Spike Lee to Direct Mike Tyson in Broadway One-Man Show - East Idaho News
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Spike Lee to Direct Mike Tyson in Broadway One-Man Show

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P1000435JPG?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1340090022230ABC News(NEW YORK) — Mike Tyson is heading to Broadway.  The former Heavyweight champ and controversial personality is doing a limited engagement one-man show about his life, called “Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth.”

At a press conference Monday announcing the show, Tyson described “The Undisputed Truth” as the raw tale of his life.

“It’s about me being on stage and being pretty raw.  Not necessarily raw in a vulgar sense … I’m just naked and vulnerable, and I’m just telling you who I am and where I’m from and how this happened and how I lose all this damn money and how I had all these children and how I go to prison and, you know, you know what happened guys, right?” he said.

Spike Lee makes his Broadway directorial debut with “The Undisputed Truth.”  At Monday’s press conference, Lee discussed how brave he thinks Tyson is for doing the show.

“It takes courage to get into the ring, but it takes courage to get onto the stage,” Lee said. “Denzel’s not playing Mike, it’s not Sam Jackson. It’s Mike Tyson, in person, on stage. That takes a lot of courage.”

Though Tyson and Lee promise the show will be honest and Tyson will be vulnerable, the two appeared to have a slight disagreement at Monday’s press conference over just how far Tyson is willing to go.

“I have to be careful because I can’t stay on some subjects for a long time.  I can’t stay … for a long time because I might cry, something might happen,” said Tyson.

“But crying’s alright, though,” Lee said.

“Sometimes maybe — maybe not,” Tyson responded, adding, “It depends on who’s crying.”

“We can go there, Mike, It’s OK. It’s the stage,” Lee said.

“Right,” Tyson finally resigned.

So what will audiences learn when they see the show?

“They’ll find out that my mother is a prostitute, my father’s a pimp and I come from a real, um, this — I don’t know what — the sex worker world and stuff, you know.  That’s why I look at the world from a different perspective than most people when I was a young kid,” Tyson said.

The former boxer said the show is part of his effort to move his life in a positive direction.

“This is just me and my wife wanted to do — this is what we decided to do after I gave up using drugs and being a pig and stuff, right, so this is what we decided we were going to [live] on this kind of level.  Just keep it moving and doing positive things,” he said.

The show will run six times between July 31 and Aug. 5.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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