TYSON, MIKE SIGNED OFFICIAL PROGRAM FOR UNDISPUTED TRUTH (2012)

“Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth” was directed by Spike Lee, written by Tyson’s wife, Kiki, and attended by Kanye West, 50 Cent, and Bryant Gumbel. Although structured as an intimate slide show, the performance feels more like a slavishly chronological series of boozy barroom reminiscences, complete with the high-spiritedness, the cringe-inducing settling of scores, the wallowing, the feints of solemnity, and occasional blubbering incoherence built into that form. Some of this jaggedness is to be expected—what would be more dishonest and insufferable than a slick Broadway version of Tyson?

But this doesn’t excuse some of the show’s godawful narrative decisions. Who thought that it would be a good idea to send Tyson off on a pitifully long rant about his ex-wife Robin Givens? Somewhere in the third act of this ugly little play-within-a-play, when Tyson began making sophomoric cracks at a photo of Givens’s mother, I considered standing up and booing. The only thing that prevented me from doing that was the menacingly partisan audience, almost wall-to-wall wise guys and wannabes, who clapped with Stalinist discipline at each cheap applause line. But if these people were truly fans, they would have demanded to hear something substantive about Tyson’s experience as a boxer. At least Harry Houdini, who spent his later years speaking out against magic, had enough regard for his art to debunk it. The premise of “Undisputed” 

seems to be that boxing isn’t a worthy subject for storytelling, that Tyson’s career in the ring is nothing more than the backstory for a canned celebrity redemption tale.

There’s no reason for narrative filler when Tyson is one of the few boxing champions whose mind is alive to the problems of fighting as a spectacle. This is the man who once told a bunch of reporters before a fight, “I know at times I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot, but I like that person. I like to show you that person because that’s who you all come to see. I’m Tyson. I’m a tyrannical titan. And sometimes I say, ‘God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.’ ” Nothing in “Undisputed” pops quite like that, nor like the moment in James Toback’s 2008 documentary, in which Tyson provided a startling narration of his experience entering the arena on fight night, engulfed by an ecstatic, screaming, blood-thirsty mass of people, his Dionysian journey from annihilating terror to omnipotence, when he seemed to die—torn to pieces by the frenzied mob—before being reborn in the ring, under the lights. Under these Broadway lights, however, Tyson might as well be reciting from his Wikipedia page when he informs us that he became the youngest champ in history, then pauses for a respectful ovation. Boo!

FULL DESCRIPTION: This is an original, official program picturing Mike Tyson on the cover. 20 pages complete plus covers. Clean inside and out. Not creased or torn. Tight binding. 9" x 11 5/8." As nice as you will see.