BOXING Vile side of Tyson shines through in two-hour special

Fox Sports Net offers a profile on the controversial boxer.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Mike Tyson may no longer qualify as the young and the restless. But at 37 and past his fighting prime, he remains boxing's most surefire soap opera.
As often as that drama has been seen in short takes and sound bites, there is finally a two-hour TV version -- set to air at 8 p.m. today on Fox Sports Net -- that feels dangerously complete.
Dangerously, because it does not leave out some of the most vile remarks the man has made, including insults to previous women interviewers.
Complete, because Tyson allowed the Fox crew headed by producer David Michaels and his nephew Steven to interview him at length, and they in turn let his conversation run beyond the snippets that have pockmarked his TV persona.
"Mike Tyson: Beyond the Glory" also indulges the people who know or knew the ex-champion best.
They run the gamut from current girlfriend Luz Whitney to ex-wives Monica Turner and Robin Givens (who gives another star turn describing being knocked out by the boxer) to former trainer Teddy Atlas, who details how and why he threatened Tyson with a gun.
Humiliations
But the program's featured personality carries the show, from footage of the brutal knockouts he delivered and suffered to the humiliations he has inflicted and taken outside the ring.
Particularly poignant is the moment when young and childlike champion Tyson, clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable, appears before reporters decked out in a crown, robe and scepter.
The outrageous costume was the brainstorm of promoter Don King, who is largely reviled in the piece.
At another point, as if to explain his chameleon conversational style that veers from paranoid and self-pitying to bilious and repulsive -- even when it is bleeped -- Tyson says, "In order to be the greatest fighter in the world, you have to be the greatest liar in the world."
Whitney says she intends to show him that "there are people he can trust" and to make him happy. In turn, Tyson says he has "never been faithful to any woman I've ever met in my life." To Whitney's declaration of love, he responds, "A couple more of my episodes and we'll find out."
Past episodes such as the rape conviction he swears was unjust; the car wreck than nearly killed him and the bite he took from Evander Holyfield's ear in a title fight are reminders revisited in the documentary.
Enhanced by the tight narration of actor/rapper Ice-T, it is a solid profile despite too many interludes featuring Tyson's pigeons.