*

Mike Tyson has lived most of his life in the public eye, famous for his skills as a boxer and infamous for most everything else. His story has been well-documented, from his hardscrabble childhood in Brooklyn to his heavyweight championships to his years in jail to his drug addiction.

Tyson is now touring the country, offering a personal account of his life in the one-man show Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, written by his wife, Kiki Tyson, and directed by Spike Lee. The play, which had a limited Broadway run last August, travels to cities across the country this spring. 

Neither of the Tysons envisioned the show as a vehicle to burnish the image of a guy once called the "baddest man on the planet," but Kiki says it has had that effect. "That was never the point," she says. "I already know who he is, and I don't care if the world knows who he is or not. Mike just loves to entertain, and he wanted to do the show as a personal challenge. But it's a blessing that people are getting to know him. He can be intense and serious and highly emotional, and also loving and gentle. He's super witty and very funny. On some level, the show has been very therapeutic for him, and I give Spike a lot of credit. He pushed things out of Mike that I did not want to push him on, because instinctively I wanted to protect this person I love. But the show made him more comfortable discussing things that were very uncomfortable for him for many years, like being falsely accused of rape, of biting [Evander Holyfield's] ears, and the death of his daughter."