I had a bad night last night. After a successful work event, where I should have been feeling really lifted, I tossed and turned. My heart raced, my mind raced, and after struggling for a while I decided that sleep was fruitless. The worries and stresses I was attempting to shake were just not going to be shaken, and concentrating on my breathing was turning out to be more and more frustrating the more it failed to work, and so I picked up “Undisputed Truth” and began to read.
It is the second Tyson book I have read, the first being “Iron Ambition: My Life with Cus D’Amato”, which I enjoyed, but sometimes seemed to dwell too much on the history of boxing in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and dragged a bit in sections. The passages on Tyson’s relationship with Cus, his legendary trainer, were gripping and insightful, and it really set up the latter half of “Undisputed Truth” as you can really see the repercussions that D’Amato’s death had on the troubled champion.
That being said, the sordid fall and mental health struggles of the controversial and violent figure is probably not the best thing to read at 3am when suffering from anxiety, restlessness, racing thoughts, and just overall heavy sadness.
Being born in the late 80s, I wasn’t aware of Tyson’s boxing peak until much later, and was much more familiar with him as a tabloid star and an actor. The wonder of technology allowed me to watch each of his fights as I read about them, with nearly all of them being available on YouTube in some form or another. This made the boxing aspect of the book supremely enjoyable.
The other side of Tyson’s life was very difficult to digest. He was violent and mentally ill for most of his life. He assaulted numerous people outside the ring for decades, and was charged and convicted of rape. Throughout the book, Tyson constantly acknowledges what a terrible, violent, damaged, selfish person he was. He describes his shame at even recollecting many memories. The one action where he does not acknowledge his fault is the rape. And that makes Tyson very difficult to like. No one can really know what went down in that hotel room, but statistics for abused women show that the percentage of liars is exponentially small, leading us to rightfully believe the accuser, until conclusive evidence has shown that there actually was no assault. Tyson was convicted. And athough he blames a mishandling of the case for his conviction, and vehemently denies the rape despite admitting to all other crimes throughout the book, it is not difficult to see how the rape could happened. He himself admits how medicated he needed to be when dealing with his mental issues, the ravages that drug and alcohol addiction laid on him, the history of violent aggression, the severe amount of heartbreaking trauma he endured as a child and teen, and the lack of love he received throughout his entire life, with the lone exception of Cus D’Amato and his wife Camille, the only people in the book Tyson describes as loving and supportive during his teen years.
This issue in the book makes it very hard to take anything at face value. At some points I found myself really wanting to believe Tyson, that maybe he was a victim of a woman trying to make money off a famous damaged black man. But time and time again he described his history of aggression, violent outbursts with men and women alike, and it made it very difficult to erase any doubt that Tyson most likely raped Desiree Washington.
As you can see, this probably wasn’t the best book to read when lying awake at 3am, and really didn’t do anything to ease my mind, but I did get to sleep finally an hour later, so at least it gave me something to focus on.
As for Tyson, I still don’t know how to feel. He has made major strides in healing himself and acknowledges many of his transgressions. We must also acknowledge the life that he was born into, and what little chance he had of success, with so many of his childhood acquaintances dying in gang related violence. And in this age of mental health awareness, no one can ignore the fact that Tyson today, after undergoing years and years of therapy, treatment, medication, reflection, and healing, is almost undeniably a different person and really could be called a mental health success story.
But then I think back to Desiree Washington, and the pain and trauma that was inflicted on her life, and I really don’t know what to think again.
Life is complicated, and so is Tyson’s book. Despite all of that, it is an incredibly gripping read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in boxing, Tyson, or even mental health. And from a purely sports perspective, I highly recommend watching the fights as you read it, because it was also amazing to watch Tyson grow, change, succeed, and fail as a fighter over three decades, in a matter of hours of fight footage.
I don’t recommend reading it at 3am during a bout of not so great mental health.