Mike Tyson in popular culture

Mike Tyson is an American former World Heavyweight boxing Champion. Tyson, ranked by ESPN as the #1 Most Outrageous Character in modern sports history^[1] has appeared in numerous popular media in either cameo appearances or as a subject of parody or satire.

Cameos and other appearances

• In 1989, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince scored a #23 R&B and #58 Pop hit with "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson", in which the Fresh Prince envisages himself taking on the heavyweight champion (and taking a beating in the process). Tyson appears as himself in the song's music video.
• Tyson made a cameo appearance on 1980s TV sitcom Who's the Boss?, during a scene when Tony Danza is impersonating Tyson's infamous voice. Tyson rings the doorbell as a neighbor and asks who the person is who's been making fun of him.
• Tyson has appeared in a commercial aired in 1990 for Toyota trucks in Japan.^[2]
• Tyson appeared in rapper Ice-T's video "New Jack Hustler" in 1991. He can be seen at the beginning of the video talking on a phone and hanging with members of Ice-T's entourage around a car.
• A 1995 Weekend Update sketch, shortly following Tyson's release from prison had Adam Sandler appearing as the self-proclaimed "president of the Mike Tyson fan club" listing the names of all the people who badmouthed Tyson, as well as Sandler for defending him, and talked trash that Tyson was behind bars and there was nothing he could do about it. Sandler read a list of addresses of the hecklers, who are no longer safe now that Tyson is no longer restrained in prison.
• Tyson was good friends with rapper Tupac Shakur, and often came out for a fight with a song Shakur specifically recorded for his ringwalk music. In 1996, Shakur was on his way to a charity event after watching the Tyson-Seldon fight when he was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting.^[3]
• Tyson was the special outside enforcer for the World Wrestling Federation match between Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin at the March 29, 1998 WrestleMania XIV pay-per-view. Before the match he seemingly aligned himself with Michaels and his D-Generation X stable, only to turn on them and punch Michaels, after counting the pinfall for Austin and awarding him the WWF Championship.^[4]
• In 1998 Tyson featured on an underground rap hit, "Second Round K.O" by Canibus. Tyson gives the rapper advice over how to defeat his lyrical opponent (rapper LL Cool J).
• In 1999 he made another movie cameo appearance, playing himself in James Toback's Black and White, a serious look at race, sex and hip hop music in Manhattan. Tyson appears in When Will I Be Loved, another film by Black and White's director James Issa Toback, in 2004.
• In 2001, Tyson had a cameo on P.Diddy's music video for "Bad Boy For Life".
• Tyson made a special cameo appearance in the 2001 movie Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, where he played an extremely peaceful man meditating in a park. Dundee's character remarked to his son in the film, "He seems like a nice bloke!"
• Tyson appears in Sylvester Stallone's 2006 movie Rocky Balboa and plays himself. He can be seen taunting Mason "The Line" Dixon, the current champion in the movie (who because of his arrogance and ability to end fights early, is based on Tyson's early career) at ringside right before the Balboa / Dixon bout begins.^[5]
• Recently Indian Bollywood movie producer Firoz Nadiadwala has approached Mike Tyson to feature in a promotional video for his film Fool and Final.^[6] It has been reported that despite his pending legal problems, Tyson has been given clearance to go to India on April 20 to participate in the shoot.^[7]
• In 2007, he appeared on the ESPY Awards show with comedian Jimmy Kimmel in a shower scene.
• Tyson appears as himself in the 2009 comedy film The Hangover. He appears in the protagonists' hotel room, demanding the return of his tiger, which they stole from him while drunk. In a 2010 interview, he stated that he appeared in The Hangover in order to fund a drug habit.^[8]
• Also in 2009, Tyson guest starred as himself on the Fox sitcom Brothers (in the episode "Lenny"). He attempted to collect a $5,000 debt owed to him by Michael Trainor (Michael Strahan), but Trainor was broke and Tyson instead took the wheelchair of Trainor's paraplegic brother Chill (Daryl Mitchell).
• A successful and long-running manga series, Hajime no Ippo, based on boxing, in the very beginning of the manga, Tyson is mentioned and has several appearances and references. Makunouchi Ippo, the protagonist, also shares many boxing traits with Tyson, such as the Peek-a-Boo stance and his sheer raw punching power.
• In 2011, Tyson made a cameo in the TV series Breaking In where he hired Contra Security to assess his estate's security. He later became involved in a case that involved a cyber teen bully and helped the student become more popular.^[9]
• On May 18, 2011 Tyson appeared with his wife on Argentina's version of Dancing with the Stars ^[10]
• In 2011, Tyson appeared in the movie The Hangover Part II as himself. Near the end of the film, he performs the song One Night in Bangkok at Stu's wedding.

Parodies and satire

• In The Simpsons, boxer (and convicted felon) Drederick Tatum is clearly modeled after Tyson. Charged with pushing his mother down a flight of stairs, Tatum was directly involved in the plot of two episodes. In "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment", he was the inspiration for Homer Simpson to hold a boxing party to watch Tatum's "Bout to Knock the Other Guy Out", though the catch was that match was on Pay-ver-view and Homer had illegal cable. The other episode was "The Homer They Fall" which took place during Homer's short-lived boxing career. Homer faced Tatum during a comeback bout that closely mirrored Tyson's comeback bout with Peter McNeeley. Also noted, Tatum's promoter Lucius Sweet is clearly modeled after long time Tyson promoter Don King right down to the trademark hair (Sweet was voiced by Paul Winfield, who played the real Don King in the 1995 biopic Tyson).
• In a Simpsons Comics sketch where Sideshow Bob recruits Nelson, Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney for a child crime gang, he is seen reading a prison magazine that reads: "Prison Weekly- Inside: Mike Tyson's five favourite penitentiaries!" This is a reference to Tyson's time in jail.
• Tyson's well hyped and short bout with Peter McNeeley in 1995 served as obvious inspiration for the parody film of that phase of Tyson's career, The Great White Hype, with a caricature of Tyson played by Damon Wayans and a caricature of Don King played by Samuel L. Jackson.^[11]
• ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons makes frequent references to "The Tyson Zone" (named after Tyson), which is a status an athlete or celebrity reaches when their behavior becomes so outrageous that one would believe most any story or anecdote about the person, no matter how seemingly bizarre.^[12]
• During the 2000 Presidential election, comedian Chris Rock produced several parody political ads endorsing Tyson for president on his TV program, The Chris Rock Show.
• Ottawa Senators goaltender Ray Emery had a picture of Tyson on his goalie mask. He wore it for one game before he was told by Senators management that this was inappropriate due to Tyson's reputation.^[13]
• In Scary Movie 4, during a flashback scene (a boxing match not so subtly disguised as a Million Dollar Baby spoof) involving lead character Cindy (Anna Faris), her opponent is a buff female boxer who resembles Tyson; who at the conclusion of the fight, proceeds to bite off the ears of every spectator and official within the boxing stadium – a reference to the infamous bite fight. Faris denied the rumors about Tyson playing Cindy's opponent in the boxing scene. She said it was a boxing trainer who quite resembles Tyson a lot. However, in the DVD commentary, David Zucker contradicts her, stating it was indeed Tyson.
• Mike Tyson was referenced by the Grand Royal Records artist, Nullset in their 2001 self-titled record in the song "Smokewood".
• Two current world champions in boxing have the name Tyson in their monikers. One is Joan Guzmán who is called "Little Tyson." The other is Ruslan Chagaev who is nicknamed "White Tyson."
• In the episode The Fight, in the T.V. show The Office the boss, Michael Scott, does an impression of Mike Tyson by speaking with a high-pitched voice. However, Michael begins to laugh.
• Mike Tyson appeared on an episode of Family Guy (though not voiced by himself) in which he fights Carol Channing on a show titled "Fox Celebrity Boxing", a fight which Tyson lost when he passed out from exhaustion because Channing kept getting back up every time he knocked her down.
• Aries Spears occasionally played as Tyson on MADtv.
• Keenan Ivory Wayans occasionally played as Tyson on In Living Color in the "Three Champs and a Baby" sketches.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Hollywood Plucky", Mike Tyson breaks through a wall and stomps into a restaurant being waited by Plucky Duck and orders Santa Fe finger links, making Plucky quip to the viewer "I'd have never figured him for a soprano."
• In an episode of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, a parody of Mike Tyson was a boxing champion named "Mike Dyson", the 2nd one to be down.
• In CSI: NY Season 1 Episode "A Man a Mile", Detective Danny Messer remarks on seeing a suspect having his left ear bandaged after been bitten in a fight remarked that he had been "Tysoned"

In movies and television

• Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (1993) (Documentary)^[14]
• Tyson (1995) (Film)^[15]
• Tyson (2008) (Documentary)^[16]
• On April 20, 2009, Tyson confirmed in a MTV interview that a film about his life is in the works and that Jamie Foxx or DMX wants to play the role.
• The Hangover (2009) (Film)
• Brothers (2009)
• Hollywood Renegade (2010) Post production (Film)
• Entourage (2010)
• Breaking In (2011)
• The Hangover: Part II (2011) (Film)

In video games

• In 1987, Nintendo released Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, on the NES, based on the arcade game Punch-Out!!, although there was later a version released in 1990 that replaced Mike Tyson with a fictional character, "Mr. Dream", after Nintendo's license with Tyson expired. Tyson is the final opponent in the 1987 game. Defeating Tyson (through boxer Little Mac) is extremely difficult, as he can knock Mac down with a single "Dynamite Punch", modeled after the real-life Tyson's devastating right upper-cut.
• In 1992, a second Nintendo game featuring Mike Tyson entitled Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch was to be released as a sequel to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. However, due to the Desiree Washington case the project was scrapped and the game was eventually released as Power Punch II with Mike Tyson in the game being replaced with a character named Mark Tyler.
• In the original Street Fighter, there is a boxer simply named "Mike" who bears a loose resemblance to Mike Tyson. The character is sometimes erroneously called "Mike Balrog" from Street Fighter II onwards, despite officially being considered a different character.
• In the Japanese and original version of Capcom's Street Fighter II series, Balrog is called Mike Bison, as a parody of Mike Tyson, possibly with the full name of "Michael Gerard Bison." Capcom USA switched the names of the Shadaloo Grandmasters around for the American versions in order to avoid a potential lawsuit from Mike Tyson. In Street Fighter Alpha 3 one of Balrog's win quotes is "If you fight me like that again I'll have to bite your ear off!"
• Tyson made his video game return in Codemasters' Mike Tyson Boxing in the fall of 2000, for the Sony Playstation. It was followed up in 2002 with Mike Tyson Heavyweight Boxing for the Microsoft XBox, and the Sony Playstation 2.
• The video game Fallout 2 featured a series of boxing matches that concluded with the player fighting a character "The Masticator." The "Masticator" made references to eating ears and was likely a parody of Mike Tyson.
• The game Crash of the Titans features a character named Tiny Tiger, whose high-pitched, lisping voice is a parody of Tyson's own speaking style.
• Tyson appears as a boss in the freeware game I Wanna Be the Guy.
• EA Sports' Fight Night Round 4 marks the debut of Mike Tyson on the Next Gen consoles in 2009. Tyson is featured, along with Muhammad Ali, on the cover of the game.
• Tyson and iPhone development company RockLive released Mike Tyson: Main Event inside the iTunes App Store in March 2011. The game was updated in April 2011 with additional fighters from rock band All Time Low.

References

External links

• Mike Tyson at the Internet Movie Database.