Whoopi Goldberg: You did a movie that I loved called The Hangover. #1, it was a great surprise to see you. And #2, it was a great surprise to see you and you were really good. Do you mind if I show you a clip? (Mike singing Genesis/Phil Collins “In The Air Tonight.”)
Barbara Walters: We showed a moment ago your beautiful wife Kiki, you said, the only woman you haven’t cheated on.
Mike Tyson: Well, I haven’t cheated on her when we were married. But when we used to date, when we were kids and stuff. It’s awesome, we used to come to parties with people and leave together. She didn’t look like she was having fun and neither was I so, it just used to happen.
Barbara Walters: What’s he like at home?
Kiki: He’s the best. He’s a lot of fun. We have a good time together.
Barbara Walters: Do you have a child together?
Kiki: Yeah, she’s 16 months.
Barbara Walters: You have a lot of responsibilities.
Mike Tyson: Listen. I always had a lot of responsibilities. I just didn’t take them. I just decided to take care of my responsibilities, live up to them. That’s a pretty interesting job. It’s harder than being heavyweight champion of the world.
Star Jones: Speaking of heavyweight champion of the world, in 2005 you said you decided to retire because you didn’t have the heart for it any morre. What does that mean?
Mike Tyson: I don’t know, from my perspective it’s not politically correct for me to express the heart for this particular audience. People might – some PETA group or some womens group might say, You heard him say that?! When you do this particular kind of sport – if I may be permitted to say – and no one gets offended to it – my objective is to destroy anybody over 200 pounds, in the ring or out. My mentality – so this guy could be a Rabbi that went on vacation and came back and could be overweight, I’m looking up and down, I’m sizing him up now. I don’t know, it’s like really primitive.
Star Jones: When you were growing up it was rough, how do you raise your children?
Mike Tyson: I do no know how. I have no blueprint to it. I can’t tell em – you ask me these questions, I’m gonna give you some answers. What am I gonna tell my son when a bully picks on him? Know what they told me? Hmm, take this knife. Take this gun. I’m gonna tell him that? He goes to school in Bethesda, MD. I say, Forget about that stuff. Don’t even fight. Normally I would say, Stand up for yourself. Don’t even stand up for yourself. Just walk away. I can’t believe I’m even telling him that [applause].
Joy Behar: Good for you. But not only walking away, dance away. I saw you on the Internet where you were doing the Italian version of Dancing With The Stars. Look at that (shows clip of Mike dancing with beautiful woman). Where did you do that?
Mike Tyson: I forgot. But I know my wife didn’t like it at all [smiles].
Joy Behar: Mike, being a boxer is kind of a natural thing to be a dancer in a way, isn’t it?
Mike Tyson: No, I’m not much of a dancer, that’s not true.
Joy Behar: And you are going to be appearing on a new Animal Planet show which is called Taking On Tyson. You’re going to take audiences inside the world of pigeon racing.
Mike Tyson: This isn’t particularly new, I’m a pigeon fancier, where I just have a lot of birds. I love all birds but I particularly like a roving pigeon. They have world championships all over the world, Queen of England, they have Yul Brynner rovers. It’s something that happens, Richard the Lionheart had em. So there’s 200 years of bloodlines. So this is what I do. And I do it with the best of bird fanciers all over the world. And this is racing homing where I have to wait on the roof for the pigeons to come back. This is something I’m not accustomed to. I’m accustomed to being at my friends, showing the birds, going in and out of the coops, look at this bird,, look at this bird. We’re just sitting there holding them some feed and waiting for some birds.
Barbara Walters: I want to congratulate you this fall you will be inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame [applause]. How do you feel about that?
Mike Tyson: I don’t know how to feel about that. I used to think – I remember when me and Cus were reading the books when I was 13 or 12. And I was seeing all the greast boxers – Mickey Walker, Harry Greb, so I’m looking at these guys. If any fighters wants to become a fighter, don’t look at the encyclopedia because it’s just going to discourage you. Because you’re looking at guys that were boxing 20 years, have had 250 fights, 250 fights. I used to say to Cus, There’s no way I could ever do this. And then he said, These guys weren’t born this way, they became that way. He said, You’re gonna have more money than these guys, more fights, more publicity. People will never forget your name. And when you become champion, you’re gonna ask somebody about these guys – they’re not gonna know who they were. But you’re gonna keep em alive. So that’s – I went like that.
Barbara Walters: So whatever the different things that you’ve gone through, some of the bad things, certainly you were a great boxer and you deserve to be in that Hall of Fame.
Whoopi Goldberg: Yeah, you absolutely deserve to be in that [applause].
