Mike Tyson remembers who he was. He misses him. Fears him, too.
In an extraordinary moment on his podcast, “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson,” the former heavyweight champion talks to Sugar Ray Leonard. He tells Leonard how much he admires him. He recalls watching Leonard beat Wilfredo Benitez in 1979 when he was a 13-year-old kid in juvenile lock-up.
He wanted to be like him, Tyson tells Leonard, recalling a fighter so fast that he could make “two punches sound like one.’’
Then, Leonard, Tyson’s guest, becomes part of his audience.
His memory of Leonard triggers his memory of what motivated him to fight.
“I’m a student of effing war,’’ he says. “From Charlemagne to Achilles, the No. 1 warrior of all war years. From him to Alexander, then Napoleon. I know them all. I’ve studied them. Read them all.
“That’s why I was so feared. That’s why is was so feared in the ring. I was an annihilator.
“…That’s all I was born for.’’’’
Then, Tyson begins to cry.
“Now, those days are gone,’’ he says. “It’s empty. I’m nothing. I’m working at the art of humbleness. That’s why I’m crying. I’m not that person no more. And I miss him.
“Sometimes, I feel like a b—-, because I don’t want that person to come out, ’cause hell is coming with him.’’
It’s astonishing. It’s compelling. It’s Tyson.