The Tao Reveals Mike Tyson's Purpose
How Kid Dynamite turned a passion for violence into a force for love
“A man who was friendly with everyone was an enemy to himself.”
The first opponent he fought had murdered his pet. Trying desperately to make friends, he showed some neighborhood kids his pigeons. The next time they came by his house, they brought a posse to rob him of his birds. Then an older kid ripped the head off of his favorite one. At the goading of his “friends”, he gave more than he got. He fought and he won.
In the days and weeks and years that followed, the bullies would pound him mercilessly in the broad daylight of the cafeteria, in front of teachers who stood by too afraid to do anything. Afterward, he’d go home to emotional abuse from his mother. His was a world of failed grown-ups who either let beatings happen or participated in them. Soon he was skipping school and taking out that anger and betrayal in thefts, drugs, and eventually armed robberies. He would be arrested 38 times by the age of 13.
Then one day he was introduced to an old boxing trainer. One of the greats who had built up a world heavyweight champion years ago and wanted one more before his passing. He would cement his legacy by proving two things: That his system worked, and that character could overcome anything. He told that boy that if he listened to him, then he’d be the youngest heavyweight champion of the world.
So the boy listened. He did everything he was told. He trained hard, studied tapes, and learned everything there was to know about fighting in the ring and outside it. He emulated greatness by studying the people who had it in their names. Starting with Ali, he went back to the beginning. Cyrus, Alexander, Pompey, Genghis, Charlemagne… each exemplifying the exalted ego, each defying the world and bringing nations to their knees. Each man ruled by violence and would not be ruled by it. The boy who could not protect a pigeon learned how to be feared.
“I was a titan, the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. My style was impetuous, my defenses were impregnable, and I was ferocious.”
Those who see only a thug or monster miss the psychological aspects of the fight game. They don’t see how the dark technical brilliance he applied in destroying men’s bodies was also at work in dismantling their minds. The unflinching death stare, the sadist’s pleasure in “conquering souls”, and the desire to bathe in blood and eat opponents’ children. It was trash-talking taken to horrifying extremes. Consciously or not, he became what he once feared. As brutal as any of his bullies, as emotionally devastating as his own mother.
Eventually, he got what he wanted, he became undisputed champion. And the debauchery became unprecedented. Like his hero Alexander, he was setting the world’s great cities aflame in one massive drunken orgy. He owned tigers, he overran private islands. He allegedly hurt women, he definitely hurt men. He smoked, snorted, and drank every mind-altering substance he could get his hands on. And yet, he was not happy. He knew, deep down, that it was all an illusion. That the belts, the finery, the adulation, the deification, all of it hinged on a false identity. The world feared him, and because it feared him it also wanted to destroy him.
Just as in every yin there is some yang. In every tyrant, there is a scared little boy struggling mightily to keep all that armor from coming apart.
“I think the average person thinks I’m a nut and I deserve whatever happens to me.”
I have said before that moral people who are greatly skilled are disliked by bad people, but a greatly skilled and immoral person is a threat to all. So it was that the self-proclaimed “baddest man on the planet” got treated the worst by those closest to him and ignored by many who could have prevented it. There were the betrayals by friends, the emotional manipulation of women, and finally, the hubris of a lifetime spent training never to be physically beaten again.
“Everyone that you fight is not your enemy and everyone who helps you is not your friend.”
Eventually, he fell. And he fell again. And just when you thought it was rock bottom, something else would give and the ground would crumble beneath his feet once more.
Like so many on their way down, he became convinced that he needed to get rid of it all. He apologized to the people he wronged, humbled himself, and But he also stayed out of the ring for 15 years. He domesticated himself, got fat, became a vegan. So afraid of his former self was he that he refused to exercise. As much as the world got to see the wonderful spirit through podcasts and interviews, they also witnessed a conflicted soul. A person, it was true, who could get by just fine never boxing again, but who could become so much more if he did.
Boxing is who he is. Today’s scientists talk of ‘flow’, those moments when everything falls away and one is completely absorbed in one’s undertaking. This, they now believe, is the key to happiness. The meaning of life. The true fountain of youth. Despite his grandiose bluffs, neither he nor the people he worshipped were ever really gods. But in spending his life doing what he loved so much that it both aroused and scared him, he was doing something divine. He was turning pain and bitterness into awe-inspiring beauty. Within the roped-off purity of the white square, he turned his pain and suffering into a destructive art. Rather than throw that away, he needed to figure out how to keep the purity inside the ring and do away with all the falsehood and deceit that goes on outside it. If he could do that, it could make him whole again.
Then, amazingly, came the footage of him working out with pads. Followed by the announcement that he was coming back for an exhibition fight.
“It’s going to be for various charities, so nobody’s gonna have to worry about me getting rich or being jealous and saying I’m doing this for money, I’m not getting anything and I just feel good doing this because I can.”
He may have been past his prime, it may not have been a sanctioned bout, and it may have ended in a draw, but it was nonetheless a cause for joy. Because after it was all over, his happiness over the decision proved he was no longer fighting for his ego. It entertained a lot of people, it helped a lot more, and he found a way to do what he loved in the most Taoist way possible: without calling undue attention to oneself, without accumulating the gold that attracts ruin, with pure love for the doing of the thing itself. His first ever fight was to avenge the loss of something pure. Now he’s found a way to bring purity to his fighting.
What could be greater than that?