Clip Reel: The Quotable Mike Tyson

Over the weekend I saw Tyson, the new documentary by James Toback about the rise and hard, hard fall of the one-time Heavyweight Champion of the World/convicted rapist. It was, in a word, decent.

While it was fun to see Kid Dynamite speak on-camera for a good hour of the film’s 90 minute running time – if only to analyze every pore of Tyson’s still off-putting face tattoo – it didn’t deliver any information one couldn’t gleam from a casual knowledge of his career or access to his Wikipedia entry. Even worse, the topics it did cover were all seen through the prism of the man himself, making it come off as a near-infomercial for why “Mike Tyson is a Good Guy”. (As an example, there’s a large portion of the film that includes, I shit you not, an image of Tyson staring off into the Pacific Ocean, just stone-cold contemplating life.) In any case, if you wanted to skip the movie altogether, here’s a handful of videos to watch instead:

Note especially the moment where he follows up his threat to eat Lennox Lewis’ children by praising his own deity. That’s some smooth transitioning there, Mike.

Again, Tyson delivers a perfectly smooth transition, this time from making fun of his opponent’s weak fighting style to delivering a shout-out to his newborn nephew.