Mike Tyson: From Robberies to Royalty - Redemption Story | E169

0:00Life is all about confidence. Confidence breeds success. Success breeds confidence. And when confidence is applied properly, it will supersede a genius. I had people at the bottom of the world, and I had people at the top of the world. And the pain is relevant. It's the same. Do you think all your friends are not that happy for your success? No. Especially if they tell you to keep doing, keep it up, don't give up. And you do what they tell you to do, and you succeed yourself. Now they inspire you, now they want to tear you down. Right. Isn't that ridiculous? Ridiculous. How important has extreme preparation been in your success?

1:02My guest today is Mike Tyson. Mike is the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, one of the greatest boxers of all time, and one of the most recognized sports personalities in the world. When he was 20 years old, four months, and 22 days old, he became the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title, and he was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles. He finished his professional career with a 50-6 record with a knockout to win percentage of 88 % and is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In addition to his incredible boxing career, Mike has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows and is the creator and actor of the one-man hit Broadway show, The Undisputed Truth, and is the author of a best-selling book of the same name.

1:47Mike is also a successful entrepreneur. He's the founder of two companies, including Tyson 2.0, and he is a dedicated philanthropist through his Mike Tyson Cares Foundation and his support of other charities, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Special Olympics. Mike, it's an incredible pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Pleasure to be here, my friend. So many people I know are motivated by different things in life. And I think when you don't have money, and I know as a kid, I wanted money, and I was motivated by money. For me, I wasn't an I was a terrible athlete, much better today than I was then.

2:18I think a lot of it's mental and there's a lot of confidence. And I didn't have a lot of confidence being bullied and not being the cool kid. See, and that was the difference. I never had trouble. Once I got it, it took me to another place I wasn't prepared to be. It took you to that stratosphere where it appeared to be like you might even be better than some people. And then, like I said, you get to look at yourself from a different perspective. You appear to be surpassing people, but you don't like yourself. The more success you receive, the more conflict you have within. And I never understood that.

2:57And I was always a glutton for more and more. I was always taught, crush the world to your feet more and more and more. And as I got older, I realized when I didn't have it, I wanted it. But now that I have it, I don't want it anymore. you know so I have to understand this someone has to manage your life because you're not you're not quite qualified to manage your life I ran into some beautiful people that came from the experience of meeting my wife and life has changed for me so drastically we would never have done that if I wasn't married to this woman we're going to talk about your awesome wife Kiki of 14 years in a little bit.

3:39But let's talk about money. And I do want to talk about the motivation of money to our future. So many people I know are motivated by money and they hate what they do. A lot of my lawyer friends, for example. I'm very unable to do that. If I don't like what I'm doing, you're unable to get any work out of me. So what's your advice to people in general where money is their greatest motivator of success? Really? whoever believes a lot of fame and money is going to make them happy the people who believe that they never had any fame or money they never had any fame or money because it becomes a job now, it becomes a job to watch people, to watch characters be prepared for a particular characteristic that you're looking for for good people or bad people people that have prepared new skiduggery on you It's you become your own alarm system.

4:35You understand? You become your own system of protection. And that's just a middle way to live. But we have to have some perspective on living in that way. I have a lot of friends who live month to month. And I have a lot of very wealthy friends. And some of the most unhappy, miserable people I know are sent to millionaires who are depressed. They're terrible parents. They travel the world. So kids are really fucked up and they have a lot of problems, a lot of drugs. Suicide is an issue. It's sad. Listen, I'm here too. Listen, I have people at the bottom of the world I'm friends with, and I have people at the top of the world that's friends with me.

5:19And the pain is relevant. It's the same. Right. Both people losing someone they love, they grieve the same. I don't care how much money you got, how much power you got. We both grieve the same. We both breathe the same. And we're the same. Some people decided money was a big part of their life. Right. And there was nothing that was going to stop them from getting that money. That's what it's all about. I'm the kind of guy I learned from my mentor. You have to want to be up more than anybody in the world wants you to be down. And once you feel that way, you have no much problems. Because you don't care what somebody that you don't care about say.

5:56You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Mike Tyson, the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now, without further ado, here's part two of my incredible interview with Mike. A lot of people, when you're successful, who you think are your friends, are not that happy for your success. No, no. Especially if they tell you to keep doing, keep it up, don't give up. And you do what they tell you to do, and you succeed yourself. Now, they inspire you. Now, they want to tear you down. Right. Isn't that ridiculous?

6:22Ridiculous. I found out there's a friend who would rather fight you than pay back a debt. That's what I learned. all people that you help and stuff. If they believe they have to pay you back, they'll find some way to fight you, have some altercation with you where your guys wouldn't talk so you would not want to talk to them or see them get your money back. But I look at that from a different perspective. If I was capable of helping somebody and they didn't want to be residual and help me back or anything, I gave them that money now that I can never talk to them again. They can never talk to me, come around me again.

6:53And so I paid for really a bad juncture in my life, and I don't have to deal with it anymore. You already mentioned you had gone to prison. Yeah. You were sentenced to six years. You did three years. You called it the three best, most valuable years. How is prison the three? Well, listen to this. It started at 63, and then went down to three. I got 60 years wiped out the books. But the really situation was that everything in life is psychological. being able to be adaptable and being able to just have the confidence to believe that you know you're going to survive this life is all about confidence confidence breeds success success breeds confidence and when confidence is applied properly it will supersede the genius there's nothing more powerful in this world than confidence in a person whose time has come there's nothing when that happens you're almost you're almost in god status but how is prison the three best years of your life what What did it do to make you a better person?

7:53It gave me a perspective. It gave me more than that, peace. I had no trouble. I didn't have the altercation, no fight. Everything went well for me in prison. Everything was almost perfect. I lived great there. I ate great there. I was treated, yeah, I was treated with privilege there, but I gave everybody respect. The first year I was there, I was an F, you know? I think, hey, everybody here deserves to be down on me. I'm the man here. And then I had to get a couple of visits to isolation. And after I had that miserable year, I started getting the hang of it. I became a trustee. Everybody respected me.

8:30And everybody liked me. When I first went there, I was a jerk. Nobody liked me. Next thing you know, they had put another year on me for fighting with the gods and cursing everybody. I just being an uncomfortable person in prison. Because I felt that I was wrong. I don't deserve it. All these people deserve to be here, but accept me. And then I realized that we're living life on life terms. I should be grateful that I'm still living. I did only three years. There were guys in there that did my time 10 times. They did 30 years. They did 30 years. And when I said I had three years, I was sad. They said, what's wrong, dude?

9:05I did your time three times already. I had 30 years. I'm not depressed. We have to live life on life terms. And that's when I understood. Who the hell am I? I'm nobody. And I realized that some people are so great from society's perspective that they hold you up so high, the only one that's got to take you down is you because this doesn't feel right. You got to tear yourself down because what's just as powerful as building yourself up is just as equally powerful as tearing yourself down. So that's a rush too. I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach the next level of success in your life.

9:44Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lift and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success.

10:17So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. When people go to prison, you're kind of the new guy in there and you got to fight to establish respect with some of the other prisoners. Were you a target and said, all right, I want to beat up Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion of the world? I don't know how to say it. Everybody loves me.

10:44You know, any problem that happened in prison was because of my ignorance, because I felt I shouldn't be there, and I was better. These guys are criminals, and I'm not the real criminals. And we have to know that we're just here for a moment in time. We're just passing through. No one's better than anyone else. Some people may have better opportunities, but we're just all God's creatures, big and small. When you're there, you knew you were going to fight again in your training every day you're running nine miles a day in prison around the yard including four miles a day in your prison cell running around around and you're doing so many jumps you said that you dented the concrete floor listen um i never saw that the prisoners and um and administration saw that um wasn't even anymore i would do it every Look at this, run in place.

11:33Neck is in place running. That's just what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the best in the world. I knew I was going to fight. I wanted to look the best. And most of my career fighting, it was just based on my ego. And I had the determination, but it all stemmed from my ego. I was thinking nobody's ever going to pick on me again. Think of those cold, weak moments when people abuse me. See, this is never going to happen again. You went in at 285, and you came out at 215. It's your lean, mean fighting machine. Yes. I never went to the cafeteria. I always had great food. My girlfriend at the time would always send food over, send money to certain people, and they would go out, bring the food in for me.

12:14We always had great smorgasbord in prison. Let's talk about Evander Holyfield. Oh, yeah, he works with us now. Yeah, we're going to talk about it. I know your partners. That's an incredible story. So you had a first fight with him back in November 9, 1996. You had the rematch June 28, 1997, and it was called The Sound and the Fury, and then it was known as The Bite Fight. So can you walk us through, I saw that fight on pay-per-view. I'm a huge fan of yours, and I've seen a bunch of your fights, but it was surprising to watch that. Can you just explain what you were thinking and what happened there?

12:52Listen, I was in the ring fighting him, and I noticed the first time I'm certain that happened. He didn't hit me, but I was dizzy about something. I don't know. Maybe I thought he hit me. But then when I watched the fight, it was because he was headbutting me. I was running to his head most of the time. The second fight, it started happening again. My head was busted. And I was in desperation. The referee and I just got frustrated a bit. And disqualified? Yeah. He was kicking my ass a little too. I have to put that in. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about probably the greatest upset in sports history.

13:29You're fighting Buster Douglas. He's a 42-to-1 underdog, and you lost that fight. How did you lose the fight? And talk about kind of the habits you were doing before the fight and what you learned from that fight. You know, regardless of that, I was just living ridiculously. He had fought a great fight, and he deserved to be champion at that time. He deserved to be worked hard. He earned that fight to be champion. There was no excuses. You learned at some point when you lost the fight that the pressure was now off and you were not disappointed. You were actually happy it happened because you learned lessons from those.

14:05What did you learn from that? That was the Buster Douglas fight. I learned that losing wasn't all as bad as it made out to be. That's what I realized about that. Losing is not as bad as people think it is. So what? I cleaned myself up. I fought four more times. He made a fight again for the title, and I got myself in trouble. I never once said this after the fight. It's over. I'm not going to do this no more. Only that's the answer. And I won my title back in six months. Never in a million years I said it's over. I'm never going to win the title again. My life is over. My career is over. I knew from my experience and from watching fighters and talking to old fighters that fought in the 20s, like when I was fighting in the 80s, and they were just telling me, Mike, man, I know a great fighter like you, and I go, all the sudden, this more will discourage you.

14:53And I just never got discouraged in my life. After a certain thing, as being a kid, I really don't need to be discouraged anymore.

15:05I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I wanna know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google, Lyft, and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

15:38I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions, and if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video.

16:01Lots of people, when they have a lot of success, they have some knockdowns, they get fired from jobs once, twice, three times, they give up. What's your message to all those people who experience great disappointment if they should keep going? Well, I'll explain that with a story. Okay. You know, Don King was my promoter. Of course, I understood some society that he stole money. Right. Some stuff that, you know, it's in the past. He did some reals. And so he expected me to be undope because I was undope for a while. I expected me to stay in jail. I was arrested for a while after I lost everything.

16:37I got in trouble. And then things has changed. My wife, I married my wife. We wrote this one-man show. It went insane. We went all over the world. performed it all over the world. We performed in countries that couldn't speak our language and they had an interpreter. But, and plus I had other success. Plus I got this boxing success. Then I have this, a pair, my clothes and everything. And then I have this boxing, called Tyson Sports pretty much. And it has the best boxing equipment in the world. And I go from all this, right? From being such a despot, drug user, alcoholic, And I go through all this transformation, forms of redemption, so to speak.

17:21And know what happened? Don King is my neighbor now. But he never in a million years thought I'd be this close to him again. You know, now he's my neighbor. So what's that mean? I can walk to his house. He has to see me until the day he dies. I don't look at life like, hey, I'm envious of something mad that people have grudges. No, because life has all been written. And as soon as eternity started, everything's been written. It happened already. That's when he said, let there be light, because he wrote our life in the dark. And so whatever happens is meant to happen. It was written. Do you ever watch Lawrence of Arabia?

17:59I've never seen it. And my kids are horrified right now. But since you're saying it to me, I promise you I'm going to watch it. What a movie. Because one movie was just guided. that this one gentleman wanted to help. Another guy said, you're wasting your time. It was written that this guy is going to die and he's not going to live long. And the guy was right. It was written. You can tell by somebody's character, if they don't redeem themselves, the future is already destiny. It's written already. Like one old boxing friend of mine met me the other day and said, we never had a million years believe that you'd still be alive because I lived that kind of life.

18:38I didn't have any hope in life even though I had a lot of materialism. I never had hope for a better life. And now that I have hope for a better life, you know, adversities don't stop, but we just handle them differently and from a positive perspective as well. You're a famous athlete. People come up and take pictures with you. Some athletes like it to a point. Some don't. You're with your family. Hey, don't take my photo. At some point, this 12-year-old kid comes up to you, and later in life, you want to learn something about the music business. So you called this amazing guy named Rodney Jerkins, and you said, I know who you are.

19:14For those people who don't know, Rodney, who goes by a dark child, is one of the most successful music producers of all time. Yes, yes. He's worked with everybody. You can ever imagine. Beyonce, Michael Jackson, Rihanna, everybody, and everyone was just dying to work with him. So you call him up. I think you're living in Maryland at the time, and you said, I want to come see you the next day. And Rodney said, hey, Mike Tyson. and called me, come on over. He drove over in a black Rolls Royce. What were you, and Rodney's known to be this incredibly nice, thoughtful, logical guy who is a great friend.

19:52Very logical, that's a good one, yeah, very logical. And he's counseled a lot of people throughout Hard Time, Justin Bieber and a whole bunch of people. So you go over there, you spend time with him, you guys become great friends. at some point he you want to fight lennox lewis but you don't really want to fight him so rodney's kind of coaching you can you tell us how you you popped him in the chin and can you also tell us what uh what his friendship means to you hey listen what time do i always pop rodney's chin every now and then but listen rodney is just the sweetest guy in the world you know people you know of course you have to have that tough um exterior in the music business but he's one of the most beautiful person in the world.

20:34I'm so grateful to be friends with his family. He's friends with my family. It's hard to pretty much how do you define his friendship? It's just total love. What does he mean to you? How big of an influence has Rodney had on your life? Rodney's one of my best friends. He's one of my best friends, the most famous person. When I say famous, I don't mean from a star perspective. Famous as far as a friend's perspective. One of my favorite people. When I say famous I mean that as one of my famous people. Not no celebrity. Yeah. Well, shout out to Rodney for bringing us together. Dark Child. Listen, listen.

21:09I'm in Dubai, and I'm talking about Rodney Juergens. Rodney Juergens, this guy doesn't know who the hell is Rodney Juergens, this guy in Dubai. I said, come on, Rodney Juergens. He dealt with this guy. And then my friend that's there, he said, hey, Dark Child. He said, oh, yeah, I know Dark Child. But they didn't know his name. They only know him by Dark Child. You got to have a branding in the music business, so they branded him Dark Child. But I'm saying his name. I'm thinking these people know who he is. Wow, Rodney's not known out here. But once my friend said, yeah, I talked to y 'all. He's a legend.

21:41Once again, shout out to Rodney for setting us up. I really appreciate it. He's become a good friend in a short amount of time. Oh, he's beautiful. You see, there's nothing in him but a godly soul. If it's not God's work, he's not doing it. One of the things that's one of my favorite topics that's made me successful among a lot of hard work is something called what I call extreme preparation. So I'm talking about the kind of preparation that's not normal preparation. I'm talking about when someone spends one hour on something, I may spend five or ten. Or someone, we're making a presentation to a company, they may spend ten, and I may spend 40.

22:14How important has extreme preparation been in your success? It's not for everyone. That's why it's called extreme. Not everyone's extreme. Some people are balanced. My extreme preparation comes from fear. Every part of success comes from fear. Fear. We turn the fear into happiness, but it comes from the fear of failing. Especially when everybody has everything riding on you. There's a fear of letting everyone down, letting yourself down. That's how come some people would rather die than let people down or let themselves down. It's just a feeling. I don't know why from that desperation, it's just a feeling.

22:55If I don't succeed, I don't want to exist. People, we have been. That's the extreme. Guys like Muhammad Ali, you got to beat them to death. They're not going to give up. If the referee don't stop the fight, if the corner don't stop the fight, you got to kill them. He's not going to give up. He's just not going to give up and quit. And that's the mindset that I believe I have. One of the greatest quotes of many that you have is, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Listen, I hear that. Sportscasters, commentators, politicians, everybody. And I was saying, somebody said that became one of the most important quotes in the 21st century.

23:35And I'm saying to myself, hey, that's not even my quote. That's because of my quote. I said, if he was here now, he would laugh to death if somebody took him that serious. Is it true? Yeah. Everyone has a plan until they get hit or they find some kind of adversity in their presence. Let's talk about life after boxing. You were addicted to drugs. No, listen, let's start. You're not starting. Life after boxing, I was totally broke after I finished boxing. Totally, what,$5 million or$6 million? But that's totally broke to me at that particular time. I didn't know what I was going to do. Didn't care, so I really indulged myself in, what, in my discouragement, my fears, my, I don't know, I used to feel like my life was a waste and all that crap.

24:23And I did a lot of drugs. I did a lot of liquor. I became a glut and I ate food. I was like 330, no, 380, 360, something to that effect. And then I decided to call my wife, who wasn't my wife at the time, and see what I could suck out of her or something. And she came, she saw my condition. She never saw me like that before, but before she came to see me, friends of all were saying, have you seen Mike lately? He's a mess. And so she saw me. I was on medication then. Maybe now and then I might. No, I don't think I'm going to cook. I mean, yes, I was. And so she saw me. I was a mess. I don't know why she even got involved in my life.

25:08She had some adversity as well. But my stuff was just nasty, dirty. I had nothing. I can't believe I still had a house and nice cars. They didn't come and get this stuff. I'm saying, wow, what's happening here? I'm ready to go to my friend's house. I was doing some creepy stuff. And my wife, she just came in single-handedly and decided, hey, I'm going to clean this mess up. She was really diligent on really allowing me to be a respectable human being in society. And so I'm really grateful and appreciative about that. Because it was just before we were coming here, we were getting ready to go in a totally different direction until we got it together.