Netflix released the official trailer Thursday for TYSON, a four-part documentary series that traces Mike Tyson’s life from a hard childhood in Brooklyn to the youngest heavyweight champion in history, then through the fame, legal trouble, financial collapse, addiction, and public controversies that followed. The series, directed by Floyd Russ (Untold, American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing), arrives Oct. 13 with four hour-long, TV-MA episodes.
Netflix on X (formerly Twitter): “The “Baddest Man on the Planet” is ready to tell his story. Mike Tyson shares it all in TYSON, a new four-part documentary series premiering October 13. pic.twitter.com/EAvvfemnTb / X”
The “Baddest Man on the Planet” is ready to tell his story. Mike Tyson shares it all in TYSON, a new four-part documentary series premiering October 13. pic.twitter.com/EAvvfemnTb
The trailer presents Tyson speaking in his own words about a life that moved from the streets to global superstardom almost overnight. “I’ve lived like a rat on the street all my life,” he says. “And the next thing you know, I’m the biggest shit in the world.” He later describes becoming “addicted to chaos” and, in one sequence, appears visibly emotional while questioning the cost of that path. Family members and others close to him appear as well, offering a picture of a man still reckoning with the personal price of his public legend.
The series follows Tyson from his chaotic upbringing through his 1986 title win at age 20 and his reign as undisputed heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990. It then turns to the years that nearly ended him: incarceration after his 1992 rape conviction, money problems, substance abuse, in-ring incidents including the infamous ear bite, and the long process of trying to rebuild. Interviews with Tyson, relatives, and friends are framed as an attempt at unfiltered accounting rather than a victory lap. Tyson has described the project as a reflective look at his own growth, saying most people avoid looking at their lives objectively and that he wanted to face “the man in the mirror,” good and bad.
The timing is not accidental. The documentary arrives after Tyson’s 2024 bout with Jake Paul, one of Netflix’s biggest live sports events, and sits alongside a companion special. Mike Tyson: Return of the Mike, a one-man show directed by Kiki Tyson and filmed in Florida, is scheduled to premiere Nov. 3. Netflix positions it as a looser, more comic counterpart in which Tyson trades menace for timing and turns his own chaos into punchlines.
Russ and a sizable producing team—including Bill Simmons among the executive producers—have assembled archival material, new interviews, and access that the streamer is selling as rare. Whether the finished episodes deliver the “raw honesty” promised in the marketing will be judged after Oct. 13. For now, the trailer makes the pitch clear: this is not a highlight reel of knockouts. It is an attempt to sit with the full, messy record of one of boxing’s most polarizing figures and let Tyson, at 60, try to explain what it cost.
