Tyson is a 1995 American biographical drama television film based on the life of American heavyweight boxer Iron Mike Tyson. Directed by Uli Edel and written by Robert Johnson, it stars Michael Jai White as Tyson alongside George C. Scott as Cus D'Amato and Paul Winfield as Don King. The film is an adaptation of the 1989 biography Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Iron Mike Tyson by José Torres, a former boxer and former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, and depicts events from Tyson's troubled childhood in Brooklyn through his conviction in 1992 for the rape of beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington.
Promotional poster
Michael Jai White is an American martial artist and actor. He was the first Black American to portray a major comic book superhero in a major motion picture, starring as Al Simmons, the protagonist in the 1997 film Spawn. White appeared as Marcus Williams in the Tyler Perry films Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010), and starred as the character on the TBS/OWN comedy-drama television series Tyler Perry's For Better or Worse. White portrayed Jax Briggs in Mortal Kombat: Legacy and the Cyborg Seth in Universal Soldier: The Return, opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme. He portrayed boxer Mike Tyson in the 1995 HBO television film Tyson. He also played the title role in the blaxploitation parody film Black Dynamite (2009), as well as the animated series of the same name.
White in January 2016
Michael Jai and Gillian White in 2017