Mike Tyson's Road to Victory | Overcoming Fear with Relentless Drive

The closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one can beat me.

A good fighter is just to be diligent and committed and disciplined. Doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. If you're not doing it with passion and love and you're just doing it for money, it's, um, the emotional outcome is gonna be disastrous. Not necessarily the size of the guy, you know what I mean? It's basically the spirit and the competitive in his heart. As we get older, we lose our hair, we lose our teeth, we lose our mothers.

Talent?

I don't believe in talent. Many times I quit boxing Before I even became a professional boxer.

He's an American former professional boxer. He was known for his ferocious and intimidating boxing style, as well as his controversial behavior inside and outside the ring. Nicknamed Iron or Kid Dynamite, he's considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. He's Mike Tyson, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success. Number 10 is my personal favorite, so I'm curious to find out which one you guys like the most, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus.

While I'm in the dressing room, 5 minutes before I come out, my gloves are laced up. I'm breaking my gloves down. I'm pushing the lever in the back of my— breaking the middle of the glove for my knuckle to pierce through the leather. I feel my knuckle piercing against the tight leather gloves on the Everlast boxing gloves. When I come out, I have supreme confidence, but I'm scared to death. I'm totally afraid. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of losing. I'm afraid of being humiliated, but I'm totally confident. The closer I get to the ring, the more confident I I get, the closer, more confidence I get. The closer, more confident I get. All during my training, I've been afraid of this man. I thought this man might be capable of beating me. I've dreamed of him beating me, but I always stayed afraid of him. But the closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one could beat me. I walk around the ring, but I never, I never take my eyes off my opponent. I keep my eyes on him, even if he's ready and pumping, he can't wait to get his he turns on me as well. I keep my eyes on him, I keep my eyes on him, I keep my eyes on him. Then once I see a chink in his armor, boom, one of his eyes may move, and then I know I have him. Then when he comes to the center of the ring, he still looks at me with his piercing look, and as if he's not afraid. But he already made that mistake when he, when he looked down for that one-tenth of a second. I know I had him. He'll fight hard for the first 2 or 3 rounds. I know I already broke his spirit. During the fight, I'm supremely confident. I'm moving my head, he's throwing punches, I'm making them miss, and I'm countering. I'm hitting him to the body, I'm punching real hard, and I'm punching, and I'm punching him. I know he's not able to take my punches. 1, 2, 3 punches, I'm throwing them punches in bunches. He goes down, he's out, I'm victorious. Mike Tyson, greatest fighter ever lived.

A good fighter is not necessarily the greatest fighter ever lived, is what— where you want to go. You know what I mean? A good fighter, just to be diligent and committed and disciplined, doing what you hate to do but do it like you love it. You know, always testing yourself and forcing yourself to the limits, you know? If you know you like, if you love women, then deny yourself that. You know what I mean? That's what success in general is all about, sacrifice. From my experience, of any little success I may have had, is be willing to sacrifice, you know. Unfortunately, sometimes you can't have fun accomplishing your goals. And when sometimes people don't have the determination, the will, and the steadfastness, the tenacity, they give in under the slightest struggle. I don't want to do anything unless I'm passionate about it. You know, I don't care if it's— I don't care any money. That's what I learned about peace and happiness, that if you're not doing it with passion, passion and love and you're just doing it for money, it's, um, the emotional outcome is going to be disastrous. And that's from my experience. That's just really what I know. So I know it has to be, um, just for pure passion and the love for what I'm doing.

As a smaller boxer yourself in terms of stature, how do you take on these big guys with a big reach?

I don't know. It's not necessarily the size of the guy, you know what I mean? It's basically the spirit and the competitive in his heart, you know. The guy wants to fight, he could be 4'2" and fight a guy 6'9". You know, if you want to fight, you're gonna fight and you're gonna do well. That's just the average of law here in the game of boxing. If you really want to do it, you're gonna do well. But what I found out in life, as life goes on, life is about losing. As we get older, we lose our hair, we lose our teeth, we lose our mothers, our fathers, our sisters. But the ones who overcome their loss in life and could shun away adversity and always willing to fight it every particular moment in life are the ones that are able to transcend and be able to spread the word to other people who's in that same particular genre as they are. In order to be great, you know what I mean, you gotta be prepared to fail greatly as well.

You know what I mean?

It's all about how you handle the failures, you know, and I'm good at handling failures. Yeah. I don't know, I'm probably not that good at handling success. I can handle failure better than I can handle success.

I feel I was born to fight because I have no other interest in anything else. Everybody's a fighter in their own right. You're a fighter, I'm a fighter. Everyone that's in this room, even the newspapermen, they're fighters. But everybody don't get up every morning and run. Everybody don't go to the gym every morning. And everybody don't have enough discipline to wait in the locker room for 2 hours or 3 hours, then go in the ring. And do what they've been taught all those years in the gym. And so that's what separates a champion from a mediocre fighter.

What about talent?

Talent? I don't believe in talent. Well, some people, they have talent. That's good. It helps when you have talent. As long as you have a lot of determination and willpower, that's all you need. And you have to have the will to win.

We all know about your love for Cus D'Amato. How much of him is in you when you're doing this?

I don't know, I'm just not him. Maybe if I continue to do this for another 20 years or so, I may be somewhere in there close to his level of protection of his fighters, but as of now, no, it's not there yet. I'm just not as seasoned and experienced as Mr. D'Amato was.

You speak of him in the present tense. He's very much with you at all times?

Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much.

Would you have him as one of the most special people in your life?

Absolutely. No one could inspire me as much as he did. You know, if I was discouraged, I'd say, you know, 'cause sometimes, I'm sure in your field, you say, well, really, things may have got difficult, something may have happened in your life, I don't want to do this no more. We all go through that. I don't want to do this no more. And he would inspire me to say, hey, this is the route to go. He would inspire me to want to do— Many times I quit boxing before I even became a professional boxer. As an amateur, I quit. I didn't want to do it. He gave me the inspiration, the reason why I should be doing this. My whole job was just to inflict pain in people's minds. I had to do intimidation factor. That's the biggest aspect of anything in life is intimidation. Because once a person who's a great anything is intimidated, he can no longer perform under the high level that he's normally accustomed to working because he's intimidated and he shut down. And I'm the man, listen, I'm the master at that. I put it out, I was like, be the most intimidating athlete in the history of the world of sports. Forget boxing, the history of the world of sports, you know. And you have to be willing— boxing and sports and everything in life is all about a bluff. It's almost like playing cards. Like, I say more so than, um, I say more so than I say shooting dice. Yeah, you know, because you could change dices and stuff, but they can't— they're hard, they can't mold, you know what I mean? You just gotta give your— if you just shoot When we would shoot, cards could bend.

Yeah.

Cards could bend like life. Us in life, we can bend. And even though we got a bad hand, that don't mean we gonna lose the fucking game.

Right.

You know what I mean? Yeah. We gonna stay in there, we gonna hold it to the end. And it's the same way in fighting. Yeah. And in life, because we were born in swallows and the sewers and gutters, that don't mean we gonna stay there if we have the desire and willpower, perseverance to be able to endure the pain.

Yeah.

You gotta endure that pain, you know. Look at me, everybody likes me now. Yeah, I'm the last man standing. Everybody likes the last man.

What will people remember about Mike Tyson 50 years from now?

50 years? I don't know, that I'm the most destructive, ferocious fighting machine that God ever created. Yeah, that's what I think.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Ali Hassan asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Mike Tyson's top 10 rules had the biggest impact on you and why. Leave it in the comments. I will join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.

Took a long time to grow up. Really took a long time to grow up and deal with the responsibilities of life. Because, you know, when you're boxing and playing rugby and football and all that, whatever you're doing, you're living a life of rowdy, living like a kid. You don't have many responsibilities.

What do you miss most about the life then? The old days?

It's not much I miss about it, no. Because when you really think about it, at the height of my career, I'm making $30, $40 million a fight. Doing what I want, anybody I want to see and meet. I see them on television, strange, I see them, I like them, I make a phone call. I can meet anybody, do what I want to do, but I didn't have any peace. You know, I didn't have peace. And now I'm at the— I'm not even at the height of my career. I don't make a tenth of the money that I made then, and I got cartoons, I have shows. I could have never accomplished this when I was fighting. I would have never gotten along with the producer. I would have been arrogant. It's just you learn humbleness You get older in life and you learn if you don't come in this world humble, this world will thrust humbleness upon you.

Do you think it's more important to be respected or feared?

I would like to be respected. Respect is more powerful than love, I believe. You know, but how many people out of the obligation of love, Machiavelli, out of the obligation of love have we hurt? Just think about it. Everybody that's listening to me, just think out of the obligation of love. This is my sister, my brother, my girlfriend. That I cheated on, my boyfriend who I didn't tell him everything, he should've knew this is not his child, whatever the situation may be, you know what I mean? We just have to know this is what it is, you know what I mean? Some people can get by with just being respected, some people get higher for being feared.

The Mitch Bloodgreen story is the greatest story ever told.

We hope Mitch is still around.

I love that story. The best. In your one-man show, you talk about like, you're like, this guy might even show up. But like, did he actually have you worried at one point? Because—

No, because listen, every time I'm somewhere, this guy's popping up. You know, I'm in the hospital because of my car accident. He's— they said, Mike, look outside. I look out my hospital window, it's a crowd, and there's the president. He's giving an interview calling me. I'm tagging that sizzling Tyson, homo Mike Tyson. Holy shit.

For those of you that don't know the Mitch Blood Green story, he fought Mitch Blood Green, and he beat him. Then he like terrorized Mike for years, would show up at dinners, at restaurants, and would try to fight him all the time. So Mike's getting fitted for a suit one night. There's this place, what was it? In Brooklyn?

In Harlem.

In Harlem.

All right.

In Harlem where—

Yeah, where you buy them, you know, those knockoff stuff.

Right. And he said this place would— it was a place where you would go get fitted for suits. And it was open at 3, 4 in the morning. And he said, that might sound weird to you, but pimps, rappers, and everybody else would go get suited at this place. So that's why it was open that late. And he said Mitch Bloodgreen came walking in one day and started, you know, calling him all kinds of names. Holy moly. And he said he was like a zombie. He said he hit him and he broke his hand when he hit him. And he knocked him out dead. And then he gets up like Jason. And like, he said, every time he knocked him out— When I knock him out, I'm scared.

I said, "Let's get to the car." Next thing I know, boom, boom, boom, boom. What the fuck? I didn't even believe this shit. I got my right hand on my children like he out. And I said, "Let's get out." He was walking. Next thing you know, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Like, he keeps knocking this guy out and the guy keeps getting up and chasing after him out to the thing. And then the game changer is he rips the mirror off Mike Tyson's Rolls-Royce and Mike has to get out and knock him out again before he drives away.

I wasn't gonna let him get rid of that. I wasn't gonna let him get rid of that. I was gonna take my little Rolls-Royce and break the window off. Break the little mirror, the side mirror, right? Yeah, ripped it off.