As Father’s Day gifts go, Mark Kriegel’s new book ‘Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson’ may not be the most obvious choice. After all, Tyson didn’t really know his dad growing up.
He was first told his father had been a Jamaican-born cab driver, only for his mother Lorna to later point to Jimmy ‘Curlee’ Kirkpatrick, a known pimp around 1970s Brooklyn. Tyson naturally preferred the latter explanation because a pimp’s son had more ‘status’ than a cabbie’s, as he explained in his 2013 one-man show, ‘Undisputed Truth.’
Tyson has described Kirkpatrick as a ‘fast-talkin’ and ‘cool-dressin’ dude who changed the path of Lorna’s life, which is less a compliment and more a diagnosis of her harrowing final years.
For, with Kirkpatrick largely absent, the mom of three got ‘caught up in the street life,’ while battling alcohol problems and drug addiction, as Tyson put it.
And growing up, whenever he was frightened and crawled into her bed, a young Tyson would hear Lorna, lying next to him, sleeping with ‘a lot’ of men who frequently abused her.
So no, the first installment of Kriegel’s two-part Tyson profile isn’t a wholesome family story. Rather, Tuesday’s new release is a thoughtful dive into the making of America’s ‘baddest man’ from one of the sport’s greatest writers and someone who covered Tyson over parts of five turbulent decades.
To Kriegel, an award-winning author and ESPN boxing commentator who spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail, Tyson’s ‘fundamental need’ for a family he never had is the driving force behind one of America’s cultural icons.
‘He’s looking for two parents,’ Kriegel said. ‘I think those are two of the driving forces throughout this entire book: His mother and father… and Cus.’
Standing alongside promoter Don King, Tyson flashes some cash to the media
Autor Mark Kriegel (right) covered Tyson for parts of five decades before writing Baddest Man
Lorna May Smith, as seen in a 1947 photo shared online by her son, Mike Tyson
Cus, of course, is legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato, who informally adopted the 16-year-old punching prodigy with his common-law wife, Camille Ewald, after Lorna died from cancer in 1982.
Kirkpatrick would pass a decade later without Tyson ever knowing if he was truly his father – a role D’Amato was happy to fill until his own death in late 1985.
Tyson’s three years training at D’Amato’s gym in Catskill, New York proved formative. Not only did he learn at the hands of a master trainer, but he filled the void of his parents with Cus and Camille. He also took refuge in a diverse group of young boxers – something he’d continue to draw on throughout his life.
‘His first family was the streets,’ Kriegel said. ‘His second family is fighters.’
With Tyson, D’Amato famously had his chance for redemption two decades after his first heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, lost his title and a rematch to a seemingly indestructible Sonny Liston.
Countless boxing writers have already pointed out that in Tyson, D’Amato suddenly had his own Liston. Sure, their styles differed considerably. Both were knockout artists, but whereas Liston’s jab was legendary, Tyson’s relied on rapid combinations of hooks and uppercuts.
What they had in common was the fear they instilled in rivals (and law enforcement), which D’Amato cultivated for his and Tyson’s mutual benefit.
In Kriegel’s view, D’Amato needed Tyson to make him ‘immortal’ and the young fighter dutifully aimed to do just that for his surrogate father. Years later, Tyson still credits D’Amato for getting him off the streets and proudly defended their dynamic in one of two lengthy conversations with Kriegel.
‘When I suggested to him that the bargain between young Mike and Cus D’Amato was existential and Faustian, and that D’Amato was asking a 13-year-old kid, “make me live forever, make me an immortal”,’ Tyson’s response is: ‘Well, didn’t I?”
Even after covering Tyson for decades, Kriegel was still surprised.
‘At what price?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘In all due respect to Mike, I’m not sure that’s really a question he wants to go at. I mean, it’s a hard question to answer. Yeah, the guy saved me, but at what cost?’
D’Amato was known as Floyd Patterson’s trainer before he informally adopted a young Tyson
Now 58, Tyson’s greatest accomplishment may be the fact that he’s still alive, Kriegel said
Tyson tries to kiss then-wife Robin Givens as her mother stands with Donald Trump in 1988
Tyson’s quest for parental figures didn’t end with D’Amato’s death.
Soon he’d be taken under the wing of promoter Don King, a shadowy figure he’d later sue for $100 million before getting just 14 percent of that in a settlement.
There was also his volatile relationship with Hollywood star Robin Givens, his first wife, whose formidable mother may have been part of Tyson’s attraction to the actress.
‘He was head over heels in love with Robin Givens for her beauty, for what she represented to him,’ Kriegel said. ‘But I don’t think that he fell for her despite her incredibly overbearing, domineering and controlling mother. In some measure [Tyson fell for Givens] because of it.’
Tyson even tried to press his court-appointed psychologist Marilyn Murray into being his mother.
‘I’m realizing right now I need a mom,’ Tyson once told her, as she later revealed to ABC News. ‘Would you be my mom?’
Robin Givens horses around with her then-husband Mike Tyson and her mother, Ruth, in 1988
Heavyweight boxer Tyson pictured alongside Givens in Los Angeles, California in 1988
Promoter Don King with actress Robin Givens ringside at Tyson-Holmes in Atlantic City
Mike Tyson and the promoter Don King take a pause of the World Boxing Council convention in Mexico City on November 1, 1988. Tyson was already among the most popular athletes alive
A typical telling of the Tyson story usually contains the same belabored anecdotes: His childhood affinity for pigeons, boxing in juvey, a series of vicious knockouts and a historic downfall that included Givens’ abuse allegations, his unfathomable 1990 loss to James ‘Buster’ Douglas, and his 1992 rape conviction in Indianapolis.
To Kriegel, those tired stories initially made him reluctant to take on a two-part Tyson biography. So instead of using his book to explain Tyson’s failures, Kriegel offers a surprisingly hopeful message both for the fighter and the reader.
‘When I look at his life now, how the hell did we get here?’ Kriegel asked. ‘I’m sure he thinks that too because the one thing that Tyson, the people in the Tyson camp and his antagonists like me in the press could all agree on was that he wasn’t long for this world.’
Mike Tyson talks to the press after winning the fight against Sammy Scaff during the bout at the Felt Forum on December 6, 1985
Kriegel recalled a conversation he had with Tyson around 2012 when Iron Mike marveled at his own age – about 46 at the time.
‘And it really wasn’t until then that he became real to me,’ Kriegel said. ‘He was in an abstraction to me. He was just like the villain in my column. And when I’d see him at a fight, he went out of his way to be p****… He wasn’t particularly charming at his trial in Indianapolis.
‘But the guy in front of me, in 2012, he was real.’
Kriegel’s story isn’t finished. There is a Part II on the way that encompasses Tyson’s turbulent 1990s, the death of his four-year-old daughter in 2009 and his tormented path to the thoughtful, wise 58-year-old we see today.
The reader actually gets a glimpse of that Tyson in a vivid scene in the prologue of Part I. Far removed from Brownsville, the man who famously bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear is seen at a tranquil tennis court along the Pacific watching his 12-year-old daughter practicing with a club pro.
For Tyson, such a moment is bigger than any boxing title. He may not have found someone to fill the void his parents left behind, but he’s now capable of making sure his children won’t suffer that same fate.
‘Maybe the real accomplishment in his life isn’t making either D’Amato or himself immortal,’ Kriegel concluded. ‘It’s actually being alive at 58, being a dad, watching his daughter play tennis. Holy s***: Who could have imagined that?’
So, in its own way, Tyson’s story does have at least one wholesome, heartwarming message. And just in time for Father’s Day.
