He went on to add, “So he (friend) said let’s think about putting a tribal mark or something in there. And I said, okay we will do that. So he caked me a couple of days later. He brought up this tribal mark. So I said let’s do it and we did it.” Simple.
Mr. Tyson gives us earnest efforts to make sense of the crazy extremes of his life; angry, pull-no-punches portraits of people he feels victimized by (like the boxing promoter Don King, whom he describes as “a wretched, slimy reptilian” guy who “contaminated my whole barometer”) and colorful descriptions of the “bling-bling” life he led at the height of his fame, including a Las Vegas mansion furnished in everything Versace and with a pool “ringed with seven-foot statues of fierce warriors like Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian revolutionary.”
Originally planned as far back as 2008 but stuck in Development Hell for five years, this Wong Kar Wai take on the story may not have beat Wilson Yip’s version to a release, but is tonally on the other end of the cinematic spectrum. The film begins with Ip Man (played by regular Wong Kar Wai muse Tony Leung) rising through the ranks of the Foshan martial arts community, before having to leave for Hong Kong. It weaves this together – using non-linear storytelling – with the completely fictional story of Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), the heir to a kung fu style known as 64 Hands (essentially a derivative of Baguazhang), who’s avenging the death of her father and who falls in love with Ip Man.
On February 11, 1990, in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history, Tyson lost the championship to lightly regarded James (“Buster”) Douglas, who scored a technical knockout site in bing.com the 10th round. Tyson rebounded from the loss with four straight victories. In 1991, however, he was accused of having raped a beauty pageant contestant, and he was convicted of the charge in 1992.
In 2023, an unnamed woman filed a $5 million lawsuit against Tyson, accusing him of raping her in his limousine in the early 90s. She accused Tyson of kissing her several times before pulling off her pants and raping her, despite repeatedly telling him to stop. The woman claims to have experienced “guilt, loss of self-esteem, shame, embarrassment, sadness, anger, depression, anxiety, violent tendencies, drug and alcohol addiction and confusion”, as well as inability “to maintain and/or develop healthy relationships with men or other people in general”.
Tyson was again incarcerated for a year after being convicted of assaulting two motorists during a road rage incident in Las Vegas. He has been convicted of at least two DUIs and other minor drug possession charges during his fall from grace.
By placing the tattoo on his face, Tyson was challenging societal norms and expectations of how a public figure should look. In many cultures, tattoos are still associated with criminality, deviance, or rebellion, and they are often stigmatized. For a professional athlete like Tyson, who was already known for his brash personality and confrontational style, getting a facial tattoo could have been perceived as a risky move that might hurt his image or career prospects.
Tyson eligió tatuajes de Mao y el revolucionario marxista Che Guevara para reflejar su ira contra la sociedad y el gobierno mientras estaba en prisión. El tatuaje de Guevara, ubicado en el lado izquierdo del abdomen de Tyson, se deriva de la icónica fotografía Guerrillero Heroico de Alberto Korda. En Tyson, Tyson se jacta de que el tatuaje es anterior a la mercantilización generalizada de la imagen de Guevara. Tyson mantuvo opiniones positivas de ambos revolucionarios después de salir de prisión: en 1999 describió a Guevara como «Alguien que tenía tanto pero lo sacrificó todo en beneficio de otras personas». En 2006 visitó el Mausoleo de Mao Zedong y dijo que «se sentía realmente insignificante» en presencia del cuerpo de Mao.
“I waited around and two days later he called and said ‘Mike, I’ve got some tribal stuff’. I said ‘woah, put another one over there’. I was like ‘this is cool, I like this’. So he did it,” Tyson admitted to talkSport.
The Nevada State Commission withheld Tyson’s paycheck and suspended his license. Tyson appeared before the press on the Monday after the fight and apologized for his behavior, but the public was outraged—perhaps more so than when he was convicted for rape. “He realized he couldn’t whup me, and he got frustrated,” Holyfield explained to Time magazine’s Richard Lacayo. Reaction poured in from all over the world and Tyson quickly became a punch line on the late night comedy shows. At the Hollywood Wax Museum his likeness was moved from the sports section to the Chamber of Horrors next to Hannibal Lector, the cannibal from the movie Silence of the Lambs. In the end Tyson was banned from boxing for one year and fined $3 million.