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Google PlayMike Tyson signs on to Microsoft Teams.
He’s sucking on a pink lollipop and wearing a fitted black T-shirt with his name on it. At the bottom of the screen, the name Kiki Tyson identifies the account holder.
He’s here to talk about his weed company, Tyson 2.0, and only has 10 minutes to answer questions, say his people. The former heavyweight champion of the world gets right into it, pulling the Blow Pop from his mouth to explain why he likes to get high on his own supply, and why he thinks Canadians will too.
Thinking is certainly something Tyson has been into since he retired from professional boxing in 2005. Famous for his vicious competitiveness and insane physical ability, he’s spending more time pontificating these days than punching. (Just don’t pester him too hard if you catch him on a commercial flight.)
The talk shifts from his cannabis habits and history to the current state of the legal weed market, and just like that, the 10 minutes is up. But Tyson doesn’t close down the computer. He’s into the chat, going back and forth with Tyson 2.0 CEO Adam Wilks, who is also on the call.
It’s clear The Baddest Man on the Planet is running his own schedule these days.
Indeed, during a recent appearance on YouTube giant Jake Paul’s Impaulsive Podcast, Tyson took 20 minutes to chew a 3.5g handful of magic mushrooms, and then an hour to talk about the positive effects hallucinogens, and weed, have on his psyche, staying long past his scheduled interview time.
This month, right on time, Tyson 2.0 is launching its first dried flower product, TKO, a cross between GMO and triangle kush grown by Ontario’s Purplefarm Genetics, in the Canadian market, along with Mike’s Bites, a 10-mg THC gummy edible shaped like—you guessed it!—an ear.
“It’s the Year of the Ear,” claims Tyson.
Below is the 40-minute extended conversation with Complex Canada, mildly edited for length and clarity.
You’ve been a part of the cannabis scene for long enough to remember the old days, the old old days. How do you think Big Weed has been doing?
The way that I make the difference is that you don’t know what you getting on the streets from the street guy, he’s gonna give you whatever he says it is. It doesn’t necessarily have to be it, but you go to the dispensary, everything you want is right there, and you know what the effects are gonna be as well.
Do you miss anything about having to have “a weed guy”?
No, I don’t miss nothing about it. My family are my weed people now.
I’ve heard you talk a lot about the ego, the power of the ego, your struggle with your ego over your lifetime as a boxer. And I’ve also heard you talk about how you now tend toward drugs that humble the ego. Where do you think cannabis lands on this scale of how it impacts the ego?
I think cannabis is very essential to that perspective because, just for instance—and it’s gonna sound a little weird when I express this—if you take a bunch of gangbangers and you put ‘em in a room and you give ‘em some liquor, they’re gonna kill each other. You put a bunch of gangbangers in the room, you give some good weed, they’re gonna start taking selfies. They’re gonna hang out and go “Hey, where you from?” It’s a whole different scenario.
You quit smoking weed for a bit back in the day when you were still boxing, right?
Yeah, I quit when I was 18. From 1984 to 1997. And then I started smoking again at Tupac’s memorial. Cause he always wanted to smoke with me, so…
“I quit when I was 18. From 1984 to 1997. And then I started smoking again at Tupac’s memorial. Cause he always wanted to smoke with me, so…”
If you were 20 years old right now again, fighting competitively, and the weed market was the way it is now where you have legality and options and information, do you think you’d use or do you think you’d shelve it again like you did?
No, I would never shelf it. That was the biggest mistake I ever made… one of the biggest mistakes.
Why?
Because I became victim to my head. With cannabis, I’m very objective and I have an objective to accomplish.
When did you discover that relationship with cannabis?
At one of my fights I had in Detroit. I fought a really big, kind of dirty fighting guy, so I was a little nervous. So I smoked some weed, and, uh, I really kicked his ass real bad and I got fined $300,000 cause the weed was in my system. Can you believe that!? $300,000 because of weed! Weed! Over weed! I got $300,000 because I had some weed that I smoked. It’s supposed to be a dehancer, not an enhancer, and they still fined me.
“Listen, there’s nothing insignificant about him. Every time you turn on the television and see his face, he’s got 70 million people watching him. Paying to watch him!” – On Jake Paul
Relatable. What do you think your former trainer Cus D’amato would think of cannabis as a tool for athletes?
He thought it was disgusting. He couldn’t understand it. He’d go, “Why you smoke these…” I forgot what he called them, “pot sticks” or something. But listen, you gotta think, he was born in 1908. Right? So right now, cannabis is just another part of the future, which other people are unable to conceive.
He was part of the old guard.
Big time old guard.
I know you’re buddies with Jake Paul. I watched your interview on his podcast, which looked like a lot of fun. But there’s been some word going around, some rumors, about a potential fight between you two. All that aside, whether it will or won’t happen, how do you rate the young man on his boxing skills? From a scale of ‘empty tomato can’ to Muhammad Ali?
In order for me to do it like that, you’ve got to go from the beginning. You’ve got this young, white, blond-hair, blue-eyed guy. He’s making noise. He’s knocking people out. These guys are not big-name guys, but every time the guy fights, he’s got 70 million people with him. So you think that he’s insignificant?
No. I don’t want to fight him…
Listen, there’s nothing insignificant about him. Every time you turn on the television and see his face, he’s got 70 million people watching him. Paying to watch him!
What do you think of his ego? When you compare your journey to where he’s at.
I also told him, “Don’t get into trouble and get locked up before we do fight.” Because he gets a little wild because of his ego, and that’s what I always tell him. “Be careful. Don’t get in trouble… throwing bottles at people, roughing people up. You can’t do that when you don’t have rules or regulations.” When you fighting and you don’t have rules and regulations, that’s when the judge gets involved in your life, or a jury gets involved in your life, or a prosecutor… everybody gets involved with your life.
“Hey, how come Canadians are always apologizing? I step on your foot, you say ‘I’m sorry.’ My dog bites you, ‘I’m sorry.’”
You’ve obviously been to Canada because you’ve been all over the world. What do you do when you come up here? Any spots you frequent?
You know, Montreal, everybody told me was the spot… I always like Saint-Catherine Street. I used to go there in the ’80s and we used to be in the video game arcades, smoking weed in there, waiting for the weed guy to come. It was really exciting for me in the early ’80s.
Those were the days…
Remember that? You had to meet the weed guy at an arcade or at a park or somebody else’s building. And do you remember how silly it was waiting for the guy to come. “All right, he’s coming!” And then you get the call, “I’ve gotta stop” and you’re like, “Aww man!”
Ric Flair is a part of the Tyson 2.0 brand. How did you link up with him?
I’ve known Ric Flair for many years. My CEO Chad introduced him and he became a friend. And Chad is the smartest guy on our team, so it was no brainer that Ric Flair had to be on the team. He’s so legendary. He’s so hip. I’m talking with everybody, inner-city kids. He talks a lot of shit, so that’s how we relate to him. And I think no one else deserves it but him.
Are there any other larger-than-life personalities you’d like to bring into the fold?
You know, it’s very hard. It looks glamorous, but it’s very difficult, very complex. You gotta watch out for the unscrupulous in this game… and it’s just really, it’s really interesting. And the reason why people that got involved and you see they no longer involved is because it became too complex for them. It becomes very complex and when it gets complex, you almost don’t see no way to win, but we stuck in there.
You’ve had a hell of a career. You’ve done incredible things, you’ve done some wild things. You’re at a point where you’re no longer trying to be the toughest guy in a ring, which was your objective for a lot of years. What keeps you fired up? What keeps you passionate? What’s the new mission for Mike Tyson?
Mike Tyson just likes to be up more than anybody in the world likes him to be down. That’s the way I am. I’m a competitor, but the only one [I’m competing against] is myself.
So you’ve got the Mike’s Bites edibles, too. What are those like?
Listen, I eat three of them and I’m a little dizzy… The black raspberry is so good. It’s the Year of the Ear!
Do you have to clear these sorts of creative concepts with Holyfield?
Well listen, he’s not the only person who has a bitten ear… It doesn’t have to be Holyfield’s ear. It’s somebody else’s ear, it’s just I bit it and turned it into something intoxicating.
Hey, how come Canadians are always apologizing? I step on your foot, you say, “I’m sorry.” My dog bites you, “I’m sorry.”
I do think there is something in the Canadian national identity where we understand that humbling the ego is easier for others around us.
You know, the ego has us fooled. Being humble is part of the ego’s game. ‘Look at how humble I am…these monsters, these savages…’ that’s part of the ego too. My superiority over everybody else is my humbleness.
I see a lot of similarities between your tenacity and that of endurance athletes. There’s a young kid in my hometown who runs these crazy long races.
It’s a form of therapy. And if he doesn’t do that, he might psychologically die… at the end of the day, he knows that he’ll be walking pretty funny if he’s walking at all. But some people just have that energy. They can’t stop.
Can you relate to that?
A hundred percent. It’s just a way of doing it that gives you the results that you want. You can do it with the result of being strong and tough in mind, or you could do it from a thinking perspective. I always like the thinking perspective because in fighting, it’s not a tough guy’s sport, it’s a thinking man’s sport. A tough guy’s gonna get really, really hurt in the sport. You really get really fucked up in boxing, in fighting period if you’re not thinking. When you’re younger you can win by being the strongest, but once you reach the highest level, you only win because you are the smartest.
How do you tap into that same sort of ruthlessness these days, that tenacity that you had to use when you were fighting at the top?
Listen, we tap into it differently. Instead of it being ferociously attacking somebody viciously, I use that same energy with loving my family and handling my business, and it turns out the same: victorious.
What’s your relationship with your children like these days?
It is great now. Now it’s really good. Now, for the last five years, it’s been impeccable because I had to get my shit together, had to get off the cocaine, the wine, the liquor. I forgot that and it changed my life. I was about to lose everything that I love.
So you don’t drink at all anymore?
You can’t pay me to do it now.
I’ve been dry since August too.
God bless you brother. One day is a miracle. One fucking day is a miracle… I had no idea how much self-hate I had. I had no idea.
And cannabis doesn’t trigger those emotions?
On cannabis I love everything. When my dog is a pain, I have some cannabis and I kiss him on the mouth. But when I’m not on cannabis he’s a pain in my ass.
