In Search Of Excellence - Mike Tyson: Fight To Your Last Breath | E58

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

My guest today is Mike Tyson, a former heavy-weight boxing champion of the world and one of the greatest boxers of all time.At the age of 20, he became the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title. He was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold WBA, WBC, and IDF titles and a member of the international boxing Hall of Fame.Mike has appeared in many movies and TV shows. He is the actor and creator of a one-man Broadway show Undisputed Truth, and the author of the best-selling book of the same name.Mike is also a very successful entrepreneur and a founder of two cannabis companies, including Tyson 2.0. He is an incredible person and a dedicated philanthropist through his Mike Tyson’s Care foundation, and the support of other charities including The Make a Wish Foundation and The Special Olympics.(1:52) Fame and moneyNeither will make you happyBecome your own alarm systemThe pain is the same at the top and the bottom of the world(06:43) Three years in prisonThree best years of his lifeEverything in life is psychologicalConfidence brings successPrison shifted his perspective (no one’s better than anyone else)(11:33) Mike’s famous fightsEvander Holyfield - The Bite FightFirst fight in 1996, rematch 1997The Sound and the Fury matchIn the second fight – Mike got frustrated and got disqualifiedNow they are partnersBuster Douglas – lost a fight from an underdogMike was happy that happenedHe learned that losing is not as bad as you thinkNever got discouraged in his lifeWon the title againHis message to people who want to give upThe story of Don KingAdversities never stop, it’s how you handle them that can change(19:16) Mike and Rodney JerkinsGreat friends with Rodney Jerkins DarkchildRodney is one of the nicest people he ever metOne of his best friendsGodley soul(22:31) The importance of Extreme PreparationIt’s not for everyoneBalance doesn’t existTrained more than everyone elseExtreme preparation came from fear of failingEverybody has a plan until they are punched in the mouth(26:23) Life after boxingWent totally broke after boxing and didn’t know what to do (called his wife for help and she helped him get back his life)Discovered cannabis and got into the businessPeople allowed to drink and smoke on the showRegrets he didn’t smoke pot while fightingMike Tyson's definition of successThe ingredients of successWhat motivates Mike Tyson today?The advice to a young boxer (prepare for disappointment and never give up and fight to your last breath)Mike Tyson as a dad (7 kids)Mike Tyson Cares Foundation(39:16) Fill in the blank to ExcellenceMike Tyson's 10 year visionMike Tyson's biggest accomplishment Mike Tyson's biggest regretMike Tyson's bucket listMike Tyson's heroSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

Whoever believes a lot of fame and money is going to make them happy, the people who believe that, they never had any fame or money. My guest today is Mike Tyson. Mike is the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, one of the greatest boxers of all time, and one of the most recognized sports personalities in the world. This is not as bad as people think it is. I never once said, it's over, I'm not going to do this no more.

Only that's a hand thing, and I won my title back in six months. When he was 20 years old, four months and 22 days old, he became the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title, and he was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles. Guys like Muhammad Ali, you got to beat him to death. You're not going to give up. If the referee don't stop the fight, if the corner don't stop the fight, you got to kill him.

He's not going to give up. He finished his professional career with a 50-6 record with a knockout-to-win percentage of 88% and is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In addition to his incredible boxing career, Mike has appeared in dozens of movies

and TV shows and is the creator and actor of the one-man hit Broadway show, The Undisputed Truth, and is the author of a best-selling book of the same name. Whenever you're prepared to be the best in the world in anything, you have to be prepared for disappointment. Because you're going to be disappointed. You're going to be discouraged. Never give up. Fight to your last breath. Never, never, never give up. Mike is also a successful entrepreneur. He's the founder of two cannabis companies, including Tyson 2.0.

And he is a dedicated philanthropist through his Mike Tyson Cares Foundation and his support of other charities, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Special Olympics. Mike, it's an incredible pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Pleasure to be here, my friend. So many people I know are motivated by different things in life. And I think when you don't have money, and I know as a kid, I wanted money and I was motivated by money. For me, I wasn't an athlete. I was a terrible athlete, much better today than I was then. I think a lot of it's mental and there's a lot of confidence. And I didn't have a lot of confidence being bullied and not being the cool kid.

See, and that was the difference. I never had a couple. Once I got it, it took me to another place I wasn't prepared to be. You know, it took me to that stratosphere where it appeared to be like you might even be better than some people. Like I said, you get to look at yourself from a different perspective.

You appear to be surpassing people, but you don't like yourself. The more success you receive, the more conflict you have within. I never understood that. I was always a glutton for more and more. I was always taught, crush the world to your feet, more and more and more. And as I got older, I realized when I didn't have it, I wanted it. But now that I have it, I don't want it anymore. So I had to understand this.

Someone has to manage your life because you're not quite qualified to manage your life. I ran into some beautiful people that came from the experience of meeting my wife and life has changed for me so drastically. I would never have done that if I wasn't married to this woman.

All right. We're going to talk about your awesome life, Kiki, of 14 years a little bit. So draftedly. I would never have done that if I wasn't married to this woman. Right. We're going to talk about your awesome life, Kiki, of 14 years in a little bit. Yeah. But let's talk about money. And I do want to talk about the motivation of money to our future. So many people I know are motivated by money and they hate what they do. A lot of my lawyer friends, for example. I'm very unable to do that.

If I don't like what I'm doing, you're unable to get any work out of me. So what's your advice to people in general where money is their greatest motivator of success? Really? Whoever believes a lot of fame and money is going to make them happy, the people who believe that, they never had any fame or money, they never had any fame or money.

They never had any fame or money because it becomes a job now. It becomes a job to watch people, to watch characters, be prepared for a particular characteristic that you're looking for, for good people or bad people, people that have prepared new skeduggery on you. You become your own alarm system. You understand? You just become your own system of protection. And that's just a middle way to live.

But we have to have some perspective on living in that way. I have a lot of friends who live month to month, and I have a lot of very wealthy friends and some of the most unhappy miserable people i know are sent to millionaires who are depressed they're terrible parents they travel the world kids are um have they're really fucked up and they have a lot of problems a lot of drugs suicide is is an issue um it's sad. Listen, I'm here too. Listen, I have people at the bottom of the world I'm friends with, and I have people at the top of the world that's friends with me. And the pain is relevant. It's the same. Right.

Both people, when they love, they grieve the same. I don't care how much money you got, how much power you got. We both grieve the same. We both breathe the same. We both breathe the same. And we're the same. Some people decided money was a big part of their life. Right. And there was nothing that was going to stop them

from getting that money. That's what it's all about. I'm the kind of guy, I learned from my mentor, you have to want to be up more than anybody in the world wants you to be down. And once you feel that way, you have no much problems. Because you don't care what somebody that you don't care about say. A lot of people, when you're successful, who you think are your friends, are not that happy

for your success. No. Especially if they tell you to keep doing, keep it up, don't give up. And you do what they tell you to do and you succeed. So now they inspire you. Now they want to tear you down. Right. Isn't that ridiculous?

Ridiculous. I found out there's a friend who'd rather fight you than pay back a debt. That's what I learned. All the people that you help and stuff. Yeah. And if they believe

they have to pay you back, they'll find some way to fight you, have some altercation with you where your guy's went and talked to you and I want to talk to him and see him and get your money back. Right. But I look at that

from a different perspective. If I was capable of helping somebody and they didn't want to talk to them and see if I can get your money back. But I look at that from a different perspective. If I was capable of helping somebody and they didn't want to be residual and help me back, I gave them that money and now I can never talk to them again. They can never talk to me, come around me again. And so I paid for really a bad juncture in my life. I don't have to deal with it anymore. You already mentioned you had gone to prison.

You were sentenced to six years. You did three years. You called it the three best, most valuable years. How is prison the three best? Well, listen to this. It started at 63 years. And then it went down to three. I got 60 years, wiped out the books.

But the really situation was that everything in life is psychological. Adapt, adapt, and being to be adaptable, being able to just have the confidence to believe that, you know, you're gonna survive this. Life is all about confidence. Confidence breeds success, success breeds confidence. And when confidence is applied properly, it will supersede a genius.

There's nothing more powerful in this world than confidence in a person whose time has come. There's nothing. When that happens, you're almost in God's status. But how was prison the three best years of your life? What did it do to make you a better person? It gave me a perspective. It gave me more than that peace. I had no trouble.

I didn't have to altercation, no fight. Everything went well for me in Princeton. Everything was almost perfect. You know, I just, I lived great there. I ate great there. I was treated, yeah, I was treated with privilege there. But I gave everybody respect. The first year I was there, I was an ass.

You know, I think, hey, everybody here deserved to be down on me. I'm the man here. And then I had to go to a couple of visits to isolation. And after I had that miserable year, I started getting the hang of it. I started, became a trustee. Everybody respected me. And everybody liked me.

When I first went down with me. And everybody liked me. My first one down was a jerk. Nobody liked me. Next thing you know, they had put another year on me for fighting with the gods and cursing everybody. I was being an uncomfortable person in prison. Because I felt that I was wrong. I don't deserve it. All these people deserve to be here but accept me. And then I realized that we're living life on life terms. I should be grateful that I'm still living.

I did only three years. There were guys in there that did my time ten times. They did 30 years. And when I said I had three years, I was sad. They said, what's wrong, dude? I did your time three times already. I had 30 years. I'm not depressed.

We have to live life on life terms. And that's when I understood, who the hell am I. I'm not depressed. We have to live life on life terms. And that's when I understood who the hell am I? I'm nobody. And I realized that some people are so great from society's perspective that they hold you up so high. Only one that's going to take you down is you. Because this doesn't feel right.

You've got to tear yourself down. Because what's just as powerful as building yourself up is just as equally powerful as tearing yourself down. So that's a rush too. When people go to prison, you're kind of the new guy in there and you got to fight to establish respect with some of the other prisoners.

Were you a target and said, all right, I want to beat up Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion of the world? No. I don't know how to say it if anybody loved me. You know, any problems that happened in prison was because of my ignorance,

because I felt I shouldn't be there, and I was better than these guys, the criminals, and I'm not the real criminals. And we have to know that we're just here for a moment in time. We're just passing through. No one's better than anyone else. Some people may have better opportunity,

but we're just all God's creatures, big and small. When you're there, you knew you were going to fight again. You're training every day. You're running nine miles a day in prison around the yard, including four miles a day in your prison cell, running around and around. And you're doing so many jumps, you said that you dented the concrete floor.

Listen, I never saw that. The prisoners and the administration saw that it wasn't even anymore. I would do it every day, running plays. Neckies and plays running. That's just what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the best in the world. I knew I was gonna fight.

I wanted to look the best. And most of my career fighting, it was just based on my ego. And I had to determine, they all stemmed from my ego. I would think nobody's ever to pick on me again. Think of those cold, weak moments when people abused me. I'd say, this is never going to happen again. You went in at 285 and you came out at 215.

You're a lean, mean fighting machine. Yes. I never went to the cafeteria. I always had great food. My girlfriend at the time always sent food over, sent money to certain people, and they would go out, bring the food in for me. We always had great smorgasbords in Britain.

Let's talk about Evander Holyfield. Oh, yeah, he works with us now. Yeah, well, we're going to talk about it. I know your partners. That's an incredible story. So you had a first fight with him back on November 9th, 1996. He had the rematch June 28th, 1997. And it was called the Sound and the Fury. And then it was known as the Bite Match. I know you've been asked this a million times. Or the Bite Fight. So can you walk us through, I saw that

fight on pay-per-view. I'm a huge fan of yours, and I've seen a bunch of your fights, but it was surprising to watch that. Can you just explain what you were thinking and what happened there? Listen, I was in the ring fighting him, and I noticed the first time something happened. He didn't hit me, but I was dizzy about something. I don't know. Maybe I thought he hit me. But then when I watched the fight, it was because he was headbutting me. I would run into

his head most of the time. And the second fight, it started happening again. My head was busted. And I was in desperation. The referee wasn't complaining with him,

but the headbutts and I just got frustrated. And disqualified? Yeah. He was kicking my ass a little too. I have to put that in. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about probably the greatest upset

in sports history. You're fighting Buster Douglas. He's a 42-1 underdog. And you lost that fight. What, how did you lose the fight? And talk about kind of the habits you were doing before the fight and what you learned from that fight. You know, regardless of that, I was just living ridiculously.

He has fought a great fight. He deserved to be champion at that time. He has deserved the work taught in Jeff Wright to be champion. There was no excuses. You learned at some point when you lost the fight that the pressure was now off and you were not disappointed. You were actually happy it happened because you learned lessons from those. What did you learn from that? That was the Buster Douglas fight. I learned that losing wasn't all as bad as it made out to be. That's what I realized about that. Losing's not as bad as people think it is.

You know what I mean? So what? I cleaned myself up. I fought four more times. I got ready to fight again for the title, and I got myself in trouble. But I never once said this after the fight. It's over. I'm not going to do this no more.

Only after here. And I won my title back in six months. Never in a million years I said it's over. I'm never going to win the title again. My life is over. My career is over. I knew it from my experience and from watching fighters and talking to old fighters in the 40s and the 20s, like when I was fighting in the 80s.

And they would just tell me, Mike, man, I know a great fighter like you, and I go, this more will discourage you. And I just never got discouraged in my life after certain things as being a kid. We don't like them to be discouraged anymore. This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by Sandy.com.

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It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office, and a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner. Bliss Beaches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five-star rating. Get your next amazing gift and order a copy of Bliss Beaches by clicking the link in our show notes. Lots of people, when they have a lot of success, they have some knockdowns, they get fired from jobs once, twice, three times, they give up. What's your message to all those people who experience great disappointment if they should keep going?

Well, I'll explain that with a story. Okay. You know, Don King was my promoter. Of course, it's, you know, it's pretty much understood from society that he stole money. Right. Some stuff that, you know, it's in the past.

He did some real, I don't know, Italian stuff. And so he expected me to be on dope. Because I was on dope for a while. He expected me to stay in jail. I was arrested for a while after I lost everything. I got in trouble. And then things have changed. I met my wife.

I married my wife. We wrote this one man show. It went insane. We went all over the world, performed it all over the world. We performed in countries that couldn't speak our language. And they had an interpreter. But,

and plus I had other success plus i got this boxing success then i have this um a pair with my apparel my clothes and everything and then i have this um boxing um called tyson sports pretty much and have the best boxing equipment in the world. And I go from all this, right, from being such a despot, drug user, alcoholic, and I go through all this transformation, forms of redemption, so to speak. And know what happened? Don King is my neighbor now. But he never in a million years

thought I'd be this close to him again. You know, now he's my neighbor. So what's that mean? I can walk to his house. He has to see me till the day he dies. So I don't look at life and think, hey, I'm envious or something mad that people have grudges.

No, because life is, it's all been written. As soon as eternity started, everything's been written. It happened already. That's when he said, let there be light because he wrote

our life in the dark. And so whatever happens is meant to happen. It was written. Did you ever watch Lawrence of Arabia? I've never seen it. And my kids are horrified right now.

But since you're saying it to me, I promise you I'm going to watch it. What a movie. Because one of the movies I've just got is this one gentleman wanted to help. And the other guy said, you're wasting your time. It was written that this guy is going to die and he's not going to live long. And the guy was right. It was written. You can tell by somebody's character if they don't redeem themselves,

the future's already destined. They're written already. Like once, an old boxing friend of mine met me the other day and said, we never had a million years believe that you'd still be alive. Because I lived that kind of life.

Now I live the life. I didn't have any hope in life, even though I had a lot of materialism. I never had hope for a better life. And now that I have hope for a better life, you know, adversities don't stop, but we just handle them differently. And from a positive perspective as well. You're a famous athlete. People come up and take pictures with you. Some athletes like it to a point, some don't. You're with your family. Hey, don't take my photo. At some point,

this 12-year-old kid comes up to you and later in life, you want to learn something about the music business. So you call this amazing guy named Rodney Jerkins and he said, I know who you are. For those people who don't know, Rodney is

who goes by Dark Child child is one of the most successful music producers of all time yes yes has worked with everybody uh you could ever have met beyonce michael jackson rihanna everybody and everyone's dying to work with them so you call them up i think you're living in maryland at the time and you said i want to come see you the next day and rodney said hey mike, Mike Tyson called me up. Come on over. He drove over in a black Rolls Royce. And Rodney's known to be this incredibly nice, thoughtful, logical guy who is a great friend.

Very logical. That's a good one. Very logical. And he's counseled a lot of people throughout hard times, Justin Bieber and a whole bunch of people. So you go over there, you spend time with him, you guys become great friends.

At some point, you want to fight Lennox Lewis, but you don't really want to fight him. So Rodney's kind of coaching you. Can you tell us how you popped him in the chin? And can you also tell us what his friendship means to you? Hey listen, what time did I always pop Rodney's chin

every now and then? But listen, Rodney is just the sweetest guy in the world. You know, people, you know, of course you have to have that tough exterior in the music business, but he's one of the most beautiful person in the world. I'm so grateful to be friends with his family, he's friends with my family. And it's hard to pretty much,

how do you define his friendship? It's just total love. What does he mean to you? How big of an influence does Rodney have on your life? Rodney's one of my best friends. He's one of my best friends, most famous person. When I say famous,

I don't mean from a star perspective. If yes, famous as far as a friend perspective, one of my favorite people. When I say famous, I mean that's one of my famous people. Not no celebrity. Well, shout out to Rodney for bringing us together.

Listen, I'm in Dubai and I'm talking about Rodney Juergens. Rodney Juergens, this guy doesn't know who the hell is Rodney Juergens, this guy in Dubai and I'm talking about Rodney Jurgens Rodney Jurgens this guy doesn't know who the hell is Rodney Jurgens

this guy in Dubai I said come on Rodney Jurgens he dealt with this guy and then my friend that's there he said hey Dark Child

he said oh yeah I know Dark Child but they didn't know his name they only know him by Dark Child you gotta have a branding in the music business so they branded him

Dark Child I'm saying his name. I'm thinking these people know who he is. Wow, Rodney's not known out here? But once my friend said Dark Child, yeah, Dark Child. So one of the things that's made me— So he's known all over the world, too, from a music perspective. He's a legend.

Yes. Once again, shout out to Rodney for setting us up. I really appreciate it. He's become a good friend in a short amount of time. Oh, he's beautiful. You see, he's not in him, but Godly so. If it's not God's work, he's not doing it. One of the things that's one of my favorite topics

that's made me successful among a lot of hard work is something called what I call extreme preparation. So I'm talking about the kind of preparation that's not normal preparation. I'm talking about the kind of preparation that's not normal preparation. I'm talking about when someone spends one hour on something, I may spend five or 10, or someone we're making a presentation to a company, they may spend 10 and I may spend 40. How important has extreme preparation been in your success? It's not for everyone. That's why it's called extreme. Not everyone's extreme.

Some people are balanced. I haven't, I'm more balanced than I was. Let me just say that. But, balance is almost impossible. How do you conduct, how do you,

how do you perceive yourself to be balanced when it doesn't appear to exist? What is balance? All right, listen, I'm going to eat five hamburgers here, and I might eat five hamburgers with the cheese, the milk, everything on top of the big bread, extra fat bread bun.

I'm going to eat five of those. Five of those. I'm going to eat one little piece of cookie. That's pretty unbalanced, huh? Pretty unbalanced. Maybe if I take five hamburgers and two packs of cookies, maybe I'll be balanced then. But do you want to be balanced in that perspective of sugar?

No, you don't want to risk from that balance. So everything has to be done pretty much moderation. But balance doesn't exist. I don't believe balance exists. That's just a word we use to try to explain some kind of situation. But I don't think most people can handle balance. For me, it's extreme. Either I'm on top of the world or I'm in the gutter.

That's how it works for me. Balance doesn't make sense to me. But didn't you train harder than every one of your opponents? You were known to train more than anyone. That's not balance. No, no, no, I know, but I, but my question was, how important has extreme preparation been to your success?

Forget about balance, I mean. My extreme preparation comes from fear it comes from fear every every part of success comes from fear return the fear into happiness but it comes from the fear the fear of failing especially when everybody has everything riding on you there's a fear of letting everyone down letting letting yourself down. That's how come some people would rather die than let people down, let themselves down. It's just a feeling that, I don't know why from that desperation,

it's just feeling if I don't succeed, I don't wanna exist. You know, people we have that, and this is the extreme, it's guys like Muhammad Ali, they rather, you gotta beat them to death, I don't want to exist. You know, people, we have that. That's the extreme. It's guys like Muhammad Ali. They rather, you got to beat him to death. You're not going to give up. If the referee don't stop the fight, if the corner don't stop the fight, you got to kill him.

He's not going to give up. He's just not going to give up and quit. And that's the mindset that I believe I have. One of the greatest quotes of many that you have is, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Listen, I hear that sportscasters, commentators, politicians, everybody. And I'm saying, somebody said that became one of the most important quotes in the 21st century. And I'm saying to myself, hey, that's not even my quote.

That's Customado's quote. If he was here now, he would laugh to death if somebody took him that serious. Is it true? Yeah. Everyone has a plan until they get hit or they find some kind of adversity in their presence. Let's talk about life after boxing. You were addicted to drugs. No, listen, let's start.

You're not starting. Life after boxing, I was totally broke after I finished boxing. Totally what, five million or six million dollars? But that's totally broke to me at that particular time. And I didn't know what I was going to do. Didn't care. So I really indulged myself in what? In my discouragement, my fears, my, I don't know. I just felt like my life was a waste and all that crap.

And I did a lot of drugs, I did a lot of liquor, I did a lot of, I became a glutton, I ate food, I was like 3.30, 3.80, 3.60, something to that effect. And then I decided to call my wife, who wasn't my wife at the time, and see what I could suck out of her or something. And she came, she saw my condition. She never saw me like that before,

but before she came to see me, friends of us would say, have you seen Mike lately? He's a mess. And so she saw me. I was on medication then. Maybe now and then I might. No, I don't think I was on cocaine. I mean, yes, I was.

And so she saw me. I was a mess. I don't know why she even got involved in my life. She had some adversity as well. But my stuff was just nasty dirty i had nothing i can't believe i still had a house with nice cars they didn't come and get this stuff i mean i'm saying wow what's happening i'm ready to go to my friend's house i was do some creepy stuff and um my wife she just came in single-handedly and decided hey i, I'm going to clean this mess up.

And so she was really diligent and really allowed me to be a respected human being in society. And so I'm really grateful and appreciative of that. Because it was just before we were coming here, we were getting ready to go in a totally different direction until we got it together. And no one else helped as much. I had a young, we had a young daughter named Milan, named in 2009, and that changed the whole game pretty much. We were working, succeeding, and giving her a great life.

I want to talk about a huge pivot in your life. You discovered cannabis at some point. It's changed your life. It's brought you a lot of peace. And I want you to talk about that, how you discovered it. And I want you to talk about your toad experience and what that was like.

So the cannabis, right? I've always smoked my whole life since I was a kid. And I had no idea. I'd been arrested for it before. I got in trouble before illegally. So someone came to me to open up a cannabis. I had no idea what to do. I had no idea what was going on.

So we got involved with these people. We partnered with them. It didn't turn out well. They didn't manage the finance and all that stuff, right? So we ran into some, my brother-in-law invited and introduced us to some other people. And these people were, we made more money in a year than I did four years with the other company.

And so this seemed like to be the right ticket. And my brother-in-law allowed these people to explain what they were capable of doing. It seemed like a no-brainer and it wasn't a no-brainer. And when we're in over a hundred thousand stores, we're the biggest cannabis company in the country, it's not the world. And it's not yet. It will be. And that's just, it took the whole world by surprise. It even got me a pod show

like you have, a podcast. And so my podcast is hot boxing, you know, we're on the boxing, we're smoking and it's hot. So that's in my podcast and it's been very successful. And people are allowed to drink and smoke

on the show. Talk about what the actual CBD has done to you as a person and your mood and your calmness. Let me explain something to you. This is going to be funny. Of all those fights I had, I only smoked pot once. I never smoked pot my whole fighting career, but at least once.

And I wish I did. I wish I wasn't sober during my fighting career. Why? Because I wish I was smoking cannabis. I was drinking like a fish, liquor, but if I was smoking cannabis, I think I would have been a better fighter. Most people would think the opposite of that is true. It slows you down.

You see these signs on the highway, smoking if you're high, you're drunk. A little smoking is too high. A little high is too high, they say. But listen, we're not talking about being high. We're talking about elevating ourselves. The word high comes from... People get language

wrong. The word high doesn't mean I'm high. It means your highest form of thinking. And that's what high means. It doesn't mean, oh, I'm high. I'm out of control. You said that the high point in your life is that when

you have a willingness to die. I think just the opposite. I don't want to die, but you've been quoted as saying that. Is that a high point of your life? This is what I found out since I've been involved with psychedelics. And I don't know if cannabis is in that same category, right? But listen, all the psychedelics, the tolls and all that stuff, and I'm trying to realize why did God create this stuff?

How could God know that this stuff attacks a certain part of your brain to make you see certain images? And as time goes on, I've been doing this for a few years, and it's about preparing you for death. That's what all this is about, all the psychedelics, all that stuff, that's what it's all about. Even liquor from a perspective, it's all about preparing you for death,

so you can die with dignity. And, oh God, no, please don't do that, I don't want that. No, that's not what it's about, it's about accepting death because if death is not great, then how can life be great? If life is not great, how can death be great? They go hand in hand.

They're related to each other. Without one, they won't be the other. How do you define success? Success comes in many forms. It's not necessarily finance. Success is not drinking anymore. That's a form of success.

Not cheating on your wife. You know, success has so many different perspectives. When I think of success, I never think about money. I think about happiness. And I believe that's what success is, happiness. Your perspective on happiness. What is success? How does success work for you?

Success works for me is when I'm in a competitive mood and I don't think no one's gonna beat me. And that's just in life, not from a physical perspective, but just in a competitive perspective. My whole, I was born to compete. That's just all I do. I'm just game for competition. If it's fighting, if it's cannabis,

if it's entrepreneurship, whatever it is, I wanna fight you. I wanna break, whatever system that is's fighting, if it's cannabis, if it's entrepreneurship, whatever it is, I want to fight you. Whatever system that is, fighting, I want to crush it to my feet. What motivates Mike Tyson today? I always think it's my children. It's making sure not necessarily that I'm going to give them a great life. I want to give them a great perspective on my life or on life period. You know, I don't know if people,

I might be scared to die. I don't know, but I know I don't cling to life. I don't want to be here if certain people are not here. You've got young kids.

Yeah. What's your advice to a young 18-year-old boxer and more generally to an 18-year-old in general, male or female? Just to know,

I learned this from Billy Jean King. I heard her say this. Just to know this, whenever you want to be the best in the world, and I'm talking about a bug collector,

a garbage can collector, a boxer, a watch collector, you know, anything, a boxer, a watch collector, you know, anything. A lawyer. Whenever you're prepared to be the best in the world at anything, you have to be prepared for disappointment. Because you're going to be disappointed. You're going to be discouraged. And you have to prepare that's going to happen and not to give up.

Never give up. Fight to your last breath. Never, never, never give up. You have a great family. You talk about your wife, Kiki. 14 years together. You have two kids together. You have seven kids total.

Yeah. You moved to Florida because you have... My daughter plays tennis. She plays tennis. My son plays golf. They told me this is the place to be for that stuff. They want to be professional. At least my daughter does.

That's amazing that you did that. It shows what kind of parent you are, what kind of family you are. Talk about what it is like to have Mike Tyson

as your dad and then talk about the work-life balance. Well, it depends on what particular area you caught me in. As I'm younger, I'm not as good of a father in my 20s and 30s as I am in my late 40s and 50s, middle 50s. It just changed, the perspective changed. The selfishness evaporates a little and you're selfless.

And that's when life becomes better because that's what true self-love is, loving other people. I always thought self-love was me buying a big mansion, buying a beautiful car, fancy clothes, but self-love is helping other people. Give them what you want and give it to someone else. We talked a little bit before the show about our kids.

We live for our kids. What's your advice to all the successful people out there who don't spend enough time with their kids and look back and say... Well, listen, whatever you do with your kids is going to pay off. There's dividends. If you spend time with them,

there's dividends that you're not going to have a good relationship with them. If you spend a lot of time with them, there's dividends that you're not going to have a good relationship with them. If you spend a lot of time with them, that's dividends that good stuff is going to happen to you. It's just about what you want to put that time in and what you want to get out of from that time. I want total respect for my kids because I give them total

respect. We collide to the people outside of our house, but we can't lie to the people in our house. They watch us every day. They watch us when we're not having our, I don't know, when we don't have our face up, you know. It's hard to say. They see us at our best and they see us at our worst.

So when people have, you know, tricky relationships with their children because their children seen things they did that the people in the streets never did or their friends. So that's like children have a different relationship with their parents than they do with certain other people. They don't look at, listen, my kids don't look at me like they see everybody in the world.

My son's like, everybody's kissing your ass. You know, nobody's kissing my ass. They shouldn't respect that I'm giving them. And kids are interesting. Kids are interesting. I had a challenge with my kids. The challenge was they had to trust me again and have, you know,

let's have self-respect. You know, we used to have, my family came over last night. One of my, my oldest son, my middle daughter, her girlfriend, and their mother.

And it was just, it's just like family. It's just, that's the best part of my life. When we're all together. Matter of fact, what makes me happy? When every one of my kids are together in one place. That's my happiness.

Everyone, we have to be together in one place and just vibing off each other. That's what I'm at my best. Tell us about the Mike Tyson Cares Foundation and how important is giving back in search of excellence? Mike Tyson Foundation, it's just such a rare thing that's done that I probably can't even express, but what we do, we help the family that's dealing with domestic violence and they don't want to go home because they have to go home to this over-pulverized person. So we have facilities

for them. We're in a position where we can help the kids with scholastic equipment, books, pencils, even teachers. And it's just, like I was saying, it's such an array of things, a charity perspective. I don't even know all of them, but it's just a, man, it's just an array of beautiful stuff that my family and my team is doing. What is next in your future? Sky's the limit, man. just a array of beautiful stuff that my family and my team is doing. What is next in your future?

Sky's the limit, man. Anything's capable of happening if I keep giving affirmations to God. I want to ask you some one-word questions. I want to ask you some fill-in-the-blank questions as we end today. Okay. Okay.

In 10 years from now, I want to be doing? Whatever I want. I want to be with my family, we want to all be together. I don't want to live far from one another. I just want to celebrate and end my life doing that. Loving my family, trying to prevent any altercations from us and hopefully that when we're all said and done, we loved each other before we died.

And there was no kind of interventions or fights, anything. Everybody loved each other. You know, there's some parents, there's some families that died not loving each other. You know, don't even want them at their deathbed. The biggest accomplishment in my life is? I think marrying my wife and having my kids. My biggest regret in life is?

Sex partners. The one thing I've always wanted to do in my life that I haven't done is? Nothing. We're dying, that's all. I don't look at life from that perspective. I look at life as just enjoying every great moment with everybody you love because life is just a blink of the eye and it's over.

We can't even anticipate our next breath. You know, I look at life from that perspective too. Life is beautiful, death is beautiful. I was looking at the story of Buddha. I was, you know, just going through, and I had no idea that his purpose, his purpose was to stop self-suffering. I had no idea this might want to do that. But he realized that suffering doesn't exist. Only self-suffering exists. And I started thinking about that. He cried because I don't suffer most of the

time. I don't suffer when I'm doing it to myself. You know, your low self-esteem comes in when you're doing so good. You say, wow, how can I be doing so good when I don't think so good about myself? I'm one of those guys with the greatest ego with the lowest self-worth. And I don't know how that works, but it works really good for me. The one person in the world that I'd like to meet and I've not met yet is? God. You know, being in the presence of what it is. I don't know, woman, man, child, baby, energy. Imagine dealing with God. My friend said I deal with God every moment of the day. Every

second of the day you're dealing with God because God is you. And we know who we are. We know, without even being involved, with us being like mongoloids, cavemen, we know the difference between right and wrong. We know how we feel when we do wrong. Even though we're laughing at it, we know, even though we're evil, we know this is just not right. You just don't do that to people or the Catholic.

You just don't do that. We know you just don't do that. I don't care if you're invalid. We know the difference from right and wrong. The number one person

I want on my podcast and haven't had is I don't know. I have no idea. It's like it's talking to people

and to acting with people. I listen I would take a guy on the street and we would have just as much fun. I'm talking about homeless guys. We would have just as much fun

than I would if I had the best media comedian in the world on the podcast. My podcast is all about love, dealing with reality, and not taking the world too serious. You know, I've been saying this to people that I learned from somebody. He said that human beings take things, what was that word again? world too serious. You know, I've been saying this to people that I learned from somebody. He said that human beings take things, what was that word again? Human beings take things too serious with God meant to be fun. And I always kept that, you know, I always kept that idea when

I get in my extreme mode. Hey, this is not meant to be complicated. This is meant to be fun and happy. So that keeps me in perspective. The one piece of advice I have for a 25 or 30-year-old is? Hey, it's not as bad as you think. Your mind makes things in life worse than it really is. Just believe in yourself and don't let nobody knock you off your mountain. You have to believe and you have to stand firm in life. You know, you don't have to win all your fights, but you got to fight them all. That's what I learned.

You don't have to win them all, but you do have to fight them all. The one question you wish I had asked but didn't is? I wish I asked my mother, what was your life like? What did you do when you were 10, 15, 20? What did you do? What did you do with your life? We never talked about my mom. I never talked to her about her family. I never knew anything about her. I learned more after she died, but I wish I asked more questions about her. So I got to become acquainted with my father as time went on. And he told me most of the stories about him and my mother from his perspective as far as he knew her.

And so that's how I knew her. If your mom were sitting here today, what would you tell her? I would say I turned out better than we thought we were. She'd be proud? Yeah, very proud. My family have a lot of pride. The Price family have a lot of pride. I'm a Price, too, so family have a lot of pride. The Price family have a lot of pride. I'm a Price, too, so we have a lot of pride.

Mike, it's an honor to have you here today. I'm super grateful for your time. I'm a huge fan of yours. You have a great story of success and redemption. One of the great stories of all time.