Key Takeaways
- Mike Tyson revisits his traumatic childhood in Netflix's four-part TYSON, revealing that his mother was a sex worker and that he witnessed and experienced violence at home.
- After more than 30 arrests by age 13, Tyson met Cus D’Amato through a guard at the Tryon School for Boys, launching the boxing career his mother never lived to see.
- Tyson says those painful experiences ultimately made him "a better person"; all four episodes premiere globally October 13, followed by Mike Tyson: Return of the Mike on November 3.
Mike Tyson has been revisiting some of the hardest parts of his childhood for his new Netflix documentary — including some moments involving his mother and her sex worker past.
"My mother was a sex worker, a prostitute, whatever you call it," Tyson says in the new docu-series (per The Mirror). "I seen that. I saw it first-hand. I was in the bed with her."
In the four-part series, he describes a home where violence moved in both directions. Lorna was beaten by at least one partner, Tyson says, and she turned that on her son.
"I've seen a lot of vicious fighting... I remember my mother fighting with her boyfriend. I saw him beat her. He knocked her teeth out, then I saw him scald her with some boiling hot water. My mother was very violent. She hit me with anything, extension cord, a liquor bottle, anything."
Directed by Floyd Russ, TYSON pairs new sit-down interviews with archival footage and traces the fighter's rise to fame and infamy. All four episodes land globally on Tuesday (October 13).
Tyson called the project "a challenging journey, yet a very welcoming one," framing it as his story told "through the reflective lens of my growth and maturity."
The series starts in 1970s and '80s Brownsville, Brooklyn, where poverty and crime shaped the block. Tyson refers to his father figure as "a pimp," adding: "A pimp who was a trick. He was more of a trick than a pimp... My mother used him."
He was first arrested at 12 and had racked up more than 30 arrests by 13, landing first in Spofford juvenile detention and then at the tougher Tryon School for Boys. "That's where all the bad kids go that kill people, that did bad crimes," he says in the doc. "Apex predators."
Tryon is also where a guard named Bobby Stewart told him he would introduce him to a boxing trainer if his grades improved. That trainer was Cus D'Amato, who needed two rounds of sparring to call the teenager a future world heavyweight champion and invited him to live and train in Catskill, New York. Lorna, whose permission was required, signed off begrudgingly.
When Tyson came home from camp talking like a champion, she pulled back.
"She'd never heard no talk like this from me before... She said, 'There's always someone better.' I said, 'Yes, exactly, Ma. I'm the guy you're talking about that's always better than the other guy...' She didn't like me no more after that. She thought something was wrong. Didn't understand where all this confidence, all this zest came from."
Lorna died of cancer in 1982, the same year Tyson won his second straight Junior Olympics heavyweight title. He was 16. "My mother never got to see me fight," he says. "It was just hard, because I was talking to her and the next thing you know, boom, she's dead." D'Amato became his legal guardian, though he never formally adopted him.
Tyson is framing all of it as fuel. "Everything that was quote-unquote 'negative,' turned out to be a positive for me," he told People. "I'm very grateful for it all because it made me a better person."
Netflix has a second Tyson project queued behind the docu-series: Mike Tyson: Return of the Mike, filmed at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, and directed by Kiki Tyson. It premieres November 3.
