The Netflix Docuseries "Tyson" Is A Must Watch For Anybody That Wants To Learn More About The Rise And Fall Of Iron Mike (Spoiler-Free Review)
Another week, another docuseries I had no clue was coming out despite having an immense interest in the subject. For all the issues with "the death of pop monoculture" and the meteoric rise of 8 million streaming networks, missing out on awesome shows/movies because I never heard of them is probably the biggest problem for me. Or it could be because I'm old, washed, and always running around with my kids. Regardless of the reason, hearing about a Mike Tyson docuseries got me hyped and I gotta say, it pretty much lived up to what I was hoping.
As the headline says, I will not be spoiling anything despite Mike Tyson's professional career being over for decades (I'm not counting that Jake Paul disaster on Iron Mike's resume) and his life playing out in the public eye more than almost any athlete of our time. Still, there was a ton of stuff that I was not aware of despite one of my first memories in the mid-80s being a Tyson piece on TV about him being a bad mamma jamma that was ready to become the next great heavyweight and was indisputably as cool as he was scary. Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to actually stay up for a Tyson fight and kinda understand boxing, he was in the post jail era of his career, which was entertaining in its own special way but nowhere near the spectacle of him knocking people out in historic fashion.
Those videos will always leave me in awe
As someone that researched some of Tyson's life, I wanted to know more about his childhood in Brooklyn, Cus D'Amato taking him in to train in the Catskills, the rise up the ranks, and the fall to the living meme he essentially became. Obviously like most of the documentaries these days, I worried about how legit and one-sided the information would be considering a lot of the stories would be coming from the mouth of Tyson as well as some of his closest confidants. Not only about the stuff in the ring but the Robin Givens marriage, the rape charge, the Evander Holyfield ear debacle, and so much more. Some people declined to speak, which leads to Tyson and his team being the only source of information. But for the most part, Tyson seems pretty candid about what happened without much concern about hiding anything because he seems to know who he is and how he has been viewed by the public in his life.
Clearly there is some fucked up shit in Tyson's life, which I feel like is mostly traced back to his childhood. There is a story about what he would do when his mom would work that shook me to my core and definitely peeled another layer back about who he is. The interviews with the guys that trained with Tyson when he was a kid in the Catskills were maybe my favorite parts of the doc, as was the behind the scenes footage as he went from amateur boxer to pro under D'Amato. I always thought Cus D'Amato being alive for the bulk of Tyson's career is one of the greatest What Ifs in sports history. The entire fall of Tyson is covered pretty openly. I'm sure they could've dived deeper into some of the stuff, but I'm guessing he didn't want to do so and the four episodes each coming in at about an hour felt like the right amount of time to tell the full story of a one time sports icon.
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I also would've loved if they dove into Tyson attaching his name and likeness to Punch Out back in the day. But from what I heard, it was kind of a right time, right place thing instead of this crazy planned out thing. So I guess I'll just rewatch Portnoy take on Tyson from the old school Barstool video days.
TL;DR If you have any interest in Mike Tyson at all, start this series ASAP. You will probably bang it out quickly because it's really good and keeps your attention the entire time because Mike Tyson the person is as fascinating as Mike Tyson the fighter, hence why people were still tuning into his fights and betting on him as a 59-year-old against Jake Paul (they show the fight for about 3 seconds in the doc, which is more than enough in my mind).