81 Minutes With Mike Tyson

Geoffrey Gray in New York Magazine:

Mike Tyson walks into the Ringside Lounge in Jersey City. It’s late afternoon on a Wednesday but feels after-hours inside the bar. A pink neon light faintly streaks the walls, which are covered with Tyson photos, and the ceiling, which drips with Mylar streamers. The music is loud. A birthday posse, four women, already drunk, shimmy around their stools as if they were stripper poles.

“What’s the food situation?” Tyson asks the proprietor. “I’m famished.”

The house specialty is pork chops.

“You have rice?” Tyson asks. “Yellow rice? And carrots?”

“So mixed vegetables. Sautéed onions, Mike?

“No onions.”

“And what to drink, Mike? Tea?”

“Chamomile.”

It’s an unexpected order from the former most feared man on the planet, but it’s what his new diet dictates. After retiring from boxing, Tyson struggled with drug addiction. He wasn’t exercising, and he got so fat he thought his heart might explode. For more than a year now, he’s been vegan. He claims to have lost over a hundred pounds.

More here.