Mike Tyson pulling no punches in one-man show

Mike Tyson smiles a lot, but he's not smiling now.

He's in character, his wide, frequent, kidlike grin replaced with a pursed-lip scowl as devoid of mirth as a funeral procession.

He jabs the air with his index finger as he speaks, his forearm forming a right angle with his biceps, which bulges like a python trying to digest a cat.

He squints his eyes into a look so cold, it's as if his retinas emitted Freon.

You would cross the street to avoid this man -- a street bustling with speeding traffic -- and you would do so quickly.

"You've got to always face your demons, because if you don't, they'll follow you to your grave," he thunders, his words resonating like a series of hand grenades whose pins he pulls with relish.

Tyson addresses the reporter sitting before him the way a teacher might scold some meddlesome student who's always in trouble.

"Be careful how you fight your fights," he continues, knowingly, "because the way you fight your fights will be the way you live your life."

Tyson's re-enacting a speech that famed trainer Cus D'Amato gave to him when he was a teenager while being groomed for the greatness that the boxing legend saw in him.

He adopts D'Amato's stern tones and no-nonsense demeanor.

"He never talked to me like a little kid," Tyson recalls, slipping back into the genial, much more modestly voiced presence that is his normal disposition these days. "It was like, 'Whoa.' "

Throughout the course of a 45-minute conversation in a suite at the MGM Grand on a recent Thursday morning, Tyson undergoes several of these transformations, mimicking the speech patterns and body language of different individuals, from his mother to Tom Sawyer.

He does so almost unconsciously, it seems, anything to better sell the story he's telling.

The guy's a natural at slipping into different roles.

As he should be.

He's been doing it for most of his life.

"I'm not 'Iron Mike.' He's created," Tyson says of his nickname as he rose to boxing prominence, becoming world champion at the age of 19, the youngest fighter ever to do so. "I'm a kid with acne and glasses, who gets picked on. I had to create this 'Iron Mike' guy so that no one would bully me again. That's always my alter ego. Destruction."

Iron Mike's not here today, but Tyson recounts plenty of his exploits.

He's been doing that a lot lately as he prepares for the premiere of "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth -- Live on Stage," his one-man show that debuts at the MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre tonight.

"Truth" chronicles the boxer's life in a wide-ranging 70-minute presentation that, like Tyson himself, aims to hit hard.

The origins of the show are twofold.

First, there was producer Adam Steck, who's launched a number of Strip production shows, including "Thunder From Down Under," "Divas Las Vegas" and "The Australian Bee Gees Show."

Steck was working out at his trainer's gym one day when he noticed a pair of boxing gloves hanging on the wall that had been used by Sonny Liston and autographed by Tyson.

"For some reason it just hit me, 'What about a one-man show with Mike, telling his life story?' " Steck recalls.

After eventually tracking Tyson down for a meeting, Steck learned that Tyson and his wife, Kiki, had already been working on developing a similar project after the couple saw Chazz Palminteri's "A Bronx Tale."

Deal for the show struck, playwright Randy Johnson was then recruited to direct the hard-knock narrative.

"Mike's got so many stories to draw from," Steck says of the free-swinging nature of "Undisputed." "The surprising fact about Mike that I found is how much knowledge about life he has because of all his experiences. It's really profound stuff. I think people are going to be like, 'Wow, that's coming out of Mike Tyson?' "

Plenty of people might already be saying as much if they've caught any of Tyson's many media appearances of late, where he's shown distinctly different sides of himself on shows such as "Conan," "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" and "Piers Morgan Tonight."

On one hand, he can be unflinchingly harsh in his assessment of his life based on his past conduct, branding himself a bum and playing down his accomplishments.

"I don't deserve my wife and my kids," he says matter-of-factly, sounding genuinely regretful. "I don't deserve a prostitute with full-blown AIDS with some of the things I've done."

But more often these days, Tyson adopts a light-hearted, near goofball persona.

To wit: his riotous "Funny or Die" videos spoofing former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, released last year, where he practically frothed at the mouth trying to out-crazy himself from one second to the next, most notably turning John Lennon's "Imagine" into the screw loose singalong "Imagine There's No Pizza."

Hey, turns out Mike Tyson's pretty funny.

Who knew?

"It was always there," Tyson says of his emerging sense of humor. "But my first occupation was fighting, combat among men, up close and personal, and with that energy, you can't say nothing derogatory about yourself. It defeats the purpose. You prove you're a god in that arena. There's nothing derogatory that can be said about a god. It's blasphemy.

"As a guy who's just being an entertainer and a comedian, tearing yourself down is a source of power," he adds.

Tyson says he's nervous about making his stage debut, wary of being able to keep his emotions in check.

"How am I going to deal with my relationship with Cus or my mother without crying or something?" he wonders. "But I'm working it out. I have to look at it as if it's not me who I'm talking about, I'm talking about this other character."

In person, Tyson comes off as a collection of characters, all fighting for air.

Soon, audiences will get a chance to meet them in person.

"Undisputed Truth," then, may be a performance, but in the most basic sense, it's not.

"I just live my life out onstage," Tyson smiles. "Loudly."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.