The Hulu Sports Miniseries That Deeply Upset Mike Tyson

Whenever Hollywood decides to tell the story of someone with worldwide fame (like Tonya Harding, Pamela Anderson, or Mike Tyson) without actually involving the real person in the process, the result is often contentious — or at least, it can leave a bad taste in viewers' mouths. Sometimes that's because the subject of a movie or TV show doesn't want a movie or TV show about their lives to exist, especially if it exposes or shines a light on a period they'd rather not relive if they can help it (see Hulu's unauthorized series "Pam and Tommy"). Other times, the studio that's making the project doesn't want (or legally need) to pay for the life rights of the person they  portray, and would rather not involve them in any way in the dramatization of their life story.

Some audience members can see those instances as cases of studio greed, while others view them as attempts to tell an unvarnished story without having the subject weigh in and nix potentially interesting story points for personal reasons. In the case of "Mike," the 2022 miniseries that attempted to tell the turbulent and wild life story of heavyweight champion and boxing legend Mike Tyson, the risk of leaving him out didn't pay off in the slightest.

If you're familiar with Mike Tyson's life and career, the choice to keep him out of a series about him feels somewhat nonsensical. After numerous documentaries (like "Tyson," a raw and fascinating character study of the boxer) and hundreds of interviews across multiple media platforms, he isn't someone who refrains from talking about his triumphs and failures. In fact, he's often so stern and honest that he shocks the interviewer and the audience with his unabashed sincerity. It occasionally seems like he doesn't like because he knows his emotions would betray him, so he tells the truth, regardless of how ugly, painful, or concerning it is. The fact that Hulu chose not to compensate him or use him as the primary resource in their miniseries was, to Tyson, an act of treachery that he will not ever forgive.

In 2022, Tyson took to Instagram to clarify where he stood about the show. He wrote:

"Don't let Hulu fool you. I don't support their story about my life. It's not 1822. It's 2022. They stole my life story and didn't pay me. To Hulu executives I'm just a n***** they can sell on the auction block."

He also claimed that the streamer tried to pay his friend Dana White (the CEO and president of the UFC) millions of dollars to help them promote the series, which White turned down out of respect and because, as the boxer put it, "he honors friendship and treating people with dignity." Despite Tyson's harsh but fair take, the show could've been an intriguing and painstaking depiction — the boxer's life offers more than enough stories and outrageous controversies, considering he was convicted of rape — but it ended up being a surface-scratching and shallow drama that both critics and viewers dismissed in equal manner. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here: If you're not going to involve the subject as a participant in a documentary or docudrama, at least make sure the final product ends up being compelling enough to justify that decision.