The Iron Will Behind Iron Mike Tyson

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So a little while back, my wife and I attended Mike Tyson's one-man show in Las Vegas. Yeah, you can see we waited until the last minute to get show tickets. It was a small venue, maybe 50 to 75 people in total. And he went through the various dramas of everybody remembers from his life that played out in the press in tabloids. But I learned a lot about what actually made up Iron and Iron Mike.

From afar, you'd think that his boxing success was just due to his brutal and violent nature and sheer body strength, but that would actually be missing the great lesson that we can take away from his story. Michael Gerard Tyson, by the time he was 13 years old, had been arrested 38 times and had been sentenced to juvenile center in upstate New York. Tyson wasn't the typical profile of a juvenile delinquent.

He was a pudgy, extremely shy, spoke with a lisp and was afraid of getting into fights. In fact, he was regularly beaten up by the neighborhood bullies who dubbed him Little Fairy Boy. Tyson was raised by an alcoholic mother and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a rough neighborhood with people regularly shooting at one another, the constant sound of deafening sirens from police cars and ambulances speeding up

and down the streets, robbers breaking into windows and young kids selling drugs to hookers on the street corners. Tyson's chances of escaping a destiny of crime, drug dealing, and early death were slim to none. But on March, 1980.

Tyson found himself in an old musty boxing gym. It converted, meaning hall that was located above a police station in Catskill, New York and was face to face with a legendary boxing coach, Kusti Yamato. Kusti Yamato was a short, bald-headed, Italian boxing trainer who liked Tyson also grew up in a rough neighborhood in the Bronx of New York. And as Tyson said, didn't have a happy muscle in his face.

Although Diamato's resume spoke for itself, he had successfully managed trained and bred two heavyweight champions, Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres. After a short sparring session in a small ring during which Tyson was punched in the nose and was bleeding profusely, Diamato invited Tyson to lunch at his white Victorian house. It was during that meal that Diamato turned to Tyson and said, if you listen to me, I can make you the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.

Tyson flinched at the baffling words of the 70-year-old man he had just met, but committed himself to be under the tutelage and rigorous training regimen of Diamato. Day in and day out, Tyson would wake up at 4 a.m., run for three to five miles, and train tirelessly in the gym for up to 55 hours, and 200 rounds of sparring each week. In the evenings, Tyson would spend hours watching and studying the fight videos of the best fighters of all time.

than being bed most nights by 9.30 pm. To get up and just repeat this whole tiresome and boring daily regimen every single day for several years. And that is lesson number one. Success is never automatic. Those you've witnessed with unbelievable strength.

talent, ability, genius, or giftedness. All of it every single time is a product of thousands of hours of grueling, boring, tedious, mundane, and hard work in drawing out, shaping, and improving that innate ability or that innate giftedness.

every single time. And Tyson noted, no one wants to get up and run at four in the morning when it's cold and pitch dark, but it has to be done. And the only reason I do it so early is because I believe the other guy isn't doing it. And that gives me a little edge. Think about it. What are you doing that your competitors, your peers?

other members of your family, your neighbors, people at your office, in your mastermind group, whomever. What are you doing to train, to work and improve on? Simply because they aren't, to give you that little edge. Well, for Iron Mike, it certainly gave him the edge.

20-year-old Mike Tyson knocked out 33-year-old Trevor Burbeck in just five minutes and 35 seconds to become the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing. And Diamato's prophecy did come to pass. By the end of his boxing career, Iron Mike Tyson was inducted into the boxing Hall of Fame, recognizes one of the greatest boxers of all time. When asked to share the secret to his success, Tyson turned to the wisdom of his late trainer and father, Bigger, Castiamato, and explained, quote,

Do what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.

And there it is. At the end of this one man act is the final lesson from Tyson's one man show. What do you hate to do? But you know it is essential to your betterment, to your greater success, and to the blossoming of your mastery, of your innate talents and abilities. And what I think is the nuanced big tip takeaway here is now that you know what it is. Do it like you love it. I think that's the big distinction here.