"Mike started liking the idea that I was waking him up to the reality in life and that's how me and Mike rolled. I would tell him the truth with no strings attached. Me and him had a pretty good relationship and that's another story. I know a whole lot of things about Mike Tyson and what happened to him. I delivered an agreement for Mike to fight 4 fights and I offered him $60 million for those fights. I showed him how he was going to make this $60 million. He signed the agreement and Shelly Finkel used that agreement to get Mike to sign back with him. Because Mike didn't want to talk to Shelly, he treated Shelly like he was some type of an animal. He refused to even talk directly to ShellyÂ…he saw Don King like a father image. It was a relationship that shocked the entire boxing community," stated promoter Murad Muhammad as he revealed behind-the-scenes details about the final years of Mike Tyson's career. You don't want to miss what else he had to say as Muhammad discusses Tyson's bouts with Razor Ruddock, his time in prison and the years leading up to his eventual retirement from the sport. Check it out!
PC: You had something on the table with Mike Tyson besides the Roy Jones Jr. fight. I don't think a lot of people knew you worked with Mike before. Could you tell us about that?
MM: Mike Tyson and I had a very good relationship. We fought Mike with Razor Ruddock. I told Razor we were going to have to fight the one that the bully is afraid of. See, the bully never likes to fight the quiet guy. The quiet guy will look the bully in his eyes and even if the bully fights him and he loses, he will knock on the door and say, "Hey man, come on out. We gotta do this again." And if the bully beats him, he will knock on his door and wait for him to come out and fight him again and again and again. The bully never likes to fight; he just likes to bully people, but he never really wants to fight. So Razor never backed down and that's the way I promoted Razor, as the quiet guy that don't give a damn about the bully.
One day, Mike was on the Arsenio Hall Show. Arsenio mentioned my name wrong. He said, "Who is that Marad guy?" Mike said, "You mean Murad? That's my promoter." Arsenio said, "I thought Don King was your promoter." He said, "Yeah, but Murad is my promoter too and he's a good promoter. The problem with Murad is he treats us too good and most of us don't deserve it." I thought that was a hell of a plus for my credibility. However, he said he would have never fought Razor Ruddock if he thought that me and Don were going to break up. He said Razor was a tough fight and he did it for the team. He thought two African Americans uniting as promoters, and him being an African American fighter and Razor Ruddock being an African American fighterÂ…he had a lot of respect for how I treated Razor.
One day, on a world-wide hookup, I was promoting Razor and Don was promoting Tyson. That's what made the fight a sensational blockbuster because both promoters were pushing for their own boxer. One time, Mike jumped up and said, "Don, why don't you promote me like Murad promotes Razor Ruddock." Then he threw the mic down and walked off of the platform while he was on a national hookup. I never forgot that. Then, when Mike would come into the arena, he would be almost 50 yards on the opposite side and see me and walk all the way across the arena to come shake my hand. I appreciated that because he understood my honesty and my integrity.
When I brought him the fight at 1 o'clock in the morning at the hotel, no one thought he was going to show up. He called Roy Jones Jr. on the phone and said, "Roy, I want you to know man that I'm going to do this. I'm not in real good shape, but if you beat me man, just promise that you will give me a rematch and if I beat you, I will give you a rematch. If we do 3 fights man, we will never have to work in the history of this sport again." Mike also told him that he would dog him and not to take it personal. He told him he was not crazy. When Mike was incarcerated, I used to write Mike and he would read my letters and I used to say, "Hey man, you tell everybody that you might go with Murad or you might go with Don King. I'm telling you now, don't even think about me man. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't even be thinking about boxing now because you're not free. Wait until you are a free spirit and out of prison and then, once you come out of prison, then you should choose who you should go with." The big story at the time was if he was coming to Murad Muhammad or to Don King. Kurt put up a great deal of money and Don King was at the right place at the right time. He offered Mike Tyson a deal to sign and Mike signed with Don for a great deal of money.
Then I told Mike, when he left Don King to go to Shelly Finkel, I said, "I don't understand that move." Someone said Mike wanted to come with me and someone told him some kind of a lie, so he went to Shelly. I said, "Michael, you were with Shelly Finkel for 7 fights and you made $7 million. Don King, who you call a crook, was paying you $33 million. You do the math." He called King a crook and he gave Mike $33 million, but he thinks Shelly is his friend and he's giving him $7 to $10 million. I told him, "It is a known fact that your foreign sales alone is $10 million; just your foreign sales." There was a company in England paying Mike Tyson $10 million. I said, "What I would like to know is what happened to your 400,000 [pay-per-view] homes, your 600,000 [pay-per-view] homes? You multiply those millions and then see who robbed you the worse, King or the people who you are with."
So Mike started liking the idea that I was waking him up to the reality in life and that's how me and Mike rolled. I would tell him the truth with no strings attached. Me and him had a pretty good relationship and that's another story. I know a whole lot of things about Mike Tyson and what happened to him. I delivered an agreement for Mike to fight 4 fights and I offered him $60 million for those fights. I showed him how he was going to make this $60 million. He signed the agreement and Shelly Finkel used that agreement to get Mike to sign back with him. Because Mike didn't want to talk to Shelly, he treated Shelly like he was some type of an animal. He refused to even talk directly to Shelly. Shelly used my agreement to get Mike to resign with him. We had a date scheduled on HBO for Mike Tyson to fight. In his first fight, he was going to make $20 million. That fight could have brought him maybe $30 million, who knows, but he was guaranteed $20 million. Shelly Finkel convinced Mike that he had to go to Kentucky, Louisville, for $2 to $3 million, and Mike took the fight [against Danny Williams]. No one understood why he took the fight. I called it burning a $25 million deal to look for $3 million. And of course you know the history. Mike lost to Danny Williams. Once again, a fight between Mike and I went out of the window. But the Roy Jones Jr. fight fell through when Mike Tyson decided to file the wrong bankruptcy. Someone convinced him to do that, and of course we believe it was Shelly Finkel, and he filed Chapter 11. Chapter 11 didn't do nothing but put all of his money in escrow to pay off his creditors. Mike couldn't see all of his money at one time, so I guess he got discouraged. So that was an event that didn't happen too.
I always believed that Mike Tyson was a victim of his own circumstances because he didn't care anymore. I remember someone sayingÂ…and I was very close to Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs, and someone said, "Mike, you mean to tell me you would go to Don, who is a thief, and leave Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs?" Mike said, "Look, Don is my brother and if Don is beating me, I would rather be beaten by my brother than anyone else." Surely you don't want to be beaten by anyone, but he felt that Don King was family and if he was getting beat, it was going to the family and that's how he saw Don King like a father image. It was a relationship that shocked the entire boxing community in the money that Mike made with Don King. King and Mike must have grossed at least 3/4 of a billion dollars. And that's a great deal of money.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]