Thief – As the first episode of Mike begins, Mike Tyson is in the ring with Evander Holyfield for their second bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Once Mike bites Evander’s ear, Mike (Trevante Rhodes) says they’re not going to start here. The story begins rewinding as he admits there is a lot of messed up stuff we’ll get to. Mike says they have a show to do as he steps out onto the stage of the Majestic Theater in Enid, Indiana on April 24, 2017. Mike talks about being in prison, talking to his car dealer, and having a tiger. He claims he is going to be honest with everyone before mentioning his trips to the psych ward back then. Tyson questions what was wrong with him back then. After asking who he is, he calls himself the most brutal, most vicious, ruthless champion there has ever been. Mike admits he is just scratching the surface.

In 1974, a young Denise (Yanna Buttons) ridicules Mike (Zaiden James). She tells him he is always going to be the one people mess with unless he fights back. Mike claims he is going to run. He grew up in Brownsville, New York. In 1971, the area had the highest murder rate in the country. There were hookers, drugs, and murderers on every street corner. Mike confesses he had some issues cause he was getting beat up constantly. He used to talk to himself out loud because he was a weird little kid. When his mom Lorna Mae (Olunike Adeliyi) took him to a doctor, she was told Mike was retarded. The doctor killed any dreams she had for Mike at that moment and he never saw her believe in him again. Mike believed everyone took a beating at some point including his mom. She tells Denise and Rodney to go to sleep. Lorna tells Mike she wants him to stay out of the way.

They don’t have anywhere else to go, but that doesn’t mean they have to take his crap. She asks Eddie (DeShawn Harold Mitchell) if she wants to soup while he is busy watching television. Lorna throws the soup in his face and hits him with the pot before Mike admits they beat the heck out of each other and have sex. It was normal to him. She lived a nicer life before Brownsville and worked as a nurse, dietitian, and went to college to be a teacher until she met a man who was probably his dad. When they spent the last of the money, they were put on the street. There are three types of poor, poor, dirt poor, and fuc#ed up poor. When a single black mother with three kids falls into the fuc#ed up poor, there is no way out. They moved from one abandoned building to another as things got worse and Lorna’s dreams died. She did things she had to do and things that would mess any kid up.

Mike stopped going to school because of the school. Second grade was the end of his education so he’d show up to school with his sister and leave. Some local boys tell him they have birds. Those birds were the only thing he loved that loved him back. He had names for each of those 30 pigeons. They still picked on him, but he was happy. That changed when Gary Flowers (Kenneth Dion Johnson) messed with his pigeon named Georgie. That is the day he became a fighter. When Gary kills the bird, Mike beats the crap out of him. We see a recreation of Mike Tyson’s bout with Michael Spinks at The Conventional Hall in Atlantic City on June 27, 1988. Mike admits that is when things started to change. Barkim introduces him to these guys and they stole everything they could. He picked them over family as his mom fell into a system rigged to make them powerless.

He was either 8 or 12 and they called themselves the Rutland Road Crew. By the time he was 10, he knew robbery. They lived big, fast, and hard because nobody was going to live long. A friend is killed by cops in front of Mike. All these lying street hustlers said he was great and that is a pattern he always fell back into. One day, Mike’s mother enters his room to say Nettie and Sal from upstairs were over drinking when someone robbed their place. Mike quickly denies it. She reminds him that his brother and sister stay out of trouble. He jokes about Rodney being a mad scientist, but he actually became a surgeon. She calls him a thief and a POS because she never stole anything in her life.

Lorna says she gave him life and he’ll spend that life in jail. She continues warning him that he’ll die or go to jail. Mike was arrested at ten and he also stole from Sal and Nettie. He started getting a reputation that he would fight anyone since he didn’t think he’d make it to 20. He asks why he should have compassion when he didn’t have a future. Mike was more interested in getting revenge on the bullies from his past. Before he was born, his mother worked as a prison matron so she saw black faces behind bars firsthand. It scared her and she tried to scare him too. When Mike started getting arrested, she’d come to the police station and do the only thing she knew how to do which was beat him. She beat him so bad once that they didn’t even charge him. Mike thinks a white family would see that violence and disapprove while a black family would say she is just trying to keep her child alive.

She died before she ever got to see any of Mike’s success. On his way to Spofford, the other kids tell Mike about a guy being held down and being shaved his first night. He is warned that the freaks like them ripe and young. When he saw Barkim there, it was like a class reunion. It became a second home to him. Mike admits he was in group homes, special ed, and some facility on Staten Island. By the time he was 13, he was too much for all five boroughs so he was sent to the Tryon Juvenile Facility upstate. In 1979, Mike (BJ Minor) learns about the guidance counselor Bobby Stewart (Michael Drayer) who has been fighting with the inmates. He was an amateur boxing champ or something. Mike thought he would take him since the only thing standing in the way of everyone sucking up to him was this little white guy. He doesn’t. Mike remember he thought he was dying. He also thought he could knock everyone else if he could learn to punch like that.

He approaches Bobby later to try to get him to teach him how to punch like that. Bobby doesn’t want to teach him anything unless he is willing to work for it. He explains he’ll need credits to work him so he should clean up his act first. Mike started applying himself, trained with Bobby, and found out that he was good at it. Mike wants Bobby to tell his mom he is finally good at something. Bobby wants to introduce him to the big-time boxing trainer Cus D’Amato (Harvey Keitel) because he can take him to the next level. Bobby promises Mike didn’t do anything and this will be good for him. Since he is going to be paroled soon, he doesn’t want Mike going back to Brownsville and getting into trouble. Cus was a legend who trained two world champions, but he only had a small gym in Catskill when Mike met him. He’d fallen into obscurity.

Mike was his last Hail Mary and meal ticket back. Cus tells Mike he can make him the youngest champion of all time if he listens to him. Mike thought it was a pervert. When Mike is asked if they’re going to work together, he asks about the roses behind Bobby and Cus because he has never seen them in person before. In the car, Mike tells Bobby he is thinking he is going to be somebody.

 

Mike Review

The first episode of Mike was a mixed bag with a somewhat messy plot that calmed down a little towards the end. It is hard to imagine viewers will watch Mike and think it is actually Mike Tyson because the likeliness isn’t great. Unfortunately, that probably will take viewers out of the experience a bit because some of the actors portraying Tyson don’t look like him enough. The accents seem over-the-top as well.

BJ Minor seems to have the appearance down the best so far, but viewers can ignore that if the story is good enough. In the first episode, there was a lot of jumping back and forth between time periods and that was somewhat distracting. The soundtrack was well selected and timed so it added to the viewing experience. By this point, everyone should know what Tyson has said about the series. That unfortunately does create some mixed ideas considering he wasn’t involved in the series at all.

Nevertheless, the first  episode shows some promise if viewers are willing to forgive its shortfalls. There will always be some sense of nagging doubt because of the controversy and some of the likeness issues, but the show could be a good exploration of Mike’s story, his rise to fame, his fall from grace, and his redemption. The first episode scores a 6 out of 10. Recaps of Mike can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work at this link.