Champs Page #8

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him at the prison,

hoping to share an estimated

$100 million payday.

Waiting for my opportunity

to get a chance to fight him,

there's a lot of writers,

in general, that think

that really he's the champ.

But realistic, I am the champ.

I have the belt.

Long before

dawn, news helicopters

hovered over the state prison,

and cameras were ready.

Hundreds of them from

around the world.

Tyson issued a

written statement.

I'm very happy to be

out and on my way home.

I will have more to say later.

It was

viewed as good versus evil.

The good was Evander.

The good Christian guy who

talks about the lord and things

like that, versus

Mike, who at that time

was the ex-con convicted rapist.

But Evander was perceived to

have no chance against Mike.

When the fight was

first announced,

Evander was a 25

to one underdog.

I mean, that's huge odds.

For anybody to be 25 to one

is like, they've got to shot.

As expected,

Mike Tyson comes out fast.

Don't push, don't

push, don't push.

Let's go.

I'm from the hood too.

I may not act like I'm from

there, but I'm from there.

Tyson never did insult me.

But the press did.

They talking about,

Tyson gonna kill you.

As we head for the bell.

They continue to

go after the bell!

Ain't nothing that he

was gonna do that I'm

not accustomed to.

No intimidation

factor here whatsoever.

Great!

Step easy.

Back.

I knew he was gonna be tough,

but I had watched

him my whole life.

It was almost like,

this is the fight.

The crowd behind Holyfield.

Holyfield!

Chants of

Holyfield as the crowd sensing

that Holyfield might

have Tyson in trouble.

Mike just wore down from not

being able to hurt Evander,

and that was something that he

had never experienced before.

Tyson in trouble!

Tyson's ready to go!

stops the fight,

and Holyfield has the win!

I can't believe what I'm seeing.

It's the most

unbelievable thing I've

ever been privileged to witness.

It was one of the most

complete fights I ever fought.

That was Holyfield's greatest

achievement.

Evander Holyfield ended up

being in some of the largest

pay per view matches in

the history of the sport,

but it took him a long

time to get there.

Evander Holyfield

was not just a good fighter.

He was a great fighter.

He's an underrated

heavyweight in my mind.

Very arguably belongs in the

top 10 heavyweights of all time

even though he was a little guy.

Started as a cruiser weight.

Tyson.

I don't think he became

what he could've been.

Boxing, as we imagine it,

is driven by a desire to

annihilate the opponent.

The focus is on the external.

Looking at what

boxers themselves say

is that it's about the internal.

It's about the discipline.

It's about the craft.

That it's not

about the opponent.

It's not about the external,

but it's about the internal.

It's about self.

When you win, everybody wins.

When you lose, you lose alone.

And that's the

truth, because you

have to deal with

that by yourself.

There's a large

degree to which the fighter

that achieves stardom,

super stardom, they

represent the American

dream to people.

They, the underdog

that makes it.

But I gotta be

honest with you, I

think a lot of that's

greatly overstated.

Mike Tyson, the

biggest athlete by far

of the 1990s, and biggest

athlete of the 1990s,

and certainly a

super star boxer,

suffered a lot of ups and downs

and was never really protected

by the people that

surrounded him

for the majority of his career.

My self worth,

even when I was a child,

depended on how much

I could hurt someone.

And as I got older and

I met Cus, that, well,

it continued to be how many

people I could knock out,

how fast I could knock them

out, how bad I could hurt them.

And so it just

stayed on that path.

The kid doesn't

have a normal home environment,

doesn't have a normal

support system around him,

and then he's basically trained

to be a fighting machine.

His life was crazy.

Tyson was a pit bull.

The ear biting incident

was a check out.

Mike was messed up.

I'm sure he'd be the first

one to tell you that.

You have to

understand, this is just what I

did, seven years of my life,

eight years of my life.

My greatest moment was

when I stopped boxing.

It was just dark for me.

Boxing got real dark for me.

A stunned crowd here

at the MCI Center in Washington

DC as McBride defeats Mike

Tyson, who quits on his stool.

I got an ability

to stay in shape,

but I don't got the fighting

guys, I don't think, anymore.

When did you recognize that?

At what part of the fight?

I don't know.

Early into the fight.

I'm just sorry I

let everybody down.

I mean, I just don't have

this in my heart anymore.

Did you feel as though you

had it coming into the fight?

No.

I'm just fighting to take

care of my bills, basically.

We know from

studies of lottery winners,

of professional

athletes, anyone who

comes into a sudden

windfall of money,

be careful what you

wish for, because that

creates more problems.

You have everybody coming

out of the woodwork

to try to get a

piece of your action.

Tyson has pulled

in an estimated $300 million.

He could have made

more if he hadn't

racked up the prison time.

And who knows how much he's lost

in lawsuits or to the managers

he claims ripped him off?

The bottom line, Tyson

then, $300 million.

Tyson now, chapter 11.

It's a sport where

you can be used.

There's no training

about how to handle

yourself outside the ring.

Very few boxers are taught

about how to handle their money.

If you don't have a good

team of people around you,

you will kill yourself.

You will crash and burn,

because every level of success

you have, you hit a wall

that you have to learn more.

I will always

wonder why Mike Tyson didn't

declare bankruptcy years before

his tax issues became crushing.

I mean, he clearly was bankrupt.

Why didn't he

declare bankruptcy?

Because it was in people's

interests to keep his contracts

alive with those he

was doing business.

Days after filing

for bankruptcy,

boxer Mike Tyson has filed suit

against his former promoter,

Don King.

Don was... I mean,

he knew everybody.

It's like he was a

step ahead of us.

How could you prepare

for something like that?

You don't know

who's trying to take

from you, who loves

you, who likes you.

You don't know if somebody's

trying to set you up.

Even when you play

by the rule book,

you find a person that has that

same energy that the person had

that was trying to rob you,

but they won't even give you

courtesy of pointing

a gun at you.

They'll rob you and do

it in black and white.

And I seen people do

worse things to you

in corporate settings than I

seen them do on the street.

Take everything from you.

There are

bottom feeders that will attach

themselves with

their law license,

with their business savvy to

a fighter from Brooklyn, New

York, Philly, or

any other place that

don't have really the education.

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