Iron Mike's a Thinker, Not a Fighter

Mike Tyson has traded in Don King for Oscar Wilde: A forthcoming documentary portrays the former world heavyweight champion as a pensive soul who reads German philosophy and relates to Wilde’s self-destructive flamboyance. “I don’t like the person I’ve become,” Tyson admits. Iron Mike looms as “the saddest, not the baddest, man on the planet,” Sheila Johnston writes for the Telegraph.

James Toback’s film explores Tyson’s impoverished childhood, rocky marriage, rape conviction, and infamous ear-biting incident, to uncover a man who says, “I wish I was smarter.” “There was this terrific sense of surprise that the guy is so complicated and articulate and intelligent and moving. And a completely lonely figure,” says Toback, who calls the boxer “a prisoner of his personality.”
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