Here is the opening to my Sunday column about Mike Tyson:

Mike Tyson is saying,

“Hey, well, check this out. I was planning on killing myself. My wife was just my friend at that time and I asked her to spend some time in Vegas. She got pregnant and she had to go to prison in two weeks. When she came back, she started talking about building a company.

“When she’s saying this, I’m saying, ‘Look at the state we’re in.’ I didn’t want to bust her bubble. She’d probably leave me. And I kept saying, ‘Yes baby, yes baby.’ I saw Chazz Palminteri (in a one-man show). I said, ‘Baby, I think I could do this.’ We staged some shows. I took questions. Someone who worked for Spike (Lee) said, ‘You’ve got to see this. Let’s take it on Broadway.’

“It all started from my wife telling me, ‘We can do this.’ My daughter died. I just wanted to live a different life. Living life is very difficult for me. I just wanted to be a savage fighter. I had a paradigm shift in life. In ’08, ’09, I wanted to kill myself. I was just OD-ing every night. I couldn’t believe I was waking up.”

To  read the full column, click here.