Mike Tyson & Oscar Wilde (Terence Winch)

Released in the spring of 2009, James Toback’s documentary Tyson  features former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson alone, sitting in a chair, talking into the camera, and as such seems as much about language as anything else. Mike Tyson has always been fascinating to listen to—his speech is scary sometimes (threats to eat his opponents’ children and the like), but just as often excoriatingly vulnerable and emotionally charged.  His voice is unmistakable—an idiosyncratic instrument of his own making, played out in an accent that’s not exactly Brooklynese or African-American.  Even when its creator mangles a word or upends the syntax, Tyson’s talk somehow comes out as even more expressive.  Listen to his private relationship with the meaning and pronunciation of “skullduggery” in the film—you’ll want to play it over and over, like a phrase in a song that just grabs your attention.

Mike Tyson, chewing your ear off, is never boring.  He has little interest in making excuses for himself, nor does he attempt to evade his compelling contradictions—thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive one moment, frighteningly predatory the next. All the notable ingredients of the Tyson saga come into play in the film—his touching father-son relationship with trainer Cus D’Amato (which brings him to the point of tears on screen), his still-raw anger over his rape conviction and three-year prison term, his eight-month catastrophe of a marriage to Robin Givens.  And, of course, his stunning rise to the top of the heavyweight division—at age 20, he became the youngest champ in history—and his subsequent fall: the shocking loss to Buster Douglas in Japan in 1990 and his bizarre bouts with Evander Holyfield later in the decade (Tyson timeline) .  While he didn’t eat Holyfield’s children, he did famously take a few bites out of Evander himself.

 

There is some interesting footage from Tyson’s life and career in the movie, and there probably could have been more, but this extended dramatic monologue would have worked without any.     

Of course, no boxer has ever had more fun with the language than Muhammad Ali, who delighted in ridiculous light verse designed to accomplish such goals as the unmanning of the fearsome Sonny Liston or the gaslighting of  Smokin’ Joe Frazier. "I Am the Greatest," "Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee," and  "Total Eclipse of the Sonny," are among Ali’s classic creative endeavors that remain fresh and funny nearly half a century later.

 

But as far as poetry and boxing go, there may be no equivalent in the heavyweight boxing ranks to match Iron Mike Tyson reciting a section of Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, as happens in Tyson. I only wish that I could find my old cassette recording of Wilde himself reading from the poem, which was first published anonymously in 1898 following Wilde’s release from prison after serving two years of hard labor for the crime of being homosexual. Tyson and Wilde: celebrity convicts. The tape was sent to me by the late James Liddy in the 1970s, and was supposedly originally recorded on wax cylinder by Thomas Edison in Paris in 1900, the year of Wilde’s death. (Liddy told me a few years ago that the recording’s authenticity has been questioned; but if it’s a fake, it’s a convincing one.) [Update: Laura Orem found this clip of Oscar reading, which may be the same as the Liddy recording.]    

In the Tyson DVD extras, Toback says he suggested the poem to Tyson.  Although Tyson didn’t know the poem, Toback reports, he was quite familiar with Wilde, as well as with Lord Alfred Douglas, and Douglas's father, the horrible Marquis of Queensberry (pictured below), who established the modern rules of boxing.

I recorded Tyson’s reading off my tv screen and include it here (Download Mike Tyson reading from The Ballad of Reading Jail).  That’s the surf in the background.

Comments

[Laura Orem]

If you come across the Wilde recording, please post it if you can! That would be amazing!

[Laura Orem]

I posted before I was finished - Tyson reading the poem is remarkable. I wonder what Wilde would have thought? I bet he would have liked it!

[Terence Winch]

Dear L: I went through my entire cassette collection of hundreds of tapes this week, and couldn't find it. But if it somehow shows up, I'll digitize it & stick it in the post. ---T

[[email protected]]

Brilliant and original post. Thanks, as always.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1424126726]

I found this on YouTube - is this the recording?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUObQv5guR8

[Terence Winch]

Dear Laura: Thanks---I should have thought to have looked on line for it. This might be the same one, but in my memory, the tape I had was of Oscar reading the last three verses of the poem. So, I don't know. There's probably a Wilde scholar out there who could speak to the authenticity of the recording. In any case, I'll add your finding to the post. ---T

[clarinda harriss]

Oh my. That reading blow my mind. Terry, thanks for much for sending this to me. I'm passing it along to a bunch of scholarly friends. I truly hope it's authentic; even if it isn't, it's moving; if it is, it's mind-blowing.

Clarinda

[Peter Kissel]

Tyson and Wilde!! Who'd a-thunk it? Terry's review of the Tyson documentary and Tyson's speech patterns really bit my ear. And Iron Mike's recording of Reading Gaol is spellbinding, scary and brilliant all at once.

[Henry Lawson]

Extraordinary! Tyson has always seemed to me to live in the literal instead of the figurative so I was amazed to hear him reading this.

[Rafael]

i think iron mike is very poetic. recently caught the documtary and i cant get the vision of him out of my mind. i am like mike... a very sensitive man. not in a sense of being weak, but in a way that lets me feel things on a more extream basis. love and pain. its a curse to be like this, but i cant imagine having the power of punch like mike and being like this. they are two extreams that i am sure torture the man. some of the things he said shocked me to say the least. even when in a tirate of anger i understood what he was saying.. for example. "i will fuck you until you love me" as crass as it may sound. its very poetic and shows a lot of pain. anyway.. i dont admire him, but i respect that he is not what the media has made him out to be, i think he has the ability to be a great poet writing wonderful pros.