era, Sugar Ray Leonard prime

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welterweight against Terrence Crawford.

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Speaker 2: Who does Mark Kriegel have I made him pause? We

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made him.

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Speaker 4: Pause, dramatic pause. I mean, I'm gonna answer.

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Speaker 1: You already answered, you already answered. We're in the bag

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for Leonard Ray and I. Rayfiel and I are in

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the bag for Leonard.

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Speaker 4: We're in the bag for all respect to Terrence Crawford.

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He's a great fighter. A lot of these guys are

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great fighters. But I'm not going against Sugary Life. Is

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any welterweight in the history of body Do you.

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Speaker 2: Make it unanimous?

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Speaker 1: Or would you take Crawford welterweight prime against welterweight prime Life?

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Speaker 4: Maybe Sugar Ray Robinson if we have the video to watch.

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Speaker 2: Him and ask him about Sugar Ray Robbs.

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Speaker 4: I'm saying who I would pick Leonard to lose to it.

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Speaker 3: I'm not as smart as you guys, but here, okay,

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here's the thing. All right, you're right with what you

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say about about Leonard, But I could imagine either scenario.

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And because I mean you, Crawford doesn't switch much anymore.

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But you just see, you just saw a guy handle

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a great one hundred and sixty eight pounder. By the way,

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before we go away from this, and I'm not I'm

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ducking only a little bit, but what what what Canelo

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did do at one sixty eight was historic and he

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does deserve as props to that. So it wasn't like

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he beat a chump, And it wasn't just like he

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beat a guy who'd been wearing silk pajama. That kind

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of weight jump with his frame, you couldn't. It's too

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easy to say just because he's Ray Leonard.

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

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Speaker 1: Yes, he did off a three year layoff when Marvin

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looked indestructible.

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Speaker 2: We're just saying, we're in the back.

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Speaker 3: From seven forty seven to sixty is different than basically

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forty seven to sixty eight.

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Speaker 4: Here like this, maybe you don't want to make a

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pick mark, but how about this, can we agree.

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Speaker 3: That he did it at thirty eight years old? I

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think that I think that I think that when when

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Leonard beat if, I'm not if I'm not mistaken when

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when Leonard beat Hagler he was what thirty two?

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Speaker 4: No, he was thirty and Hagler was thirty two.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.

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Speaker 4: But I think we'll.

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Speaker 3: Agree a guy to jump up and wait to created

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completely different physique at that advanced age. That's without pressing.

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So I'm talking to like, you really do have an

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encyclopedia thirty eight jump up cheese.

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Speaker 4: But the thing is, how about this Because of the

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style that they both fight in and the way they.

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Speaker 3: Cross, I'm leaning Leonard is that that's good.

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Speaker 4: But I would say this it would be a hell

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of a fight obviously. Oh yeah, tremendous.

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Speaker 1: And we love the nostalgia, and that's now going to

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00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:19,480
work our way to being nostalgic about Mike Tyson and

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Mark Kriegel's book, which is out Rayfield, Holding it up,

307
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:30,200
Get it closer to the camera, Bad Man.

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Speaker 2: Of Mike Tyson. There it is from Mark Krigel.

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Speaker 4: Sent this to me in the mail with a beautiful inscription.

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Thank you for this, Mark. I can't wait the Delvin

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and Love page.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So I begin these conversations the same way. What

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led you other than the obvious iconic heavyweight champion from

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the what led you to want to write the book? Go?

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Speaker 3: And editor called me and I owed the publisher a book,

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and he goes, would you be willing to do Mike Tyson?

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And the first thing I thought it was like, the

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last thing I want to do is like Tyson, Like,

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there's no way I want to do Mike Tyson. I

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covered him in my formative years as a columnist. There's

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a there's a newspaper reporter. But what he was really

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asking me about was, like about the the current iteration

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of Mike Tyson? How you know this was? This was

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not far removed from his I guess his first comeback,

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not the Jake Paul thing, but uh, I'm blanking. Was

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this the.

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Speaker 2: Expedition when he bought Roy Jones?

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Speaker 4: And after it was after the Roy fight, so still

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in the pandemic was going on.

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Speaker 3: It was just after the pandemic, and I just actually

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this is he says, Hey, you know the money's due.

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I didn't want to give back the money, but I

333
00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:06,799
owe the publisher of book. How about Tyson? I'm like,

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I just tore my hamstring, like ripped it up. I'm

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waiting to go into surgery and I'm on the Viking

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Ends and I'm like, like, I'm thinking, like what body

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part would I rather stick like a nail and go

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revisit all the crap that I wrote about Tyson in

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the nineties. I'm like, nowhere. A friend of mine says, like,

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what are you talking about? Like, it's your duty as

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a writer. You can't get money back. So I started

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to actually think about it, and I thought about I

343
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saw him in twenty twelve, Okay, and this guy was

344
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like the designated villain in my column, like, no matter

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what happened, Tyson sucks. Are you need to talk about

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your default position? And he made it very good villain

347
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and you know, for a young for young columnist, it

348
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was kind of it was kind of perfect. But I

349
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remember seeing him in twenty twelve at the previews for

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his one man show, I'm just Beauty Truth, and I'm

351
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watching him this guy I just savaged, and I start

352
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like weeping. I weep easy. But I meet him after

353
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the show and we start to talk, and it really

354
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stayed with me.

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Speaker 4: You at Mark, at this point, you hadn't seen him

356
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for a while, right, Yeah, And I have to believe

357
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with all the things that you wrote, about If anybody

358
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goes back and reads your copious amounts of copy from

359
00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:35,000
your stints at the Daily News and the New York Post,

360
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a lot of what you wrote about Tyson was not

361
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exactly nice about him. So I can't imagine he had

362
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a positive view of you at that time. No, I

363
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mean it was.

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Speaker 3: I mean I wrote, I wrote well, but horribly of him. Yeah.

365
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Speaker 4: No, your writing was good, but you savaged him, savage

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him daily practically.

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Speaker 3: Well never I had a chance. Okay, right, and uh,

368
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I'm crying about thinking about this guy. So I run,

369
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I run an idea by the by the editor, and

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he goes, oh, it's great, right, And the book was

371
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The book was intended. It started as a kind of essay.

372
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I said, I don't want to write a biography about Tyson.

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His life is too well known, the bar is too high.

374
00:20:31,519 --> 00:20:33,480
What am I going to What am I going to

375
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tell people? But I did want to write a book

376
00:20:36,279 --> 00:20:40,079
about what I thought at that time was looking at

377
00:20:40,079 --> 00:20:43,880
his life probably the greatest single comeback I've ever seen.

378
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And I'm not like guiding up the guy for the

379
00:20:46,079 --> 00:20:48,960
hell of it, but I do think that there's some

380
00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:52,480
virtue in what he has survived. And you know, you

381
00:20:52,519 --> 00:20:54,519
get older, you're not as much of an asshole as

382
00:20:54,519 --> 00:20:56,759
you were when you were in your twenties and your thirties,

383
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and you knew everything in the whole world as a

384
00:20:59,240 --> 00:21:04,000
young columnist. And you know, I start to catalog the

385
00:21:04,039 --> 00:21:13,720
thing that that he survived, which is booze cocaine, found Brooklyn, molestation, incarceration,

386
00:21:14,079 --> 00:21:18,319
two stretches of incarceration as a juvenile and an adult,

387
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don King going broke, and the kind of fame that

388
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was basically a form of insanity. And here he is.

389
00:21:28,039 --> 00:21:31,680
And one of the sources I have in the book

390
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:38,880
opening see is watching Tyson watch his kid play tennis

391
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,279
in you know, somewhere in Orange County of all places.

392
00:21:42,319 --> 00:21:46,039
Now I think about this, That's not anything I could

393
00:21:46,079 --> 00:21:50,559
have imagined. And the idea that Tyson has has outpaced

394
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:55,119
even my imagination or anyone's imagination. His own imagination is

395
00:21:55,119 --> 00:21:58,240
to me extraordinary. And the one thing that even the

396
00:21:58,319 --> 00:22:02,839
haters like me and the acolytes on the Tyson side

397
00:22:02,839 --> 00:22:05,759
could agree on, and I think, Daniel, you'll bear me

398
00:22:05,799 --> 00:22:08,119
out on this. The one thing that everyone agreed on

399
00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:12,759
was like the over under on his survival, his mortality.

400
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:18,799
Take the under because he was going and and there's

401
00:22:18,839 --> 00:22:22,279
a million ways he could have gone, but here he is.

402
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,759
And then that you have this other idea which no

403
00:22:25,799 --> 00:22:34,440
one expected, which is, holy shit, he's beloved. So this book,

404
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:37,319
this book is an attempt to figure out what went

405
00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:40,200
into the making of him. I should say, because I

406
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:43,839
didn't want to write a biography. There was no way

407
00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:49,480
in help it. But Tyson generates so much damn story.

408
00:22:49,839 --> 00:22:55,680
There's so much story that it became more and more

409
00:22:55,759 --> 00:23:00,920
and more biographical until I got to the point where

410
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:03,519
I meet with my editor. I think it was like

411
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:08,359
March of twenty three. I say, I'm glad you like

412
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:12,759
the manuscript. But you know, I'm glad you like the manuscript.

413
00:23:12,799 --> 00:23:16,079
But we got about eighty ninety thousand words here and

414
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,519
he's still like sixteen or seventeen. You know what he

415
00:23:19,559 --> 00:23:22,680
wanted to do. He goes, there is there a place

416
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:26,920
that you can break it and do a two part?

417
00:23:27,079 --> 00:23:28,519
I said, there's no way in hell.

418
00:23:29,519 --> 00:23:32,200
Speaker 4: But of course the other is the other is I.

419
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 3: Mean because the way that I I mean. So it

420
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,680
started as an essay and it was about Tyson, it

421
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:39,759
was about New York, and a lot of it was

422
00:23:39,759 --> 00:23:46,359
about writers. And fighters and the narcissism that the boxing

423
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:50,720
hinges on. Like to me, one of the things this

424
00:23:50,759 --> 00:23:56,920
book taught me was that reinforced boxing is the greatest

425
00:23:57,039 --> 00:24:04,559
symphony in narcissism anywhere. And it's it's not just the fighters,

426
00:24:04,559 --> 00:24:08,279
although you need you need to be absolutely crazy with

427
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:11,640
yourself to walk into the ring and then walk into

428
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:15,759
the ring and fancy yourself a heavyweight champion. But this

429
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:21,119
is also about the promoters narcissism, the promoters egos, the writers,

430
00:24:21,599 --> 00:24:26,279
as we well know, especially when the days when part

431
00:24:26,319 --> 00:24:29,119
of the engine here was the writers from different papers,

432
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:34,240
particularly in New York. And then what this is about,

433
00:24:34,799 --> 00:24:39,000
as much as anything, is the ego of the trainer.

434
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:45,759
In this case it's custom model who made him. My question,

435
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,799
My question to Mike, and he pushed back on this

436
00:24:48,079 --> 00:24:52,599
was at what price? At what price? I mean he

437
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,119
was brilliant, he was charming. He had seduced a generation

438
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,599
of really accomplished writers, and I think that was the

439
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:03,880
basis for Cuss his great pr and there was something

440
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:07,640
to it, it really was. But like if you're if

441
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:10,680
you're putting a kid who was just out of a

442
00:25:10,799 --> 00:25:14,759
juvenile lockup under hypnosis at the age of like fourteen

443
00:25:14,839 --> 00:25:17,440
or fifteen, and you're telling them like you're a scouraged

444
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:22,000
from God. You're you know, every punches of bad intentions

445
00:25:22,039 --> 00:25:26,599
and take you know, intended to like decapitate somebody. What

446
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,440
did you think you were going to get? Like really,

447
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,799
what the hell did you think you were going to get?

448
00:25:32,319 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 4: What he got?

449
00:25:33,559 --> 00:25:37,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, And but Tyson talks about this too, and he

450
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:41,039
in the way, Tyson's even more insightful than he knows.

451
00:25:42,039 --> 00:25:45,359
You know, his his idol wasn't all.

452
00:25:45,279 --> 00:25:47,799
Speaker 4: Lead d right, it was Durant.

453
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:49,799
Speaker 3: It was the street guy, was the guy who was

454
00:25:49,839 --> 00:25:52,240
you know, said I'm going to do unspeakable things to you.

455
00:25:52,880 --> 00:26:00,000
But but he's the most potent engine all of this stuff,

456
00:26:01,079 --> 00:26:05,319
this custom model, custom models and ambition, custom Model's ego.

457
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:09,240
I'm not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, but you

458
00:26:09,319 --> 00:26:11,559
got to you gotta look at it. I mean, can

459
00:26:11,599 --> 00:26:14,799
you imagine, you know, the normal progression is, let's say

460
00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:16,559
you get a kid out of like, you know, a

461
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:20,000
juvenile prison or juvenile lock up, and you said, we're

462
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:23,200
gonna give you another chance, and the kid's great, okay, wonderful,

463
00:26:23,799 --> 00:26:26,000
And the first thing is that we'll put you in

464
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,519
the gloves or you know, we'll get you a trainer,

465
00:26:28,599 --> 00:26:32,920
we'll work with you. Maybe one day you'll be turn pro.

466
00:26:33,279 --> 00:26:35,920
We'll call you a champ kid. But from the beginning,

467
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:42,119
Tyson was there to avenge Ali's lost homes. Tyson was

468
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:44,440
there telling them, you're going to be the greatest, the biggest,

469
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,519
the youngest, the baddest. You're gonna go down for all time.

470
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:53,279
And so Tyson, when I mentioned this to Tyson gets

471
00:26:53,279 --> 00:26:55,519
a little pissed off and he says, well, what are

472
00:26:55,519 --> 00:27:00,599
you talking about. He says, didn't die, Yeah he did,

473
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,799
but like again, what price? And this is all about

474
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,559
Cuss and Cuss. I can't tell you how many times

475
00:27:07,759 --> 00:27:10,839
Cuss came across a kid and said, he's the next champ.

476
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,519
He's the next this, he's the next that. And he

477
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:18,279
did it first with Floyd Patterson, who basically wasn't much

478
00:27:18,319 --> 00:27:21,559
more than a middleweight, and he did it with Mike Tyson.

479
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,759
And the idea that this crazy old guy, this brilliant,

480
00:27:24,799 --> 00:27:29,119
crazy old guy, created the two youngest ever heavyweight champions.

481
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:35,480
It's kind of extraordinary. And looking on this, the first

482
00:27:35,519 --> 00:27:38,160
part of Tyson's career, which is where this book ends,

483
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:42,480
it ends with the Sphinx Fire is actually underrated. You know,

484
00:27:42,519 --> 00:27:45,240
we just kind of like, oh, it was great, you know,

485
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:47,839
you see the knock us, but what he actually accomplished

486
00:27:47,839 --> 00:27:51,400
there is without precedent. It'll never that will never be

487
00:27:51,519 --> 00:27:55,599
equal that first part of his career the last part.

488
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,319
I think that we became addicted to him for you know,

489
00:27:59,519 --> 00:28:01,680
many of the wrong reasons because you're watching like the

490
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:03,960
Freak Show and it never read.

491
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 4: And that that's, by the way, where I joined the

492
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,119
party when I started to write about boxing when Mike

493
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:14,400
was already The first Tyson fight that I wrote about,

494
00:28:14,759 --> 00:28:16,880
I believe was the Savaast fight overseas, but I did

495
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:18,640
not go to the fight. The first fight I covered

496
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,440
was later that year when I went to Detroit to

497
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:23,440
cover him against Galata and then I covered.

498
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 3: So he was really like, so that was after both,

499
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:27,240
the right.

500
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 4: Yes, it was after both. I covered the tail end

501
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,039
of the career. I covered the losses to uh, you know,

502
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:34,039
Danny Williams and when he answer.

503
00:28:33,799 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: A question, well, no, it's all it's all good in

504
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,039
the nostalgia. But I want to bring it back to

505
00:28:38,119 --> 00:28:40,359
what you were saying, because again Dan and I are

506
00:28:40,359 --> 00:28:42,240
of similar age.

507
00:28:42,759 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 2: Dan was in New York.

508
00:28:44,279 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 1: I was here in Florida, and the phenomenon that was

509
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:51,160
going on with him fighting at times a couple of

510
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:54,960
times a month, sometimes three times a month, and sometimes

511
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:58,519
he would fight maybe twice in ten days, knocking people

512
00:28:58,559 --> 00:29:02,039
out left and right, and then nationally he's on the

513
00:29:02,079 --> 00:29:04,799
cover of Sports Illustrated when that really meant something. And

514
00:29:04,839 --> 00:29:07,759
then suddenly he's on a fight on ABC's Wide World

515
00:29:07,799 --> 00:29:10,759
of Sports and the whole country is now seeing the

516
00:29:10,799 --> 00:29:17,119
New York phenomenon. That's when I think of the excitement

517
00:29:17,119 --> 00:29:20,079
around Mike Tyson that built to Trevor berbick in the

518
00:29:20,119 --> 00:29:23,599
knockout and the youngest heavyweight champ ever that that is

519
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,279
so nostalgic to me eighty five early eighties.

520
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:34,079
Speaker 3: Orchestrated, Yeah, it was perfectly orchestrated. I think that, you know,

521
00:29:34,799 --> 00:29:39,319
I don't think that Jimmy Jacobs, who was Custom Models protege,

522
00:29:39,519 --> 00:29:43,000
and Tyson's manager, and Bill Cayton, where you know, the

523
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,519
holy men that some of the media made them out

524
00:29:45,559 --> 00:29:48,680
to be, and you could see the media factions in this.

525
00:29:49,039 --> 00:29:51,279
I mean to go back to the newspaper stuff to

526
00:29:51,319 --> 00:29:55,559
me was fascinating because it really it reconstructs, and it

527
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:59,359
deconstructs where everyone's allegiances were, who was playing one angle.

528
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 4: I have to say, by the way, you mentioned that

529
00:30:02,559 --> 00:30:04,160
one of the first things I did, because I haven't

530
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:05,519
wrote a chance. I just got the book like the

531
00:30:05,559 --> 00:30:07,400
day before yesterday, so I haven't really had a chance

532
00:30:07,599 --> 00:30:09,680
to truly delve in other than the beginning. But I

533
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:11,279
went and I looked like I do with any book,

534
00:30:11,279 --> 00:30:13,519
and I looked at the acknowledgments and the index, and

535
00:30:13,559 --> 00:30:16,039
then the bibliography. And the first thing I did in

536
00:30:16,079 --> 00:30:19,119
the index was look up the Tyson writers that I

537
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:20,960
knew and I worked with at the beginning of my career,

538
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,480
to see how much how many times Michael Katz is

539
00:30:24,519 --> 00:30:27,200
in there, to see how many times Wiley Matthews is

540
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,359
in there. All these guys I first covered fights with,

541
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:31,440
and sure enough they're all in there a lot. So

542
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:33,960
I look forward to hearing and seeing what they had.

543
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 3: Cats is my Rabbi, God blessed.

544
00:30:37,279 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 4: Kats was my rabbi too at the beginning.

545
00:30:39,039 --> 00:30:42,279
Speaker 3: He wouldn't he wouldn't admit to that. He was just

546
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:43,720
rumbling curse.

547
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:46,319
Speaker 4: I got. I have to ask you though about I

548
00:30:46,359 --> 00:30:48,839
have got some questions about this thing. You talked about

549
00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:50,920
how the book came into being. You met with the editor.

550
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,559
You want to do a biography again, you had done

551
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:54,960
biographies and other.

552
00:30:55,039 --> 00:30:57,359
Speaker 3: I don't want to do this biography.

553
00:30:56,759 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 4: Right, you were No, You're good to doing biography. You

554
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,000
did the great name of Bio and and Pistol, p

555
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,920
Marivich and ray Mancini. So they come to you with

556
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:05,799
the idea of Tyson. You don't want to do the biography.

557
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:08,160
I fast forward. You did a Tyson biography because that's

558
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:09,119
what this is essentially.

559
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 3: Yeah.

560
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 4: No, But when you finally decide to take the editor

561
00:31:12,799 --> 00:31:15,680
up on that position, Okay, I own the book. I

562
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:17,039
don't want to give back the money. I'm going to

563
00:31:17,079 --> 00:31:20,160
do the Tyson book. Now you've made that decision, and

564
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:22,559
you're sitting here like, Okay, I'm writing a Tyson whatever

565
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,039
it's going to be. And I think to myself as

566
00:31:25,079 --> 00:31:28,000
a writer myself, when you go to tackle a subject,

567
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:30,720
even just in like, you know, a fifteen hundred word story,

568
00:31:30,759 --> 00:31:33,400
forget about a four hundred and thirty four page book,

569
00:31:33,599 --> 00:31:36,480
which is what this clock's in at. How in the

570
00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:38,880
world do you get your arms around such an overwhelming

571
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,359
topic when there's so much to do so many things,

572
00:31:42,359 --> 00:31:44,400
you could write, so many people to talk to, Like

573
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:47,960
where in the world do you even start? You sit

574
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:50,039
down on the first day and you're like, Okay, I'm

575
00:31:50,039 --> 00:31:52,039
writing a book on Tyson. Where do you start?

576
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:55,279
Speaker 3: I got a system, I'll type it. I want to

577
00:31:55,359 --> 00:31:57,720
I want to get back to something that TJ said

578
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:01,079
before Get Cad. You remember, I want to go back

579
00:32:01,119 --> 00:32:04,759
to Jimmy Jacobs and the idea of video and VCRs

580
00:32:04,799 --> 00:32:11,240
and knockouts. But I started like everyone has his her

581
00:32:11,279 --> 00:32:17,000
own system. And I remember us talking back in twenty eighteen.

582
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:22,440
I was I was completely flummoxed. And it's not a

583
00:32:22,519 --> 00:32:25,519
luxury you had, Dan, because you're like knocking stuff out

584
00:32:25,559 --> 00:32:30,359
all the time by a Crawford story. And I reported

585
00:32:30,359 --> 00:32:32,720
this shit at it. I really did. I was really

586
00:32:32,759 --> 00:32:35,319
proud about so much stuff on Crawford. And I was

587
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:40,319
determined to like write the ultimate Termans Crawford story and

588
00:32:40,519 --> 00:32:44,759
you know, by his mother, him and omaha. And I

589
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:48,440
wrote that goddamn lead. I swear to god, I wrote

590
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:52,559
it like forty times. And I remember telling you, like

591
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:54,400
in between broadcasts.

592
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:58,119
Speaker 4: I remember this, like Dan, I tried, I.

593
00:32:58,039 --> 00:33:01,039
Speaker 3: Wrote this lead blah blah blah, blah, I did seven,

594
00:33:01,359 --> 00:33:03,799
I don't remember what it was. And you're like, what

595
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,359
are you nuts? And I did say that, like are

596
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:09,920
you I got and and and the answer is yes.

597
00:33:10,039 --> 00:33:14,519
But I do think, even if the book suck, to

598
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,319
try to do them adequately, you gotta be a little

599
00:33:17,359 --> 00:33:19,759
bit nuts. You have to be like, this is my

600
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,400
white whale. I think that. I think that Canelo and

601
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:26,359
I'll say it all wait, Crawford looked to Canelo is

602
00:33:26,359 --> 00:33:28,640
his white whale. But you have to you gotta you

603
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,079
gotta be that nuts to do this thing. Probably how

604
00:33:31,119 --> 00:33:34,480
do you start on dare? So here's how I do it.

605
00:33:36,759 --> 00:33:37,039
Speaker 2: M h.

606
00:33:38,319 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 3: It's always been the case. Whatever the prologue is, the

607
00:33:41,519 --> 00:33:43,920
prologue is the most difficult thing and the thing that

608
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:45,559
everything's supposed to start from.

609
00:33:45,799 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 4: In this case, it's that scene of him playing tennis,

610
00:33:49,359 --> 00:33:51,960
and it's a complete right. I did read that part

611
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:53,680
of it.

612
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:56,279
Speaker 3: It's a it's a different kind of prologue, but that

613
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:58,960
was left over from when the book was still an essay,

614
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,680
and I still think it's one of the finer scenes.

615
00:34:02,039 --> 00:34:04,880
And I kept it in there for that for that reason,

616
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,720
because I think it's a it's a good hook and

617
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:10,719
it asks the question, what the hell do we get here?

618
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:16,199
My technique for the for the body of the biography,

619
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:22,639
I establish a file like a hanging file, for every

620
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,920
year of the subject's life, sometimes for his parents' lives.

621
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:32,280
So there, and then a file for the genealogical stuff.

622
00:34:32,639 --> 00:34:36,599
In this case, a lot happens before Tyson is born

623
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:38,679
that you'll see in the I don't think I'm giving

624
00:34:38,679 --> 00:34:41,880
too much a little bit of it. In the second chapter.

625
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:46,559
I find he he has he has a brother, a

626
00:34:46,559 --> 00:34:52,760
half brother, and and he's really smart guy. And you

627
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,159
can see where a lot of stuff runs through the

628
00:34:55,159 --> 00:34:58,679
family tree, and his analysis of Tyson and the family,

629
00:34:59,199 --> 00:35:03,920
and and the break make up of his of Tyson's

630
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:08,519
parents marriage and who the father was is really on point.

631
00:35:08,639 --> 00:35:12,800
You could see again why certain things happen. But I

632
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,840
go through and I establish a file for every year

633
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:21,280
of the person's life, some of it because the technology

634
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:23,559
change has been a long time since I wrote a book,

635
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:28,440
So there there are these extraordinary digital archives. You know,

636
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:31,280
sometimes you can get loaded down with this stuff, but

637
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:37,039
if you want, you have a real time record of

638
00:35:37,079 --> 00:35:42,280
what was said every single goddamn day, especially beat up

639
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:45,719
for fights, but not only that, but it's also it

640
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:49,519
allows you, in my case, to excavate a great deal

641
00:35:49,559 --> 00:35:53,679
of Custom Model's life, because so much had been written

642
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,280
about custom Motto, and he was an object of fascination

643
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:02,199
for so many really prominent great writers, Norman Mail or

644
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,480
Gay to Lease, the guy who was my rabbi in

645
00:36:05,519 --> 00:36:11,480
the business, Pete Hamill. And that's an it's an extraordinary perspective.

646
00:36:11,519 --> 00:36:14,440
So I mean, I spend I spend a lot of time.

647
00:36:16,599 --> 00:36:19,199
I spend a lot of time on Listen. I spend

648
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:21,360
a lot of time on Patterson. I spend a whole

649
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:23,679
lot of time on Cuss and I spend a lot

650
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:27,199
of time, you know, on Patterson listening. Because the writers

651
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:32,039
to this, the fable making you're dealing with, Tyson, came

652
00:36:32,119 --> 00:36:36,360
up in a world where the writers still matter. Maybe

653
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:38,519
that's a good thing that we don't anymore. I personally

654
00:36:38,599 --> 00:36:43,480
think it's not. I think I think that that Dan

655
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:47,000
the world we came up and was better for journalism

656
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:50,400
than when we passed for journalism or being a boxing

657
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,000
writer was sticking up your phone just saying like, Hey,

658
00:36:53,039 --> 00:36:54,119
talk about this.

659
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:57,440
Speaker 4: Don't get me started, don't get me started on that ship.

660
00:36:57,559 --> 00:37:01,320
Speaker 3: This is not a Hey, talk about. That's not a question, man.

661
00:37:03,159 --> 00:37:04,360
Speaker 4: The I had the I had the.

662
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 3: Shape the fable that that shaped the fable. And because

663
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,639
there were these high end writers were so entranced with Cuss,

664
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:14,599
and Cuss was saying, this kid is going to be

665
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:19,760
x Y and Z. It got over and and at

666
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,360
that time, particularly in New York, you know where all

667
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:27,880
the broadcast power was headquartered, they all took their cues

668
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,079
from the fancy writers. People are saying, holy ship, we

669
00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:32,920
got to get this kid, we got to sign them up.

670
00:37:34,119 --> 00:37:38,519
Seth Abraham was particularly appreciate and what he saw Entyson,

671
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:40,719
and he you know, without knowing it.

672
00:37:41,039 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I'm gonna interruptcause a lot of

673
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:43,840
people listening might not know who he is.

674
00:37:44,079 --> 00:37:44,639
Speaker 3: He was running.

675
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,159
Speaker 4: He was running HBO Sports at the time.

676
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 3: And and what what he what? What seth Abraham was

677
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:57,519
able to do by signing Tyson was what Tony Soprano,

678
00:37:57,639 --> 00:38:03,039
a fictional character, did for HBO a decade and plus later.

679
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,760
You know, they conquered the eighteen to forty nine year

680
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:10,039
old male demographic, the idea that a fighter could do that.

681
00:38:10,199 --> 00:38:11,920
I mean today, I don't know what the hell Tyson

682
00:38:12,079 --> 00:38:16,239
would be worth, but you know they created a character.

683
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:20,079
And that's my argument is that in addition to being

684
00:38:20,079 --> 00:38:22,880
a sport, and we can argue about all sorts of stuff,

685
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:27,079
but boxing is the most organic form of storytelling. Storytelling

686
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,440
is conflict, right, and the story of the first ingredient

687
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,519
you need is conflict. Boxing is a ritualized conflict that

688
00:38:34,559 --> 00:38:37,159
works well on television when you don't screw it up.

689
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,519
The fighters come in basically naked, and what distinguishes either

690
00:38:42,559 --> 00:38:46,159
a guy or girl is their backstories. So all the

691
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,079
crazy shit that made them fighters in their first place

692
00:38:49,159 --> 00:38:51,519
is coming right with them into the ring. They bring

693
00:38:51,639 --> 00:38:54,840
all their personal history, all their dysfunction, all their ambition,

694
00:38:55,159 --> 00:38:58,679
and you're putting everything on the line there, and you're

695
00:38:58,679 --> 00:39:00,960
willing to risk everything if you're going to screw that

696
00:39:01,039 --> 00:39:03,079
story up. You know good as a writer.

697
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:05,280
Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad that you wrote this, And I'm going

698
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,199
to say why, because number one, you're a great writer.

699
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:09,360
We know that that's not even up for debate. But

700
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:12,320
what I found interesting, and I'm like fifteen pages into

701
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,400
the book, I'm already reading stuff that I didn't know

702
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:17,800
about now, Mike Tyson, as you just said, by so

703
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:22,039
many writers for literally since the mid eighties has been

704
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,800
dissected and written and written and written every which way

705
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:26,519
a thousand times.

706
00:39:26,559 --> 00:39:29,760
Speaker 2: Tough to have anything original that.

707
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 4: You haven't already finding stuff that I never knew about.

708
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,800
Like you mentioned a little while ago your file about

709
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,760
his parents. There's already stuff in there, Like I heard

710
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,519
some things from Mike over my years of covering him

711
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,239
and from others about his mom, but I never really

712
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:45,840
heard anything about his father or read anything in detail

713
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,400
about the dad. I'm fifteen pages in, I'm reading stuff

714
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,639
about the dad, Mark, How are you the only one

715
00:39:50,639 --> 00:39:52,760
that's able to put that in this form? And nobody

716
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:53,679
else did that before you.

717
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,280
Speaker 3: I'm the only one. I took the assignment, you know,

718
00:39:57,679 --> 00:39:59,480
and I worried too much. You know, I don't know,

719
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:00,559
you know.

720
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,199
Speaker 4: I think we're forty years into the Tyson experiment and

721
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:04,960
no one's written about his father. And tell you that

722
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:05,559
I'm aware of.

723
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:11,880
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I will say that Mike Marley God his dad, Okay,

724
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:15,000
And back in eighty eight, I mean, no one got

725
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:19,320
the brother. But they there you go, they but they

726
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,320
did have but they did have the dad. You know,

727
00:40:21,519 --> 00:40:25,119
it's you got to be obsessed. You gotta be you

728
00:40:25,199 --> 00:40:26,920
gotta be nuts. You got to be willing to like,

729
00:40:27,079 --> 00:40:29,639
I'm glad you're obed wrote the lad you want to lead?

730
00:40:29,679 --> 00:40:31,840
How many times? What are you schmock back? I know

731
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:33,599
you didn't say that, but you're thinking that, and I'm

732
00:40:33,599 --> 00:40:34,280
thinking that too.

733
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna I'll explain to the people that understand

734
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,159
this and you have had this conversation. We both have

735
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:41,840
been boxing writers for a very long time, but we

736
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:44,480
do it in a much different manner. You you write

737
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:48,960
these beautiful pieces that delve into the the mindset, to

738
00:40:49,039 --> 00:40:53,239
the personality, to what they're thinking, and you agonize over

739
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:55,519
every single word the hents that takes you, you know,

740
00:40:56,039 --> 00:40:58,039
two hours or two days to write the lead to

741
00:40:58,079 --> 00:41:00,199
a story. And in that period of time, I've in

742
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:03,719
twelve notebooks. We come at it a different way. They're

743
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:05,960
both good in their own way, I guess, but it's

744
00:41:06,039 --> 00:41:06,880
completely different.

745
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:08,760
Speaker 3: So I have a nervous breakdown writing twelve.

746
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:11,599
Speaker 4: I exactly. I think I wanted doing what you do,

747
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:13,440
and you think I'm nuts for doing what I do.

748
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't.

749
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:16,679
Speaker 3: I don't think you're nuts at all. No, not at all.

750
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,639
I just couldn't keep track of it. You gotta have

751
00:41:19,679 --> 00:41:23,320
like tunnel vision to do this. And I said this

752
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:29,000
before I didn't. I haven't been a boxing writer for that.

753
00:41:29,039 --> 00:41:32,960
I mean, I've been in boxing full time since late

754
00:41:33,039 --> 00:41:36,239
twenty seventeen. But before that, I was a columnist, and

755
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,679
I there was no reason for me to be a

756
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,639
sports columnist. I got the job because I wrote about basketball.

757
00:41:42,679 --> 00:41:44,760
I like writing about basketball. I was good at writing

758
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,400
about it, and that the Post had bought out all

759
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:51,119
the sports writers they needed, they needed, they needed a

760
00:41:51,159 --> 00:41:54,960
columnist would work for next to nothing, and I would.

761
00:41:55,159 --> 00:41:57,960
So I got the job by accident. And some of

762
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:00,480
it I liked. Some of it I thought was little ship,

763
00:42:01,559 --> 00:42:04,000
you know, like covering the regular season baseball game and

764
00:42:04,159 --> 00:42:06,920
you know July like okay whatever, or a k next

765
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:15,039
game and in February. But I love boxing. I love boxing,

766
00:42:15,199 --> 00:42:20,599
and you know, I came up covering a lot of

767
00:42:20,679 --> 00:42:27,239
organized crime like boxing, crack tailers, mafia trials, well you know,

768
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,360
stuff that was going on in the late eighties. Boxing

769
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:34,239
is where show business meets organize crime. And for my purposes,

770
00:42:34,519 --> 00:42:37,199
it might not be good for the fighters, but for

771
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:39,559
the writers it was great. And I say this again

772
00:42:39,599 --> 00:42:41,760
and again. Boxing made me a little bit better writer.

773
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:46,360
Than I actually am so wait. I gotta let this dog.

774
00:42:46,159 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 2: Out because I was gonna say I could see the.

775
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 3: Dog for the last sixty seconds.

776
00:42:50,559 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 2: We'll edit this part, very distinguished group. Okay, thanks fellas,

777
00:42:59,280 --> 00:42:59,800
we'll edit this.

778
00:43:02,559 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 4: They got to leave that in.

779
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:07,679
Speaker 1: So hold on, Rayfield, Rayfield, you've taken this for like

780
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,360
the last eight minutes away from how I started.

781
00:43:10,599 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 2: I got good save it.

782
00:43:13,039 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: In the mid eighties, he became a phenomenon nationwide where

783
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:23,000
everybody got introduced with the knockout against Marvus Fraser and

784
00:43:23,039 --> 00:43:25,599
they saw him beating Quick till Us on national TV,

785
00:43:26,039 --> 00:43:28,920
that kind of stuff. Pick it up on the phenomenon

786
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:32,239
of Tyson. They're nineteen eighty five and leading eventually to

787
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:33,639
Trevor Burbrick in nineteen eighty six.

788
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 3: Dan, we did detour, but it was we did. But

789
00:43:39,159 --> 00:43:41,719
you know, I know it's your your but I asked TJ.

790
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:45,840
Please let me get back to that. Thank you here.

791
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:48,199
I think there are a couple of components that no

792
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:51,679
one had seen before. First of all, people wanted the

793
00:43:51,679 --> 00:43:58,079
heavyweight division back, and it was a great deal of

794
00:43:58,159 --> 00:44:03,800
horrible prejudice director against Larry Holmes, merely because he was

795
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:11,199
not charismatic merely because he followed Ali. But Tyson comes

796
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:17,599
along and Jimmy Jacobs figures out, who had been a

797
00:44:18,199 --> 00:44:24,559
producer with Bill Cayton, another of Tyson's ex managers. Jacobs

798
00:44:24,599 --> 00:44:26,519
is a great PR guy, not a great producer, but

799
00:44:26,559 --> 00:44:31,679
a great PR guy and relentless. So you take this

800
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:36,159
new technology with VCRs. You make a tape of all

801
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:42,159
these knockouts, and the knockouts are visually spectacular. The most

802
00:44:42,199 --> 00:44:46,280
famous early one is Bourbon because Bourbert falls in every

803
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:52,920
damn corner of the ring. You take a knockout, you

804
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:57,800
splice it, You send it to every news director, sports editor,

805
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:04,039
sports right around the country, and they play on local news.

806
00:45:05,679 --> 00:45:07,800
The sports editor starts asking about it, but you have

807
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:09,719
you have a way to play it now in the VCR,

808
00:45:11,119 --> 00:45:15,159
So it's the knockouts themselves. The Marves Fraser knockout was

809
00:45:15,199 --> 00:45:21,519
absolutely terrifying. But then you stick the mic in front

810
00:45:21,559 --> 00:45:27,440
of his face and it's like a wrestler and you're

811
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,400
trying to reconcile not just the crazy shit that he's saying,

812
00:45:32,639 --> 00:45:35,760
but the quality of his voice, the pitch in his voice,

813
00:45:36,599 --> 00:45:40,800
and you're going to wait that the guy with that

814
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:44,000
voice just did that and trying to reconcile those two

815
00:45:44,119 --> 00:45:48,960
things is absolutely nuts. You know what he's saying, like

816
00:45:49,039 --> 00:45:54,719
I wanted to push the nose blowing up to his brain. Wait, holy,

817
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,159
I haven't heard that before. I haven't heard that before.

818
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,239
And in point of fact, you've got that particular thing

819
00:46:02,119 --> 00:46:04,440
from Cuss like, oh but the bone up hit him

820
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:10,320
on upper cutting. Okay, great, And they fired the publicist,

821
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:14,119
they fired Tyson's pr guy after the fight because he

822
00:46:14,199 --> 00:46:17,199
said that. In point of fact, it helped him get over.

823
00:46:17,639 --> 00:46:21,760
It made people they were addicted to him. The most

824
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:26,079
famous Tyson monologue I think is after is the fight

825
00:46:26,119 --> 00:46:30,039
in Scotland, right that you covered. I'm gonna when it's

826
00:46:30,039 --> 00:46:30,679
a lead up.

827
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:33,679
Speaker 4: This is before Lewis. He wants to get Lewis in

828
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:33,920
the ring.

829
00:46:34,039 --> 00:46:37,280
Speaker 3: He wants to get Lewis someone you meet your children at.

830
00:46:37,199 --> 00:46:38,679
Speaker 4: A time when Len didn't have any children.

831
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 2: Right.

832
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:46,519
Speaker 3: But but it's it's the greatest wrestling promo that ever

833
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:48,800
was ever was done, was ever taped?

834
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:51,679
Speaker 4: Would you it's definitely up there.

835
00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 3: I mean, there's nothing to Hulk Hogan or any of

836
00:46:54,519 --> 00:46:58,280
those guys ever said that got over that way. And

837
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:04,480
remember something Ion's career was a real at the top fight.

838
00:47:04,559 --> 00:47:05,880
It was already done.

839
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:10,519
Speaker 4: And those those those wrestling promos, if you will, they

840
00:47:10,519 --> 00:47:13,280
were in essence scripted. This was not scripted. This was

841
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:15,679
Tyson thirty seconds after he just.

842
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 3: It was like the first experiment in reality TV or

843
00:47:22,079 --> 00:47:24,480
tabloid culture, whatever the hell you want to call it.

844
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:27,480
I mean, I remember I remember as a as a

845
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:33,159
city side reporter covering. My first Tyson assignment was go

846
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:34,840
up to Harlem. It's like four in the morning, went

847
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:36,280
up to Harlem. He just got into a fight with

848
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,440
Mitch Greene. Where dapa dance. It's like a club. No,

849
00:47:39,519 --> 00:47:41,559
it's a clothing star. Get your ass up there. Stop

850
00:47:41,599 --> 00:47:45,199
what do you mean? And it was a goof at

851
00:47:45,199 --> 00:47:48,960
the time, and his marriage to Robin Gibbons was imploded.

852
00:47:50,119 --> 00:47:52,440
When I look back on it now as a grown up,

853
00:47:52,519 --> 00:47:56,159
I realized that I'm watching a young man's life implode

854
00:47:56,199 --> 00:47:58,599
because he can't deal with this insanity.

855
00:47:59,119 --> 00:48:01,639
Speaker 4: People have to remember, he's like twenty two years old

856
00:48:01,639 --> 00:48:03,920
at this point, something like that, twenty three years old.

857
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:08,039
Speaker 3: He's twenty one, he's twenty two, then he's twenty one

858
00:48:08,079 --> 00:48:11,360
when he fights Sphinx. By the way, like, wasn't the chump.

859
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:16,000
You know, he did beat Larry Holmes, and the idea

860
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:21,320
that he decimates him, he destroys him in ninety one seconds,

861
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,960
is really rather extraordinary, and again it crystallizes this idea

862
00:48:28,159 --> 00:48:31,920
of the knockout and the destroyer. But I want to

863
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,880
go back in Scotland with the I want to eat

864
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:38,400
your children's speech. He's really he's at that time, he's

865
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:41,960
grieving for a kid that he did time with as

866
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:45,559
a juvenile. That's what's really going on there. So underneath

867
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:50,000
what seems there's one level of Tyson which is like

868
00:48:50,039 --> 00:48:53,440
the surface and you go, oh my god, it's whatever

869
00:48:53,559 --> 00:48:56,760
comes in the surface with Tyson, it's like holy shit,

870
00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:58,840
oh my god, I can't believe it. He knocked this

871
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:00,920
guy out. Can you believe what he said? And then

872
00:49:01,039 --> 00:49:07,079
underneath it there's this other layer that that's that's more subtle.

873
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:13,119
It's usually more painful. You know. I have a theory

874
00:49:13,119 --> 00:49:19,199
that I developed in the book about about Holy Fields

875
00:49:19,199 --> 00:49:25,599
in the ear and there was a cuss his favorite fighter.

876
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:28,960
Apparently there was a guy named already Diamond. You're familiar, Dan,

877
00:49:29,199 --> 00:49:31,400
Not really, No, you don't know Artie Diamond.

878
00:49:31,559 --> 00:49:32,119
Speaker 4: I don't think so.

879
00:49:33,079 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 3: Artie guy who was actually was said to be Cuss's

880
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:41,440
favorite fighter and the only guy who when they asked

881
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,840
Cus who who didn't feel fear? You know, Cuss his

882
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:48,440
whole theology was everybody feeling fear and it's okay, it's

883
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,400
how you deal with being scared. Okay, great, But the

884
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:53,960
only guy Cuss would have didn't feel fear was the

885
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,159
guy already diving, but like he was already punching. You know,

886
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,280
early in his career, a couple of legendary he fights

887
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:04,119
but didn't have you know, it wasn't nothing like a champion.

888
00:50:04,159 --> 00:50:08,360
This is the late forties, early fifties. Leaves boxing does

889
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:10,719
what he does best, which is like he's a violent guy.

890
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:14,920
He gets busted for some on robbery his first day

891
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:20,800
in the yard. Guy comes up to him and says, hey,

892
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:23,760
you know, you know you can have anything you want here,

893
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:28,639
but you know you're going to be my wife. This

894
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:33,760
is a really scary con Okay, so what does lady

895
00:50:33,840 --> 00:50:39,199
Diamond do? Come on, Dan, I.

896
00:50:39,119 --> 00:50:41,519
Speaker 2: Think the punchline has to be he bit his ear.

897
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,079
Speaker 3: Off of spit it out. And remember if this is

898
00:50:46,119 --> 00:50:48,679
applicable to box, and it's not just you and the

899
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:50,840
other guy, it's you the other guy in the audience,

900
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:54,039
and that sent a message that's and no one ever

901
00:50:54,079 --> 00:50:56,599
messed with Already Diamond. Now what I am really proud

902
00:50:56,679 --> 00:50:58,480
of that I got a guy who did time with

903
00:50:58,559 --> 00:51:02,199
already Domond here and and the way he recalled already

904
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:06,400
with the kind of yeah, the kind of sensitivity that

905
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,519
he did, and he knew cuss and knew the whole crew.

906
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:13,440
What I'm me, I'm most proud of in the damn book.

907
00:51:14,039 --> 00:51:20,480
But in Tyson's own book he goes on and on

908
00:51:21,079 --> 00:51:25,320
about Arty Diamond and cuss. You. You know, like you know,

909
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:27,119
you go away to sleep away camp, you get like

910
00:51:27,159 --> 00:51:30,840
scary stories or whatever, Mary Poppins or bedtime story, whatever

911
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,239
the hell. You go away to catskill and custom Models

912
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:37,800
fight camp, you get Arty Diamond stories like that's how Okay,

913
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:42,719
well it's a little nuts, right, okay, right, But but

914
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:47,440
that was held up to these kids as as as

915
00:51:47,559 --> 00:51:51,000
virtuous behavior. That's how you get the bullied not to

916
00:51:51,039 --> 00:51:54,840
take advantage of you, not to violate you. Okay, Remember

917
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:57,119
Tyson's a kid who had done a lot of time.

918
00:51:57,719 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really German.

919
00:52:00,079 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 3: This You have to make a statement now when he's

920
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:09,360
when he's locked in with the Vander and he gets

921
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:11,440
to a point where this ain't going any other way

922
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:13,880
and the Vander's fouling him or not. We get that's

923
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:17,599
a separate argument, okay, but I am throwing it out there.

924
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:22,360
I do think that the two, the two things are connected.

925
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,159
This this was the stuff that This was the stuff

926
00:52:27,199 --> 00:52:31,000
that that Tyson got a steady diet of that that

927
00:52:31,079 --> 00:52:36,519
he absorbed as a kid under custom models tutelage. And

928
00:52:36,559 --> 00:52:39,920
I think that, you know, I try not to bullshit here,

929
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,880
but I do think it's exceedingly germane those stories.

930
00:52:44,039 --> 00:52:46,280
Speaker 4: I think you're probably right about that. How when you

931
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:48,960
were writing the book, how how cooperative was Tyson with you?

932
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 3: I didn't ask him for much because I never I

933
00:52:52,679 --> 00:52:56,880
knew that, you know, he's not going to go through

934
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:59,719
his life story for Mark Kriegel, Who is you know,

935
00:53:00,159 --> 00:53:01,599
the ship out of the print for I don't know

936
00:53:01,599 --> 00:53:02,039
how long.

937
00:53:02,119 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 4: But that was the only question, if he's going to

938
00:53:03,519 --> 00:53:04,039
help you out?

939
00:53:04,199 --> 00:53:06,880
Speaker 3: No, he was fine, he was he was actually it

940
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:07,679
was actually great.

941
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 4: But but he did keep The point is he did

942
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,639
cooperate and help you to certain parts of.

943
00:53:13,559 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 3: What he was. He was greater than I ever had

944
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:17,719
to write for him.

945
00:53:17,599 --> 00:53:19,239
Speaker 4: To be Well, how much did you interview him for

946
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:19,599
the book?

947
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 3: Two conversations. It was basically to establish ground rules. And

948
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:27,800
the only quote I used from those conversations was when

949
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:33,079
he pushed back on the idea that that that the

950
00:53:33,159 --> 00:53:36,400
Mottel it wasn't necessarily like the greatest thing in the world.

951
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:39,320
It was more complicated, you know, And he has a

952
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:43,760
lot invested in in the deification of custom model and

953
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:48,119
I understand that, I really do. That's not my job

954
00:53:48,599 --> 00:53:54,159
as the biographer. So the only line I used from

955
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:57,800
from from those sessions was, we will deny as long

956
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:00,760
as as long as I'm here, you know, he'll he'll

957
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:02,199
be glorified or something like that.

958
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:04,679
Speaker 4: Have you heard back from him about his like what

959
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:06,360
he thought of the book? Not that you necessarily care,

960
00:54:06,440 --> 00:54:07,920
but did he think you did?

961
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:09,559
Speaker 3: You know what I do care? I always care.

962
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 4: Do you think does he think you did him justice

963
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:12,480
in this book?

964
00:54:13,559 --> 00:54:16,639
Speaker 3: I heard from his wife. We've emailed, and and she

965
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:20,880
was I think it's safe to say she thought I

966
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,480
was fair. There were some parts that you know that

967
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:29,480
did he he wasn't crazy about and we both knew that, and.

968
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:30,400
Speaker 4: That's the nature of the beast.

969
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 3: Though but but I think that she said I was

970
00:54:35,039 --> 00:54:38,400
fair and it was good and it was complete, and

971
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:42,199
so I'm taking that. I don't want to. I can

972
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:46,280
remember the trying to remember what you wrote, but it

973
00:54:46,519 --> 00:54:50,920
was very complimentary and more made me happy. But this

974
00:54:51,039 --> 00:54:53,679
is also I can't write to please the subject, of.

975
00:54:53,639 --> 00:54:55,760
Speaker 4: Course, But it's not like you're not like you're doing

976
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:58,280
his autoography, as as told to Mark Kriegele, you're writing,

977
00:54:58,519 --> 00:55:01,079
but let me you're you're ready historical.

978
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,800
Speaker 3: But you asked about process here in this case, this

979
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:09,360
is your man. He has written, you know, one autobiography

980
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:12,920
which is luminous and really well done. I actually think

981
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:15,679
it's a little long, but it covers so much, and

982
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:21,760
another memoir about his time with costs. Then there are

983
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:28,960
like countless pieces, newspaper pieces, magazine pieces, broadcast pieces done

984
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:31,719
in real time. And I think that you know, when

985
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:34,880
you're a biographer, you know that what people are saying

986
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:37,000
in the moment tends to be more accurate than what

987
00:55:37,039 --> 00:55:40,559
they remember because the memories are self serving. You forget shit,

988
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:46,480
you know, memories are corrupted, not necessarily by design, but

989
00:55:46,599 --> 00:55:53,679
just we're fallible, we're human. So I didn't It's like

990
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:58,159
Joe Namath. I didn't need Joe Namath. That was a

991
00:55:58,199 --> 00:55:59,800
more antagonistic situation.

992
00:56:00,559 --> 00:56:03,079
Speaker 4: But you're talking about the biography you did on Joe.

993
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:07,559
Speaker 3: Correct, But like typically what would happen is the source

994
00:56:07,599 --> 00:56:11,400
would call Keiky Mike's wife and says, okay, speak to

995
00:56:11,440 --> 00:56:15,519
this Kriegle and she would say yeah. And for that alone,

996
00:56:15,679 --> 00:56:18,639
I'm grateful. That's all. That's all I ever. All I asked, like,

997
00:56:18,679 --> 00:56:24,800
don't shut me down, and I'm great with that. And

998
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:27,639
I think that here's what I here's what I do think.

999
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,360
It wasn't my it wasn't my goal to guid him

1000
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:33,719
up or to tear him down. But it was my

1001
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:38,199
goal to be empathetic, to like to really understand who

1002
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:41,280
is the real guy here? Because there's so many layers.

1003
00:56:41,639 --> 00:56:43,880
You know, you're you're that famous, there's so many layers

1004
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:51,239
of of craziness and bullshit and what's the real guy?

1005
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:54,639
What's the real kid? Who is he? Where? What does

1006
00:56:54,679 --> 00:56:57,800
he come from? Yeah? I think that we have some

1007
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:00,039
answers here. I'm sorry, teacher, you do.

1008
00:57:00,039 --> 00:57:01,920
Speaker 4: Have some answers, but you didn't you you only got

1009
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:04,000
to like you mentioned and now I didn't realize this

1010
00:57:04,079 --> 00:57:05,880
until I started to look at the book that it

1011
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:10,920
only goes it concludes after Sphinx, that's only the he

1012
00:57:11,039 --> 00:57:14,239
fought for you know another. You know, that was nineteen

1013
00:57:14,519 --> 00:57:19,679
nineteen eighty. He fights another you know another, fights another

1014
00:57:19,719 --> 00:57:23,559
twelve years after that, you know, and then he has

1015
00:57:23,599 --> 00:57:25,280
obviously all the things that happened is in his one

1016
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:27,880
on more than twelve years. He retired in five. He

1017
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:30,880
had many more things that went on in his life.

1018
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:32,760
He had, like you know, talking about the things he

1019
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:34,760
went through, the death of his daughter. He went to

1020
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:37,159
prison again on the road rage thing. You know, he

1021
00:57:37,199 --> 00:57:40,280
came back after tons of substance abuse. He became sort

1022
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:42,559
of a movie star. All the different things that he's

1023
00:57:42,559 --> 00:57:44,440
done in that period of time. Are we seeing a

1024
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:46,920
part too? Did you? Are you doing a second part?

1025
00:57:47,719 --> 00:57:48,679
Speaker 3: Oh, that's the plan.

1026
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:51,079
Speaker 4: Okay, you don't want to give back the money?

1027
00:57:52,519 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to. I don't want to make

1028
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:55,360
it sound cynical.

1029
00:57:56,119 --> 00:57:58,400
Speaker 4: I'm joking about that. No, no, no, no, what I'm saying there

1030
00:57:58,480 --> 00:57:59,280
needs to be part two.

1031
00:58:00,679 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 3: It's a legit question. But I want to. I just

1032
00:58:02,519 --> 00:58:05,760
want to go back. I didn't want to write a

1033
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:08,239
Tyson biography. I didn't want to write about Tyson. When

1034
00:58:08,239 --> 00:58:13,679
I started thinking about it, I gradually started like to

1035
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,000
see the possibilities of it. But I thought when I

1036
00:58:17,079 --> 00:58:20,880
started it, this was an essay about what I've learned

1037
00:58:20,920 --> 00:58:21,880
covering fighters.

1038
00:58:22,039 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 4: The four hundred page essay, I know, but that wasn't

1039
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:25,719
what it was supposed to be.

1040
00:58:26,039 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 3: And then it became biographical, and then I'm like, holy

1041
00:58:30,639 --> 00:58:33,639
and a lot of the interviews, a good many of them,

1042
00:58:34,079 --> 00:58:40,760
I did when the book was still one book, because

1043
00:58:41,679 --> 00:58:44,280
for instance, that the story I just told you about

1044
00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:49,320
Artie Diamond really doesn't pay off until you get to

1045
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:55,239
the holy Field fights. And by the way, holy Field,

1046
00:58:55,239 --> 00:58:59,679
from the time he was a teenager was one of

1047
00:58:59,679 --> 00:59:03,719
the maybe the only with the exception of Lennox Lewis,

1048
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:08,000
who wasn't scared of Tyson. I mean, Vander just like

1049
00:59:08,559 --> 00:59:12,880
my mom loves me, I'm chosen by God. I'm going

1050
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:15,119
to beat his ass and he believed that from when

1051
00:59:15,159 --> 00:59:17,400
he was a skinny light heavyweight whatever.

1052
00:59:17,599 --> 00:59:19,159
Speaker 4: I think Lewis thought the same thing.

1053
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 3: Lewis learned something and there's a scene in there, you

1054
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:28,400
know Lewis. The Lewis was really effective in the book.

1055
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:31,880
He talked with great candor and he's talked about it before,

1056
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:37,599
but he spends the better part of a week in Catskill.

1057
00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:42,320
I think they're both seventeen. And it starts out, it

1058
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:47,119
starts out really friendly, and the first day Tyson beats

1059
00:59:47,119 --> 00:59:51,119
his ass and sparn The second day Lewis begins to

1060
00:59:51,199 --> 00:59:53,639
catch up. In the third day, Lewis begins to catch

1061
00:59:53,719 --> 00:59:56,920
up some more. But he does walk away with the

1062
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:00,079
sense of how to handle him that and unlike so

1063
01:00:00,199 --> 01:00:05,559
many guys, so many guys, he didn't allow his fear

1064
01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:08,360
to get carried away the abandoned I don't think was

1065
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:13,440
ever scared period. Lennox had to learn that he wasn't

1066
01:00:13,559 --> 01:00:16,960
terrifying by dealing with his fear in the ring.

1067
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:21,079
Speaker 4: And you know, so they weren't friendly though at that point,

1068
01:00:21,119 --> 01:00:23,559
Mark because and I mean another book. I'm thinking like,

1069
01:00:23,599 --> 01:00:25,760
when I talked to Lenox about these types of things,

1070
01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:28,280
he told me stories. I went to visit him in

1071
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:30,559
training camp when he was preparing for the Tyson fight,

1072
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,639
and he was telling me about how they sparred and

1073
01:00:33,719 --> 01:00:35,519
you know, there was pure blood in his mouth when

1074
01:00:35,519 --> 01:00:37,280
he bloodied him up. And you know, but in the

1075
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:39,079
evening they would go, you know, because Kuss had this

1076
01:00:39,159 --> 01:00:42,559
amazing fight library that that Jimmy Jacobs ended up having,

1077
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:45,280
and they would take a white towel or a white

1078
01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:48,440
uh like bed sheet and throw it over the the

1079
01:00:49,159 --> 01:00:51,280
clothesline and they would put the films up and they

1080
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:54,960
would watch these videos together in the evening as just

1081
01:00:55,039 --> 01:00:57,960
like teenage guys. You know that we're that were boxing

1082
01:00:58,159 --> 01:01:00,679
competing in the friendly afterwards.

1083
01:01:01,519 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean I think that once the bell

1084
01:01:05,519 --> 01:01:08,679
rang on the first day, it runs across the ring

1085
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:13,119
to just tear them all. And there is an element

1086
01:01:13,159 --> 01:01:16,199
there is a question, and there always is with fighters

1087
01:01:16,199 --> 01:01:18,519
in camp, like how much are you my friend? And

1088
01:01:18,519 --> 01:01:21,880
how much are you playing me? Now? They're not Those

1089
01:01:21,880 --> 01:01:25,599
are not mutually exclusive positions there, right, And you can

1090
01:01:25,679 --> 01:01:27,519
be friends with guys you know you're going to fight

1091
01:01:27,559 --> 01:01:29,199
the next day. You're looking for an ad or not

1092
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:29,760
or whatever.

1093
01:01:30,079 --> 01:01:32,960
Speaker 4: But not saying they were best friends, saying they enjoyed

1094
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:33,719
each other, I don't.

1095
01:01:33,559 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 3: Know, they definitely did. And and but but in Cuss

1096
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:41,599
his mind on the third day, he's like, hey, stop,

1097
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:44,719
you're going to fight this guy one day. Everything with

1098
01:01:44,840 --> 01:01:48,159
Cuss was with an eye toward the future, was with

1099
01:01:48,239 --> 01:01:55,719
an eye toward Tyson's immortality and his own And you know,

1100
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:59,079
I think that I think that my suspicion is and

1101
01:01:59,119 --> 01:02:03,119
I think Lennox would bear me out on this. Those

1102
01:02:03,159 --> 01:02:08,679
three or four days made him advanced them immeasurably as

1103
01:02:08,719 --> 01:02:10,840
a fighter and his confidence.

1104
01:02:11,199 --> 01:02:13,039
Speaker 4: And are you already starting to put all this in

1105
01:02:13,119 --> 01:02:15,480
your files for the second part? Yeah?

1106
01:02:15,599 --> 01:02:17,760
Speaker 3: No, I mean there's a lot of interviews I couldn't stuff.

1107
01:02:18,199 --> 01:02:20,239
You know, people I interviewed. I don't want to give

1108
01:02:20,239 --> 01:02:23,320
it away now, but a ton of stuff I have

1109
01:02:25,559 --> 01:02:27,360
I couldn't get into here. TJ.

1110
01:02:28,239 --> 01:02:30,360
Speaker 2: Well, I just got to say this. But first of all,

1111
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:32,960
we promise you this wouldn't take two days. So we've

1112
01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:34,519
done a bunch here tonight.

1113
01:02:34,519 --> 01:02:37,559
Speaker 3: See already, right, I love it bathering for an hour.

1114
01:02:37,679 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: Please emphasize to the audience because Dan and I talk

1115
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:41,480
about this all the time.

1116
01:02:41,519 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 2: We're now.

1117
01:02:42,400 --> 01:02:44,480
Speaker 1: I hate that we make us out to be old.

1118
01:02:44,599 --> 01:02:47,440
We're now forty years on from this era that we're

1119
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:50,280
talking about in the mid to late eighties, thirty five

1120
01:02:50,400 --> 01:02:54,519
years on. Convey to the people with what you wrote

1121
01:02:54,679 --> 01:02:59,719
in this book. He was seemingly so indestructible in that era.

1122
01:03:00,079 --> 01:03:02,800
We cannot convey it enough to the younger fans, the

1123
01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:07,880
sub thirty year olds, et cetera. He seemed to be indestructible.

1124
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:11,039
That's a big part of why it's so compelling thirty

1125
01:03:11,079 --> 01:03:12,000
five forty years later.

1126
01:03:12,119 --> 01:03:12,360
Speaker 4: Right.

1127
01:03:14,079 --> 01:03:17,679
Speaker 3: It was in the knockouts. I don't maybe there have

1128
01:03:17,719 --> 01:03:24,559
been knockouts like that before, but the regularity and the

1129
01:03:24,599 --> 01:03:29,000
sort of terrifying quality of the guys falling the way

1130
01:03:29,079 --> 01:03:33,199
that they did, and the action was typically so compressed

1131
01:03:33,239 --> 01:03:37,400
because most of them were early knockouts. What you don't

1132
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:44,800
get today, this sense of menace. He fought I think

1133
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:50,960
fifteen or sixteen times in the year the year going

1134
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:54,159
back a year from his first title in November of

1135
01:03:54,239 --> 01:03:55,079
nineteen eighty six.

1136
01:03:55,400 --> 01:03:58,079
Speaker 4: Yeah, from day from like early eighty five tol eighty six,

1137
01:03:58,119 --> 01:03:59,719
he fought like almost twenty times I think.

1138
01:04:00,079 --> 01:04:04,239
Speaker 3: Right, So, can you imagine, like, get a kid today,

1139
01:04:04,280 --> 01:04:06,320
like they get a fight, they need a year off,

1140
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:09,079
or they got to go on sabbatical, they need a

1141
01:04:09,119 --> 01:04:12,400
social media break, or they got to like check into

1142
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:18,639
whatever sixteen times fifteen sixteen times in the year leading

1143
01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:21,199
up to his title fight, and they weren't all bumped,

1144
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:24,440
you know, contrary to you, just because there wasn't a

1145
01:04:24,519 --> 01:04:30,559
charismatic champion. But the matchmaker Ron cantsid something really interesting

1146
01:04:30,599 --> 01:04:35,280
to say to me. I literally had to push guys

1147
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:38,719
out of the dressing room they were so scared. And

1148
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:44,039
these were not contrary to the way we like to remember.

1149
01:04:44,280 --> 01:04:47,159
They weren't all tomato cans like Okay, he had some

1150
01:04:47,239 --> 01:04:50,519
tomato cans coming up. Everyone does. But a lot of

1151
01:04:50,559 --> 01:04:54,679
them were trained American heavyweights. They weren't guys who had

1152
01:04:54,800 --> 01:04:57,559
washed out in basketball or football. They knew what they

1153
01:04:57,559 --> 01:05:00,000
were doing in their ring, they knew how to handle themselves.

1154
01:05:00,119 --> 01:05:02,360
And there was scared shitless of Mike Tyson. That's just

1155
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:05,039
the bottom line of it. And that type of fear

1156
01:05:06,079 --> 01:05:10,440
had never been broadcast before. It was never that palpable.

1157
01:05:10,679 --> 01:05:13,519
Maybe we didn't have the technology, maybe there was Maybe

1158
01:05:13,559 --> 01:05:16,119
maybe guys were that scared of Marciano. I don't know.

1159
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:18,840
Maybe guys were that scared of our lead. I don't know.

1160
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:22,000
I doubt it, but we know that they were that

1161
01:05:22,199 --> 01:05:26,400
scared of Tyson. And and that's an interesting phenomenon because

1162
01:05:26,440 --> 01:05:30,119
because boxing makes all the stuff that you're not supposed

1163
01:05:30,159 --> 01:05:33,199
to see available to see, it becomes intimate. You can

1164
01:05:33,239 --> 01:05:35,599
almost smell it, even though it's on television and you

1165
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:37,840
get so damn close to it. And when you see

1166
01:05:37,840 --> 01:05:41,360
a knockout like Trevor Berbick or where you see him

1167
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:45,320
just torture a guy, an Olympic gold medalist who was

1168
01:05:45,360 --> 01:05:48,119
supposed to be the next all lead in Terrell Biggs,

1169
01:05:48,159 --> 01:05:52,760
the one guy he really really wanted to hurt. When

1170
01:05:52,800 --> 01:05:55,920
you see a Marvis Frasier, when you see Marvis just

1171
01:05:56,199 --> 01:06:00,000
crumple in front of his fall, those those are things

1172
01:06:00,360 --> 01:06:03,960
that you cannot see in other sports. And you probably

1173
01:06:04,599 --> 01:06:09,599
watching television network TV TJ's you said, ABC of the markets. Yeah,

1174
01:06:10,679 --> 01:06:15,079
you're seeing something you probably, like in life, you probably

1175
01:06:15,079 --> 01:06:18,079
shouldn't see, but you know you cannot take.

1176
01:06:17,880 --> 01:06:19,519
Speaker 2: Your eyes peract away.

1177
01:06:19,599 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 3: And that's and that's why, to this day, the only

1178
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:26,400
guy that Jake Paul could have done that number like

1179
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:28,800
one hundred and three live streams or whatever the hell

1180
01:06:29,039 --> 01:06:30,000
we're old guys.

1181
01:06:30,079 --> 01:06:31,760
Speaker 4: There, and eight I believe it was.

1182
01:06:31,840 --> 01:06:33,679
Speaker 3: Okay, one hundred and eight What is a one hundred and eight?

1183
01:06:33,679 --> 01:06:34,199
What is it? What?

1184
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:36,559
Speaker 4: One hundred eight million worldwide viewers?

1185
01:06:36,599 --> 01:06:39,039
Speaker 3: Okay, one hundred and eight million views. The only guy,

1186
01:06:39,079 --> 01:06:41,960
and Jake's a really smart guy. The only guy he

1187
01:06:41,960 --> 01:06:44,880
could have done that number with. It ain't Tank Whatever,

1188
01:06:45,039 --> 01:06:48,599
it ain't Tank Davis, Mike Tyson, It's Mike Tyson. It's

1189
01:06:48,639 --> 01:06:51,480
only Mike Tyson. He can be sixty, he can be seventy.

1190
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:55,320
And that's why the seeds of that, and and and

1191
01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:58,159
by the way, Netflix was only asking him to do

1192
01:06:58,239 --> 01:07:01,800
the same thing for them in twenty whatever it is

1193
01:07:02,079 --> 01:07:05,639
that he did for HBO back in the eighties, he

1194
01:07:06,079 --> 01:07:10,239
remains the most potent economic engine in the history of

1195
01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:11,639
this or any other sport.

1196
01:07:12,280 --> 01:07:14,719
Speaker 4: Now, I'm looking forward to seeing what you write about Jake,

1197
01:07:14,760 --> 01:07:17,760
Paul and Mike Tyson in the second volume of your

1198
01:07:17,880 --> 01:07:18,639
Tyson series.

1199
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:21,639
Speaker 1: All right, so anything else big Dan here as we

1200
01:07:21,679 --> 01:07:23,480
wrap it with Mark Kriegel for the video in the

1201
01:07:23,519 --> 01:07:25,840
podcast audience. Besides get the book, I mean we're going

1202
01:07:25,880 --> 01:07:28,280
to say that again. Get the book, obviously. I can't

1203
01:07:28,280 --> 01:07:31,360
wait till support Mickey. Here's the way. I just have

1204
01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:33,239
this a very easy question. Mark from the time you

1205
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:36,280
sat down, once you decided on doing this and started

1206
01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:39,119
putting your files together, until the time you turn in

1207
01:07:39,199 --> 01:07:41,320
the completed manuscript, how long did this take you to do?

1208
01:07:41,800 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 4: I mean, writing the whole thing from you you sit down,

1209
01:07:44,800 --> 01:07:47,320
I'm going to do this until you turn in the manuscript.

1210
01:07:50,880 --> 01:07:55,199
Speaker 3: I started in, uh, and again I just torn a hamstring.

1211
01:07:55,239 --> 01:07:58,000
I was like really high on vicoting right now that

1212
01:07:58,039 --> 01:07:59,800
I'm like, what do I really wanted to do this book?

1213
01:08:01,880 --> 01:08:06,639
June of twenty twenty one, okay, and I handed in

1214
01:08:07,039 --> 01:08:17,279
handed in the manuscript the very beginning of twenty twenty work.

1215
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:20,439
I worked on the manuscript through twenty twenty three.

1216
01:08:21,079 --> 01:08:23,199
Speaker 4: So it took you a year and a half basically, No, no.

1217
01:08:23,079 --> 01:08:26,199
Speaker 3: No, it was. It was long. I mean, that's a

1218
01:08:26,279 --> 01:08:29,359
first draft and you work on that manuscript, still take

1219
01:08:29,399 --> 01:08:34,279
it down, edit it. I could call me back, I'll

1220
01:08:34,279 --> 01:08:38,760
give you a date, But I mean it took about

1221
01:08:38,760 --> 01:08:40,640
two years to hand in the first raft.

1222
01:08:40,760 --> 01:08:43,840
Speaker 1: It wasn't six weeks, as we like to sarcastically joke

1223
01:08:43,960 --> 01:08:45,359
it took them out, but I mean it was.

1224
01:08:45,520 --> 01:08:49,840
Speaker 3: It was. But I only agreed to do it in

1225
01:08:49,920 --> 01:08:53,760
two years because I thought it wasn't a biography. Biography

1226
01:08:53,800 --> 01:08:58,479
is a different animal man, you know, and it's one

1227
01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:00,079
of the reasons I didn't. I was like, oh, I

1228
01:09:00,119 --> 01:09:01,479
read and that's kind of cheated.

1229
01:09:02,800 --> 01:09:05,640
Speaker 4: And I keep thinking though, like with this book, like

1230
01:09:06,079 --> 01:09:11,319
I watched Ken Burns do the biography, the phenomenal documentary

1231
01:09:11,319 --> 01:09:14,239
that is like I don't know four or six hours

1232
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:17,079
about Jack Johnson, but a staff no, no, no, I

1233
01:09:17,119 --> 01:09:19,520
get that. And then I watched later which is amazing

1234
01:09:19,840 --> 01:09:20,359
where he did.

1235
01:09:20,920 --> 01:09:21,039
Speaker 3: Uh.

1236
01:09:22,239 --> 01:09:25,159
Speaker 4: It is the definative thing on Ali that he did.

1237
01:09:25,319 --> 01:09:29,279
I could see your your book or books on his

1238
01:09:29,399 --> 01:09:31,279
life with the stuff on the dad and through the

1239
01:09:31,279 --> 01:09:34,840
whole thing becoming the basis for like that type of

1240
01:09:35,439 --> 01:09:40,520
legitimate journalistic historical document of a documentary about his life,

1241
01:09:40,560 --> 01:09:42,560
which there's been tons of things produced, but I still

1242
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:44,760
don't think there's been anything that you could say. Is

1243
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:47,600
that the definitive history of Mike Tyson that covers all

1244
01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:50,239
the bases the way that the types of books that

1245
01:09:50,279 --> 01:09:53,920
you write do with your subject. Well, I'll look forward

1246
01:09:53,920 --> 01:09:54,359
to that too.

1247
01:09:55,199 --> 01:09:57,720
Speaker 1: Again, we plugged the book one more time. I hold

1248
01:09:57,720 --> 01:10:00,560
it up. Mike Tyson very better.

1249
01:10:00,560 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 4: I got better.

1250
01:10:01,119 --> 01:10:05,239
Speaker 3: Here is man?

1251
01:10:05,399 --> 01:10:05,960
Speaker 2: There it is.

1252
01:10:06,720 --> 01:10:07,399
Speaker 3: That is man.

1253
01:10:08,319 --> 01:10:10,520
Speaker 1: The making of Mike Tyson is out there. Hey, one

1254
01:10:10,600 --> 01:10:13,279
more before we're done here on the video in the podcast,

1255
01:10:13,319 --> 01:10:15,159
A lot of people are eager to know when are

1256
01:10:15,199 --> 01:10:15,640
you back?

1257
01:10:16,079 --> 01:10:16,800
Speaker 2: Where are you back?

1258
01:10:16,880 --> 01:10:19,920
Speaker 1: We saw you on the Netflix broadcast of Canelo and Crawford.

1259
01:10:19,960 --> 01:10:21,680
You want to tease us a little bit when we

1260
01:10:21,760 --> 01:10:23,840
might see you again, and what else you're up to?

1261
01:10:23,920 --> 01:10:24,640
Speaker 2: What else is up?

1262
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:27,680
Speaker 3: I'm still working for ESPN, but I don't. I mean,

1263
01:10:27,720 --> 01:10:30,279
you'll see me the next time I write for ESPN,

1264
01:10:30,319 --> 01:10:32,079
which is Dan knows it could be, could be months

1265
01:10:32,079 --> 01:10:34,840
from now, who knows. I don't. I don't know when

1266
01:10:34,880 --> 01:10:37,439
the next broadcast or what the next broadcast or anything

1267
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:41,159
about You probably know more than I did.

1268
01:10:42,279 --> 01:10:42,840
Speaker 4: I probably do.

1269
01:10:42,920 --> 01:10:46,279
Speaker 1: Actually, Hey, we love you, We love your work, and

1270
01:10:46,319 --> 01:10:48,039
we look forward to seeing more of you as well

1271
01:10:48,079 --> 01:10:49,560
as reading the book and reading.

1272
01:10:49,279 --> 01:10:53,079
Speaker 2: More of you as well. So big Dan.

1273
01:10:53,119 --> 01:10:56,159
Speaker 1: Other than that, I think we're good on this conversation

1274
01:10:56,399 --> 01:10:59,079
here about the book with Mark Kreeble. We wish you well,

1275
01:10:59,079 --> 01:11:02,079
We wish you success with the book. It's out where

1276
01:11:02,119 --> 01:11:05,479
if you get books through Amazon digitally everywhere, right, so

1277
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:08,359
the actual story you can walk into and buy yes

1278
01:11:08,560 --> 01:11:09,279
by Amazon.

1279
01:11:09,399 --> 01:11:11,119
Speaker 3: Guess next day you don't go listen.

1280
01:11:11,079 --> 01:11:14,239
Speaker 1: Love it, love it that, Mark Prigel, thank you for

1281
01:11:14,279 --> 01:11:17,399
being with us on this special on this special live

1282
01:11:17,920 --> 01:11:19,840
show here that we did on the video on our

1283
01:11:19,840 --> 01:11:21,760
YouTube page and also on the podcast.

1284
01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:22,640
Speaker 2: We appreciate you.

1285
01:11:23,119 --> 01:11:27,680
Speaker 3: Thank you, guys so much. I have a great, great evening. Huh.