Mike Tyson, Fighter, Rapist, Actor, Wounded Flower, Broadway Star

Remember MIKE TYSON'S PUNCH OUT? One of the games that surely must go into the Nintendo Hall of Fame, it featured an array of crazy boxers with abilities ranging from fancy hops to the ability to magically fly around in loops and yet the hardest to beat, the boss at the end of the game is a hard hitting super-fast, super-strong video game version of Mike Tyson himself, a move inspired when the President of Nintendo saw Tyson fight in person and was awed by the man's raw power.

For a little Tyson was the undisputed WBA Champion of the world. Then he had some injury. Then he was sent to jail for raping some chick. Then he bit Evander Holyfield's ear off. I think he beat his wife too. And then he lost to Lennox Lewis. And about a decade later he went bankrupt, in spite of having made well over $300 million over his career.

But Tyson's story is a truly grueling hero's quest, with all the traditional failures and demons inherent; a classic tale about one man's ambition to overcome adversity. It has a wild kid who started fighting because he got picked on for his lisp and high voice, who was arrested almost 40 times as a juvenile. It's got a colorful trainer (Cus D'Amato) pulling the troubled Brooklyn-by-way-of Bed-Stu out of reform school to train him to fight and eventually adopting him when Tyson's mother died in his teen years. The kid ends up having one of the heaviest hands in the history of boxing but lacking in the smarts department, making him easy fodder for such exploiters as Don King and, as is rumored, by his ex-wife Robin Givens who supposedly, with the help of her mother, used him more as a meal ticket than a husband. His is a story of a tough guy who just wanted to be loved as something more than a piece of meat to make money off and who did the best with what God gave him but when confronted with his limitations lashed out like an animal.

But yeah, so Tyson's a fighter, a rapist, a wife-beater, but in spite of it all, and after his bankruptcy and one would assume a level of ostracism, something strange started happening. He began to emerge as a media character.  He's got 95 imdb credits playing himself, from the pilot to ROSEANNE to his recent breakthrough in THE HANGOVER movies. And now he's even doing some "Acting", most recently playing Herman Cain in a few skits. Love him or hate him, his story's pretty fucking amazing. Now there's a chance for you theater heads looking for something a bit different, a bit grittier to hear his story first person.

Tyson's doing a Broadway autobiographical show called UNDISPUTED TRUTH, directed by none other than Spike Lee (an upgrade of the Vegas run of the one-man show which was directed by Randy Johnson). Opening tonight at the Longacre Theater. Tickets are still on sale with VIP tickets costing about 3 hundo getting you backstage and even a meet and greet with the champ.

Mike Tyson's story on Broadway's storied venue - sure to please even the most discerning sports and theater fans alike.

At the least it's gotta be light years better than Raven Simone in SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL.

- Ryan