Mike Tyson recalls 'being in bed' with his late mother during her sex work

revisited some of the most difficult parts of her childhood for her new Netflix documentary – including some moments involving her mother and her past as a sex worker.

“My mother was a sex worker, a prostitute, whatever you want to call it,” Tyson says in the new documentary series (by The mirror). “I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes. I was in bed with her.”

In the four-part series, he describes a home where violence spread back and forth. Lorna was beaten by at least one partner, Tyson said, and she turned on her son.

“I saw a lot of violent fights… I remember my mother fighting with her boyfriend. I saw him beating her. He knocked her teeth out, then I saw him scalding her with boiling water. My mother was very violent. She hit me with anything, an extension cord, a bottle of alcohol, anything.”

COMPLEX SHOP: Shop the brands you love, anytime, anywhere. Find out more. Buy. Collect. Obsess.

Directed by Floyd Russ, TYSON combines new interviews with archival footage and charts the fighter’s rise to fame and infamy. The four episodes arrive worldwide on Tuesday October 13.

Tyson called the project a “challenging, but very welcoming journey,” describing it as his story told “through the reflective lens of my growth and maturity.”

The series begins in the 1970s and 80s in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where poverty and crime have shaped the neighborhood. Tyson calls his father figure a “pimp,” adding, “A pimp who was a catch.” He was more of a trap than a pimp… My mother used him. »

He was first arrested at age 12 and had racked up more than 30 arrests by age 13, landing first in Spofford juvenile detention and then the tougher Tryon School for Boys. “This is where all the bad kids go who kill people, who commit bad crimes,” he says in the document. “Supreme predators.”

It was also in Tryon that a guard named Bobby Stewart told him he would introduce him to a boxing trainer if his grades improved. That trainer was Cus D’Amato, who needed two rounds of training to brand the teenager as a future heavyweight champion of the world and invited him to live and train in Catskill, New York. Lorna, whose permission was required, reluctantly signed.

When Tyson came home from camp speaking like a champ, she walked away.

“She had never heard a speech like that from me before… She said, ‘There’s always someone better.’ I said, “Yes, exactly, Mom. I’m the guy you’re talking about who’s always better than the rest…’ She didn’t like me after that. She thought something was wrong. I didn’t understand where all this confidence, all this enthusiasm came from.”

Lorna died of cancer in 1982, the same year Tyson won his second consecutive heavyweight title at the Junior Olympics. He was 16 years old. “My mother never had the opportunity to see me fight,” he said. “It was just hard, because I was talking to her and the next thing you know, boom, she’s dead.” D’Amato became his legal guardian, although he never officially adopted him.

Tyson considers it all fuel. “Everything that was quote-unquote ‘negative’ turned out to be positive for me,” he said. People. “I am very grateful for all of this because it has made me a better person.”

Netflix has a second Tyson project lined up behind the documentary series: Mike Tyson: The Return of Mikefilmed at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, and directed by Kiki Tyson. It will premiere on November 3.