Mike Tyson interview continuous,
MITCHELL: Do you feel like you’ve gotten past that old self mostly, or do you still feel bits of it?
TYSON: I work on it consistently. I guess I have more faith and confidence in myself now.
MITCHELL: There’s a point in Tyson when you talk about your
frame of mind before a fight. When you were in the dressing room getting
ready to go out, you’d be afraid. But the closer you got to the ring,
the more confident you got.
TYSON: Well, because being in the ring became my reality, and, in my reality, I’d think I was someone special.
MITCHELL: But you were something special.
TYSON: But that’s the frame of mind I had back then. When I was young, I thought I was a god. Now, I just basically work on staying humble. My priorities changed. Just to be able to try to change them—that was frightening to me.
MITCHELL: It seems, though, like fear has been something that’s motivated you.
TYSON: Fear and the thought of failure . . . But we don’t really know what fear is. Fear is something that we create in our own minds. Fear could be like fire. You can use it to heat you up, keep you warm, cook your food. There are so many things you can use it for. But if you allow it to go out of control, it will destroy you and everything around you.
MITCHELL: So you’re talking about this combination of fear and discipline.
TYSON: Exactly. Discipline is doing what you hate to do but doing it like you love it. But with fear, it’s not so much about learning how to use it but how to embrace it.
MITCHELL: Did [Tyson’s first trainer] Cus D’Amato help you recognize how to deal with that?
TYSON: Oh, 100 percent. I never knew anything about that stuff until Cus brought it to my attention—that it was healthy to feel fear. If you didn’t feel it, then you were either crazy or you were a liar. Because it’s unnatural to fight somebody who has nothing against you and never did anything to you or to your family, who never stole anything from you. And now you’ve got to go and try to dismantle this guy . . . It takes -discipline to do that.
MITCHELL: What was always so much fun about watching you fight is that you would propel yourself off the balls of your feet to hit somebody. We’re used to seeing heavyweights kind of move in and twist their body into the punch. But you would throw yourself into it, almost like it was a street fight.
TYSON: Well, I was blessed with speed and a good punch. Everybody thinks I’m the hardest puncher ever. But I just think I was really fast, and my punches got to the target faster. That’s what made my knockouts always seem spectacular.
MITCHELL: You don’t think you were one of the hardest punchers?
TYSON: I do think I was a very hard puncher, but I was also a very accurate puncher if I hit you on certain spots and stuff . . . Guys like George Foreman could hit you in the back or on the side of the head or behind the ears and knock you out. But most of the heavyweight guys were so much bigger than me.
MITCHELL: So your strategy was to get up in your opponents’ faces and try to get to them as quickly as possible?
TYSON: Yes. You have to be consistent if you want to break their spirit, their will. Because that’s really what fighting is about . . . People see it as a physical contact sport, but it’s not. It’s really a spiritual one of will against will. Who wants it the most? How much is he willing to take—and dish out—to get it? It’s like fighting is 10 percent physical and 90 percent emotional.
MITCHELL: I remember you saying that you had mastered the art of skulduggery.
TYSON: Yeah. I was an emotional manipulator of fighters . . . You have to know how to be cold, you know? Just have no -emotions, no feelings. It takes time, though, to develop that. I’d been working on that since I was 12 years old. It doesn’t happen overnight. My objective was to hurt the other fighters. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to be merciless. Man, I was a wild thing. . . It’s kind of a drug, a rush. But that’s just how I was as a kid . . . It’s funny, because Cus was always saying that Ali was better than anybody because he controlled his emotions and his fears. Ali was just an emotional juggernaut.
(Continue to next part Interview of Mike Tyson 2/2..)
Other Great Personalities Interviews,
TYSON: I work on it consistently. I guess I have more faith and confidence in myself now.
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| Source: islandmotivation.com |
TYSON: Well, because being in the ring became my reality, and, in my reality, I’d think I was someone special.
MITCHELL: But you were something special.
TYSON: But that’s the frame of mind I had back then. When I was young, I thought I was a god. Now, I just basically work on staying humble. My priorities changed. Just to be able to try to change them—that was frightening to me.
MITCHELL: It seems, though, like fear has been something that’s motivated you.
TYSON: Fear and the thought of failure . . . But we don’t really know what fear is. Fear is something that we create in our own minds. Fear could be like fire. You can use it to heat you up, keep you warm, cook your food. There are so many things you can use it for. But if you allow it to go out of control, it will destroy you and everything around you.
MITCHELL: So you’re talking about this combination of fear and discipline.
TYSON: Exactly. Discipline is doing what you hate to do but doing it like you love it. But with fear, it’s not so much about learning how to use it but how to embrace it.
MITCHELL: Did [Tyson’s first trainer] Cus D’Amato help you recognize how to deal with that?
TYSON: Oh, 100 percent. I never knew anything about that stuff until Cus brought it to my attention—that it was healthy to feel fear. If you didn’t feel it, then you were either crazy or you were a liar. Because it’s unnatural to fight somebody who has nothing against you and never did anything to you or to your family, who never stole anything from you. And now you’ve got to go and try to dismantle this guy . . . It takes -discipline to do that.
MITCHELL: What was always so much fun about watching you fight is that you would propel yourself off the balls of your feet to hit somebody. We’re used to seeing heavyweights kind of move in and twist their body into the punch. But you would throw yourself into it, almost like it was a street fight.
TYSON: Well, I was blessed with speed and a good punch. Everybody thinks I’m the hardest puncher ever. But I just think I was really fast, and my punches got to the target faster. That’s what made my knockouts always seem spectacular.
MITCHELL: You don’t think you were one of the hardest punchers?
TYSON: I do think I was a very hard puncher, but I was also a very accurate puncher if I hit you on certain spots and stuff . . . Guys like George Foreman could hit you in the back or on the side of the head or behind the ears and knock you out. But most of the heavyweight guys were so much bigger than me.
MITCHELL: So your strategy was to get up in your opponents’ faces and try to get to them as quickly as possible?
TYSON: Yes. You have to be consistent if you want to break their spirit, their will. Because that’s really what fighting is about . . . People see it as a physical contact sport, but it’s not. It’s really a spiritual one of will against will. Who wants it the most? How much is he willing to take—and dish out—to get it? It’s like fighting is 10 percent physical and 90 percent emotional.
MITCHELL: I remember you saying that you had mastered the art of skulduggery.
TYSON: Yeah. I was an emotional manipulator of fighters . . . You have to know how to be cold, you know? Just have no -emotions, no feelings. It takes time, though, to develop that. I’d been working on that since I was 12 years old. It doesn’t happen overnight. My objective was to hurt the other fighters. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to be merciless. Man, I was a wild thing. . . It’s kind of a drug, a rush. But that’s just how I was as a kid . . . It’s funny, because Cus was always saying that Ali was better than anybody because he controlled his emotions and his fears. Ali was just an emotional juggernaut.
(Continue to next part Interview of Mike Tyson 2/2..)
Other Great Personalities Interviews,
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