Mark Kriegel‘s newly released book, ‘Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson‘, provides an in-depth examination of the iconic boxer‘s formative years, highlighting how his unstable childhood influenced his path to becoming one of America’s most recognized cultural figures.
Among the most startling revelations is Tyson‘s experience as a young child. Growing up, whenever he was frightened and crawled into his mother Lorna‘s bed, he would hear her, lying next to him, engaging in relations with “a lot” of men who frequently mistreated her.
Tyson’s mother, Lorna Mae Smith, worked as a prison matron for a while at the notoriously harsh New York Women’s House of Detention, the “House of D,” a dehumanizing and overcrowded jail, marking the grim environment into which Tyson was born. His biological father, Jimmy “Curlee” Kirkpatrick, was a sharecropper’s descendant with a contradictory nature—part protector, part hustler—and largely absent from Tyson’s childhood.
Tyson‘s uncertain paternity also marked his early life. He was initially told his father was a Jamaican-born cab driver, but his mother Lorna later identified Jimmy ‘Curlee’ Kirkpatrick, a known p*mp in 1970s Brooklyn. Tyson preferred the latter explanation because a p*mp’s son had more “status” than a cabbie’s, as he explained in his 2013 one-man show, ‘Undisputed Truth.
With Kirkpatrick largely absent, Lorna, a mother of three, got “caught up in the st reet life” while battling her own demons, according to Tyson.
Cus D’Amato, the legendary boxing trainer, informally adopted the 16-year-old Tyson with his common-law wife, Camille Ewald, after Lorna died from cancer in 1982. Kirkpatrick would pass away a decade later without Tyson ever knowing if he was truly his father – a role D’Amato gladly filled until his own death in late 1985.
The relationship between Tyson and D’Amato proved transformative for both. D’Amato saw in Tyson a chance for redemption decades after his first heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, lost his title to Sonny Liston. In Tyson, D’Amato had found his own intimidating force.
Kriegel suggests their relationship was complex:
“When I suggested to him that the bargain between young Mike and Cus D’Amato was existential and Faustian, and that D’Amato was asking a 13-year-old kid, ‘make me live forever, make me an immortal,'” Tyson’s response was: “Well, didn’t I?”
Tyson‘s search for parental figures continued after D’Amato‘s death. He was soon under promoter Don King‘s influence, a relationship that would later end in litigation. His volatile marriage to actress Robin Givens may have been partially influenced by her domineering mother.
“He was head over heels in love with Robin Givens for her beauty, for what she represented to him,” Kriegel explained. “But I don’t think that he fell for her despite her incredibly overbearing, domineering and controlling mother. In some measure [Tyson fell for Givens] because of it.”
Tyson even asked his court-appointed psychologist Marilyn Murray to assume a maternal role, telling her,
“I’m realizing right now I need a mom. Would you be my mom?”
Rather than focusing on Tyson‘s well-documented troubles—his legal issues, his 1990 loss to James ‘Buster’ Douglas, and his 1992 conviction—Kriegel offers a surprisingly hopeful perspective.
“When I look at his life now, how the h-ll did we get here?” Kriegel reflected. “I’m sure he thinks that too because the one thing that Tyson, the people in the Tyson camp and his antagonists like me in the press could all agree on was that he wasn’t long for this world.”
The biography concludes with a glimpse of Tyson‘s present life—a tranquil scene of him watching his 12-year-old daughter practice tennis. For Tyson, such moments now mean more than any boxing title. Though he may not have found substitutes for his parents, he’s ensuring his children won’t experience similar voids.
“Maybe the real accomplishment in his life isn’t making either D’Amato or himself immortal,” Kriegel concluded. “It’s actually being alive at 58, being a dad, watching his daughter play tennis. Holy s***: Who could have imagined that?”
Released Tuesday by Penguin Random House, ‘Baddest Man’ is the first installment of Kriegel‘s two-part Tyson biography, with the second volume set to cover his later years and continued personal evolution.
