The Toronto Star
Published On Thu Apr 7 2011
Former boxer Mike Tyson with his birds on the set of his six-part documentary Taking on Tyson, in this undated publicity photograph.
MAT SZWAJKOS FOR ANIMAL PLANET
Rob Salem Television Columnist
The last thing you’d expect is for Mike Tyson to touch you.
Actually, the last thing you’d expect, if Tyson did touch you, would ever being able to get up off the floor.
Fortunately, it isn’t that kind of touching.
Taking on Tyson, a new six-part Animal Planet documentary (debuting Thursday at 9 p.m.), does however pack an emotional punch as the former world champion boxer returns home to re-embrace his first love: of all things, raising pigeons.
Incongruous as it may seem, a lot of the kids in the tough Brooklyn neighbourhood where Tyson grew up spent much of their time — when they weren’t beating on each other — tending to rooftop coops.
Indeed, Tyson’s first fight was over a bird, throwing his first punch at a neighbourhood bully (yes, “Iron” Mike was actually once bullied) who had killed one of his beloved pigeon pals.
“I have a pretty colourful past,” Tyson acknowledged at the TV press previews in January.
“We got (to) a pretty dark place for me and we discuss it a little bit. But the main insight is the birds, and what we have the birds doing and what they mean in our lives, and you’re going to see that once you view the program.”
And that’s the second big surprise: how beautifully shot this show is — looking down from the rooftops, the mean streets of Brooklyn and Jersey City somehow don’t seem that mean at all.
And neither does the much-maligned Tyson, as he seeks clarity, redemption and a new lease on life, re-embracing raising birds and taking it to the next level, racing them.
Even more colourful are the odd characters up on those rooftops with him, from Vinnie Torre, the master sensei of competitive pigeon racing, to local landlord Mario Costa, a Tyson friend and mentor from early in his fighting career, whose superficially gangsterlike exterior (à la Silvio Dante of The Sopranos) hides a heart of gold.
“It’s about so much more than me,” Tyson says of the series, “because once you see the rest of the characters, their personalities are going to dwarf my personality.
“I’m still Mike Tyson. I’m colourful, too. But with these guys, it’s just another level, you know?”
Tyson was as surprised as anyone when Animal Planet suggested the show.
“The promoter called up and said ‘Mike, somebody wants to talk to you about doing a show about pigeons.’
“I talked to my lawyer (and) he spoke with the Animal Planet, and it was true. And I said, ‘Wow, this is going to get a chance for me to broaden the horizons of people who are ignorant or perhaps neophytes on the lives of flying pigeons.’”
And Tyson turns out to be a uniquely enthusiastic and well-informed spokesman.
“You have to understand . . . the history of pigeons goes so much further than what we may anticipate, you know? The pigeons are man’s first feathered friend, before any animal, before a chicken, before anything.
“They were the first money in ancient times. For instance, when Napoleon was happening, when he was going to the battle on Waterloo, he was fighting this general from England named Wellington, and then Wellington won the war.
“And there was a spy there, not necessarily a spy, but just someone there for the interest of the Rothschilds, so to speak. He released a homing pigeon. The homing pigeon got back to the Rothschild family. He told the results of the war and they took all their money from banking and they bet it on the war and that’s how they made massive of billions of dollars . . . it was from the pigeon. That’s how they got the information.
“They go all the way to the royal level, to the Queen of England and the royal families of Europe. Everyone has racing pigeons. It’s just a cultural thing.”
And for Tyson and his friends, it is something more.
“This is what we do,” he says. “Our lives are dedicated to pigeons. Even though I’m out there fighting people, getting locked up, getting in trouble, whatever it may be, in my life (this) has been always consistent.
“It’s more than . . . something that we do for a hobby. This is something we’re going to do until the day we die.”
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