This man can take a punch—particularly when he’s the one throwing it.
Inside a boxing ring, that would cause one wackadoodle sports injury. Outside the ring—say, on an MGM Grand stage—it’s called being able to laugh at yourself. And letting us laugh along (without wanting to knock us into next year).
“By the time I was 12, I had been arrested 30 times,” says Onstage Mike Tyson as many in the crowd shake their heads in a kind of muted amazement in Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club—though not everything during Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth is strictly comic. But a lot is.
“The correction center looked like Cheers to me,” Tyson says, finishing the anecdote. “Everybody knows your name.”
Yet from his perspective, even if the stories are true, the truth-teller is a dual personality. “It’s not Mike Tyson up there,” insists Offstage Mike, before his show. “It’s just a guy who can do Mike Tyson better than anyone in the world. It’s just a story I’m telling.”
Whichever Tyson you perceive, it’s Tyson Truth, Round Two that you’re getting now. “If you’re not humbled by this world, this world will thrust humbleness upon you,” says Offstage Mike, who shares that humility in his one-man show’s second go-around in Vegas, after having also been produced as a Broadway play, HBO special and published memoir.
“(Humility) is not a message, it’s a fact that’s going to happen to you. It’s merciless.”
Humility, humor, nostalgia and a raconteur’s knack for storytelling are all integral to Undisputed Truth, as are bursts of braggadocio. Iron Mike, after all, lays claim to being the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles, intimidating opponents with a ferocious fighting style that earned him entry into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011.
Stretching from wretched memories (and a couple sweet ones) from his Brooklyn childhood to his criminal pursuits to his breathtaking boxing rise and the dark, destructive paths he traveled down in a violence-prone descent, Truth—written by his wife, Kiki—is ultimately a tale of uplift and redemption, culminating in his presence on the stage.
Punchlines pepper the show, which is framed by videos and images flashing across onstage screens. On his Brooklyn neighborhood when a current photo of his old apartment building pops up: “Now white people live there. You know what happens when white people move in: There goes the neighborhood.”
Intro to boxing? When he pummeled a bully who broke the neck of his pet pigeon. “It was love at first fight,” says Onstage Mike, who launches into warm reminiscing of his beloved and colorful mentor Cus D’Amato. Funny detours include the story of his first sexual encounter, a coitus-interruptus moment when he had to give his paramour’s mom the Heimlich maneuver.
Along the way, Tyson unflinchingly addresses his bountiful cocaine habit; tosses stink bombs at ex-spouse/actress Robin Givens, whom he casts as a viper he was a “sucker” to marry; and sprays animus at promoter Don King, whom he blames for financial miseries. And in a lengthy, enthusiastic monologue, Tyson recalls, nearly taunt for taunt and punch for punch, his epic street throw-down with ex-boxer Mitch Green—with Tyson giggling throughout the retelling.
Whatever you’ve thought of Iron Mike’s up-and-down life and career through the years, it’s hard not to find him a streetwise charmer and even endearing, watching him swing from quiet reflection over his mistakes to chortling and snorting like a ticklish hyena.
“I just want to entertain people,” says Offstage Mike about Onstage Mike. “I’ve learned about what entertaining truly is.”
MGM Grand, 10 p.m. Thurs.-Sun., starting at $54.95 plus tax an fee, 21+. 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster.
