Mike Tyson and Former Mafia Captain | Sit Down with Michael Franzese

hey everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well and today i got a very very special sit down for all of you it's one i've been waiting for i would call him a dear friend now two dear friends actually the one and only mike tyson and i know i've been announcing this over the past several months but we finally were able to nail mike down he's got a heavy schedule he's going to be fighting again in december lennox lewis and i can tell you he's in great shape you'll see it but man when he hugged me i felt it i don't want to go in the ring with mike tyson another special guest is tom patty and tom and mike go back like 25 years they were kids together both fought under customarto you know they got great stories and just a great friendship and tom's a special guy he's actually the county supervisor san joaquin county and he's become a very dear friend too so i'm really excited about this and you know everybody knows who mike is i mean mike probably is one of the most recognizable people in the world just like muhammad ali was during his day everybody knows mike tyson most people know his story you know where he came from and to see what he's been through and where he has gotten himself to be now is what's really impressive you get inspired and encouraged and happy when you see a guy from the neighborhood that went through so much stuff in his life happens to meet one guy and you'll hear it that had a tremendous influence on him a tremendous impact really changed his life even though he has some challenges afterwards i mean he's the youngest heavyweight champion you know at the age of 20. he's fighting again you know who knows he may be the oldest heavyweight champion again if he wins if he goes that far what i love about mike he's very honest very sincere there's no bs about him whatsoever he'll tell you that so it's a great interview great sit down i should say you're going to enjoy tom too i love when i get two guys together to have a history mike and i spoke on his podcast on hot boxing a while back and we become good friends so that's the story so tune in with no further at you as they say here's my sit down with mike tyson tom patton [Music] [Music] mike tyson i've been looking forward to this for many many many months how you doing mike okay really good to have you here tom same thing great to see you mike yeah good good to uh have you drive down from up north i know tom is the uh county supervisor up in san joaquin county yes and you two go back how many years he was 18 i was 15. okay 38 39 years wow yeah you're both showing your age however i'm older than the both of you unfortunately you know that trouble i used to be the youngest guy around now i'm one of the oldest now you look good though when you came in michael i i gave you a hug you you're like solid as a rock trainer i just i want to get this exhibition over with linux lewis and then probably my next one be with joshua or tyson really yeah wow wouldn't that be amazing you talk about it youngest heavyweight champion ever and then a shot at being the oldest champion ever unbelievable and i think he'll do it i want to you know and we work with charities now we can work with you you know i mean we know that you're running for office we could work charities for you we could do exhibitions for your organizations you know and kill those other cats you know what's funny when we went to dinner a couple of months ago i don't remember this mike but i asked you if you're into mma you're into cage fighting and you said to me michael if two bugs walked across the table and he started fighting i'm into that yeah that's true yeah it's like fighting like if i view it cuss right cuss to see two dogs that see two um kangaroos anything that's a smart thing see that movie was inside and attacked him anything cuz sees he put into his fight you see a dog do move a bug fighting another bugger a praying master's fight he'll use that in his box because he thinks that's superior really yeah absolutely everything he equates with fighting talking sitting down drinking water everything well you know his name has come up you know i was totally into fights my dad was into everybody in that and my former life was into fights and every time custer's name came up i mean people had a lot of respect for him on the street no doubt 40 did yeah he was one of those guys that was that was very important to him like if i was to say to him he was very proud to be italian if i was to say to him if he was to see um jersey shore right he would well you know he's the older table they ain't he said they're not italian what do you mean because they're italian because look at this italian show they're not italian and that's just he had italian had to be a certain way you have to be this way in order to be italian you could be born that lived it for 20 years and if you didn't act a certain way no he's not attached you had to carry yourself in the integrity how do i know that right that that we're with him well with with cuss everything was character for him too yeah character and he instilled that in his fighters it was very important to him right you know because had a rough life you know he um the police killed his brother in 1927. he told me that killed his father yeah yeah and then he just interesting and tough yeah when you sat down with custody talked about boxing was the metaphor he used to develop a person's character he said not all my fighters become champions but you apply the same principles in life as you'll gain through this sport you'll be successful no matter what the endeavor and that's what he constantly harped on working and developing a person's character think about a lot of boys that come to him mixed up confused problematic no other option in life cuss would peel back like an onion the layers that they maybe inhibit and hold a person back and get them to their creative their their explosive and and their full potential and that's what gus did time and time again he did it for my dad he did it for floyd patterson when they lived in they trained together back in the back in the 40s and 50s my dad and floyd patterson trained as boxers and then mike and i you know to to you know span those decades cuss had influence for thousands of boys amazing he just had a sense he's seen greatness and something but he's totally different can't explain them yeah totally a different animal a legend though you know it's funny a a while back i had a sit down with joe egan oh god i love joey you know what he said to me he said to me he was describing the first time he was your sparring partner and he said you know cuss said to him just get over there get in line or whatever and three or four guys were ahead of him and they go in the ring with you and you knocked every one of them down and he said my legs were shaking my knees were he said i had to get in the ring he said and you hit him a punch in the chest he said it was like lightning struck in his chest he said he felt it all the time he was telling me that yeah that's what he said and then he said but i didn't go down i didn't go down and he said you called him the the baddest white man on the planet the toughest white man on the planet he was great oh you gotta see now listen listen if you want to see some gangster um characteristic you need to see joey in um birmingham england yeah whole the the whole stuff yeah the whole oh he's the dog he told me a story about how how well you treated his mom and everything and really appreciated that he was he had a lot of great things to say about you too tom best part about joe is he came up to catskill new york and there's you know there's trials and there's tribulations and and joe became one of the boys he became one of us and and we have that bond listen i don't know if i should say um joey's one of those guys that fought the english over there what'd you call those guys again the irish irish the ira yeah joey was down with those guys that was [ __ ] yeah well back in the 80s that was the thing yeah and they later like hey we're we're really you know that's like they're more common than that terrorism that's right yeah yeah i know he's he told me some of the stories i thought oh man yeah he was he was a good guy i really enjoyed him you know mike one thing i gotta say in the last you know several years watching you you are you're probably the most one of the most honest and sincere guys that i have ever witnessed and i really mean that because i've been watching you for a while a lot of interviews and everything that you've done you're just so honest i don't know my wife wouldn't think that right now i wouldn't think well sugar exceptions i thought of anything but listen um like when you're on the street you got to be honest because um we're all really transparent we're more transparent than what we know so we think we're hiding something we're not hiding nothing there's only certain ways human beings conduct themselves yeah secretly openly quiet you know just we can only be certain people for certain characteristics we can't be too many people let me we always like that no no no i learned that from cuffs yeah but but also think might think about this mike you know he's had so many trials and tribulations there's so many opportunities to be on a platform you can't carry on a charade so mike's mike you've really established yourself i'm a you're an open book you you say it you're honest you reveal it you share it i just know this i know one day i'm gonna die and whatever i said don't mean [ __ ] so i look at it like that yeah but it means a lot well let me ask you this when you die and you're gone what kind of legacy do you want to live well how do you want people to remember think about i don't care what people think about me no no way if i did that i wouldn't be i guess successful you know i um i thrive off that it's hard for me to even excel if somebody doesn't dislike me i hate me i need it to excel um so your legacy is whatever it is it is but it's honesty never being discouraged more than anything more than honesty because i still lie sometimes if i want something and um it's just never getting discouraged never giving up even because even if i'm lying so what i made a mistake i'm sorry mm-hmm you type of guy that uh i can relate to this because i almost think there's nothing that i can't do or can't accomplish if i agree i think um man listen impossible is nothing to somebody who tries no i never tried to say that's impossible so i don't try you know i'll give you an example yesterday and this is silly but it means a lot difference with people my wife is always a little pessimistic about things she's kind of hesitant about trying things we're going down to a wedding in san diego okay normally an hour and 20 minute drive well we hit a lot of traffic there was an accident and she said well let's turn around we're going to miss the wedding my daughter was in it missed the wedding let's go home i said no i'm going to get you to the wedding somehow some way okay and we got there just as the wedding was started and i said it was up to you i said you think i'm driving 100 miles an hour to go eat lunch or to go back home i said we're going to get to the wedding i feel out i can always accomplish something if i try i know without being unreal and if i was in that situation i would say imagine what they're gonna say we don't get there they don't see us there we betrayed them we put let them down exactly see i i don't think women think about that no i mean she was ready to turn around so we're gonna turn around and go home and then come back again and all this traffic and snow we're gonna make it there somehow we got there but you know i look i think that's a good quality mike you know i mean listen to mine it'll matter whatever have never get discouraged fight to the end until you die never stop let me ask you a question walking into the ring you ever get scared to death really yeah you never look scared well that's the whole thing boxing's like acting you always project what you don't feel on someone else you know but i found out that um as i got older i found out they're more scared of me than i am with them 100 percent so once i found that out you know i almost stopped training that's that's the truth every fighter overcomes fear every fighter i mean it never leaves you you keep it to the day you die yeah michael think about like if something something happened you had to spring in action you don't have time to really you know mentally think about the ramifications you'll spring into action you'll defend yourself your friend your family your wife whoever whoever whatever you have to do you'll do it right but if you say okay tomorrow at 12 o'clock this is going to occur the guy may have a knife a weapon he's going to assault you be like a whole nother dimension of psychology is unfolding and you know internally of course so fighters you're going to have that fear but that's the difference between a hero and a coward in spite of how you feel as cuss would teach us in spite of how you feel the hero steps up the coward runs away and that history is rife with those experiences this is one thing because never give a cow with some heart because they'll kill you yeah huh which means you you can never show your family life yeah same thing but you can never show them in the ring no i mean if you got hit even in life same thing poker face yeah you know it's funny we had this uh well i can't get over today i was gonna go into something with the sit down with sammy i guess oh come on please i need to get him please please could i talk to sam on the phone not long ago he's just i think he's an awesome guy he he is old school to the team yeah he's going to be that way forever i got to put something to rest you know for those of you that haven't been paying attention please pay attention now in my former life people would say you know you were afraid of roy demayo were you afraid of sammy garvano were you afraid of these guys what did i have to fear i'm a made guy if sammy was made of me or roy demayo was mad at me we're not going in the ring to fight okay we're not going to go and have a duel in the middle of the street if somebody gets an order to kill another guy in that life they're not going to know about it you're not going to telegraph it you know you got to understand something made guys don't fear one another you might fear your boss because he's got the power of life and death over you but anybody else from another crew another family you're not in fear of these people because you don't have to be and remember this if you get an order to take somebody out you're going to take him out you're not going to go and talk to him about it you're not going to fight him first and say whoever wins wins we were all capable of doing what we had to do so there was no reason to fear one another so every time you hear that just get it out of your head made guys we're not in fear of one another that's it we had to sit down and he and i are different you know he's he's a gangster i was a racketeer a little bit different you know but um so the clip that they showed yesterday he actually got pretty heated with me at one point he said i'll eat you alive you know really yeah yeah yeah yeah 75 years old he's just biggest i'll eat you alive and uh so some of the comments were you know mike were you scared that's come on you know it's scared of what you know but uh but i'll tell you he is a trip he is a trip i mean he hasn't changed one bit really no yeah well well i i shouldn't say that i mean he's different in that his this thought process is different but as far as who he is inside oh yeah yeah i mean it must be hard to let that go that's just something it is hard you know it it really is you know look even me i mean it's still part of who you are you know what mike you don't ever it's like you say you could take the boy out of brooklyn you can't take nothing out of the boy it's still part of you in some ways and uh you know i i think hopefully in the good ways because you know in that life we learned a lot about respect and and discipline and you know respecting authority had to respect authority in that life you know and discipline was a big part of it you know so uh but sammy but god wanted just everybody to have their own thought they don't want one person to dictate to everybody who's that yes that's god you don't want one person to dictate to the whole that's right no that's not that's right but also would you agree that i'm one of the most important things in life is transition where you start your life and where you go when you learn lessons so you know that's the best really the best qualities you're ever going to have is where you're where you're beginning is in your transition how you've learned lessons how we've discovered god or spirituality or or new motivation or purpose in life much different than what you thought when you were a kid no doubt do you believe you'd still be here doing this if what didn't you think somebody would have killed you by now 100 percent i i never i just turned 70 years old and there was a time you looked really good thank you thank you not as good as you but you look really good when you think of 70 years old you think of somebody in a can or something you know you think of that well my dad passed away last february at 103. wow 103. wow got out of prison uh after doing 40 years at the age of 100 he was the oldest inmate in the system when they let him out oldest inmate in this system well i'll tell you a quick story about my dad i go to see him my mom had just passed away and he was in prison they wouldn't let him out we tried to get him out for the funeral wouldn't let him out so they gave me a special visit in the attorney's room right so i go see him and he's depressed i never seen my dad depressed ever and i said hey what's wrong he says what do i got to live for so my wife is dead i'm in this place he's going on and on and on so i looked at him and i said hey you're getting you know down on me what's going on with you he's what do you mean you know he got a little bit insulted i said i don't hear you talk like this i said let me remind you of something 1967 we're in judge mitchell's courtroom he just sentenced you to 50 years in prison 225's running wild right he looked at you and he said mr francis you got anything to say to the court and he said yeah your honor and he leans over he said i'm going to fool you and everybody in this courtroom i'm going to do the whole 50. this is what he said right and i said you remember that dad he said damn right he said i ain't dying until 2017 when i walk out of here i keep my word even to that rat judge that was his exact words and that pepped him up yeah and he and he did every day of his time everybody else is dead yeah all his co-defendants the judge the prosecutors the fbi they're all done he was the only one he said i kept myself in three did you ever talk to that how do you feel oh yeah all the time you know he uh yeah he said look you know he said they're not gonna get me down there's different ways to look at it he had a certain principle about him look mike they could uh hit him with bayonets baseball bats he was never going to say a word it was just his principle he took an oath he was going to die by it no matter what the fl and he did never said a word would never did the whole 50 years he was framed by the way mike my dad was no bank robber he was 100 percent framed on that case i'll take that to my grave yeah he's reinvestigated that it was a bad case right would never flip the flip side of that is like i try to you know make him understand i said dad but our whole family was destroyed my mom 33 years without a husband she at the end of her life her relationship with my dad was ugly because she blamed him for everything that went wrong my sister dies of an overdose of drugs my brother john 25 years a drug addict he became an informant at one point cleaned up his act now but my other sister died young 42 years old so that the family was destroyed i'm the only one that's you know thank god thank god came out of that i tell people all the time like maybe you'll relate to this the street life the gang life the mob life their evil lifestyles because i'm not calling the guys evil i was one of them you know i'm just very fortunate very blessed but i don't know any family of any member of that life whether it be gang cause an austro mafia that hasn't been totally devastating no i always say this the streets are undefeated exactly can't be them you can't beat them yeah you can't beat them especially today they got all the tools all the weapons you know they've been defeated in the 20s the people that stayed in the business a long time they got wiped out yeah it just doesn't work no you can't don't care whatever it is if you don't go into a legal business like in chicago most of the irish gangsters they turned politicians the cops or their sons became cops and they stayed in control of the business but it's just um you just gotta stay out of that street the streets are going to kill you no it's bad there's no lawyer there's nothing everything goes in life there's no rules in life people don't understand that we live in life there's no rules we have lords cops but in life no rules everything goes you're everything no you're right and it's your own you gotta you gotta set your own standard really you know within yourself and this is how i'm gonna be and just try to try to do the right thing hey look you know he asked me i i didn't know if i was going to be around at 70 years old i mean at one point in time everybody was mad at me you know and and i never sold my former associates short these guys were not you know they don't play but you know i believe uh god had a different purpose for me in life that's why i'm here i mean it question for you and for mike what would you identify as that transitional point like what was the transition from where you were you realized like wait a minute i've got to make a shift i'm i'm making this paradigm shift from where i'm at and and i'm now going to transition to a better person i'm an animal i'm from the school of custom models nobody's going to beat me i'm just that well i mean it's a [ __ ] animal when when it comes to life fighting for my life and i love to fight and you've been doing that your whole life it's the psychological fight right yeah i like that gives me a wreck excuse me i'm sorry it's okay it's okay you know for me you know the transition was tom i just knew the life was in trouble yeah i mean you know when they brought those racquet racketeering statute in bail reform act sensing reform act guys were flipping left and right the government had you know wiretaps and recording devices on everybody and i'm seeing guys going to prison getting a hundred years 150 years i was the youngest guy out of everybody and i'm saying man this is trouble here but at the same token i don't want to hurt anybody and i felt horrible about betraying my oath but i said if i'm going to live a life i have to make a change and then of course i met my wife and she if i don't meet my wife i would have probably never walked away from the life yeah because you know i said she's 20 years old 21 years old what am i going to do marry this girl stay here and wind up with a 50 100 year prison sentence destroy her life maybe we'll have kids destroy their lives i said it's got to be one thing or the other either i'm going to try to make a life for myself with her or i'm going to stick this out and and eventually go down i knew i was going down i mean i had seven indictments i had 18 arrests you know they're going to keep coming at you until they get you there's no way you're going to beat them you might just you don't beat them yeah you don't beat them so you you know you have mike you're living the double life for a while when we were up in casco boxing and training you were still going back to brooklyn yeah and hanging out with all your robin houses sometimes yeah and so we didn't you know we're up in catskill training in the gym seven days a week but you have this other alternate life going on when you go back to the city yeah um what's your guys your friend's name that's that you were showing pictures of this to me um i was showing them pictures i was you know i'm in the neighborhood with the guys and they see me with these white people holding white babies and saying mike this [ __ ] me up and then somebody said man let's get this money he said mike no no no don't come on go back with these white people white people love you he gotta kill his at least white people love me isn't that something yeah let me let me ask you this mike only i i'm very troubled by what's going on in our country today and i i've at 70 years old i can honestly say i've never seen this country more divided in my lifetime than i see it now you know i i don't see this country as a racist country i know we have problems look it's you know i'll give you an example i'm in prison i used to hang out with a lot of black guys why we used to play when i was out in the yard and they didn't have me in lockdown we used to play ball we used to walk the track we used to do the italian guys in there one guy was a boss pete milano he's like the boss of l.a they used to hang out together they used to play cards they used to talk about war stories i wasn't interested in that i wanted to do my time and be active or whatever so the black guys just say michael how come those guys ignore us they don't come around they don't talk to us she said they're racist and i say they're not racist they're more comfortable with their own guys they talk about stuff that they know they eat pasta they sit down they talk war stories they play cards i said they're just comfortable with guys from their own neighborhood same way you guys are comfortable but so well you play with a you you know you you hang out with us that's because i like to do what you do i don't like to do what they do it's not a race thing you know and they kind of got it they said yeah i think i think that i think if you anybody in any race if one day we're all black and we got a chinese guy and he's down with us we look at all chinese differently yeah you're right you know yes we're we're tribal if you had a bunch of people on an island there was taller and shorter people the shorter people would be hanging out with each other the taller people hanging out with each other and the rumor got out that one group had better provisions food coconuts water you go and you rate it you take it because you were it was against them it wasn't intentional it was just a survival instinct and you are michael you agree and i think you would you just stay with your kind like you you go somewhere and there's pigeon guys right you guys are going to automatically gravitate together come right here and go to my hillbilly guys then my brothers i love them and they're my pigeon guys yeah they're like my family love family there's that bond through something that you gravitate toward and that's a familiarity forget about race or religion it's a step aside because the primary thing is more conditioned than racism but why do you think we have such divisiveness now i mean because listen let me ask you when i let you when guys look at you do you think they see color with you no i think they see my color but they know who i am they're familiar with me how can i not see that you're white how can i not see that somebody's um chinese or not that's that's our objective that's what attracted us to no that's the italian guy who wants to and but it's all but what's funny about it because ever since not everybody in ireland wasn't white ten thousand years ago a thousand i don't know a thousand years ago it was more metropolitan than anyone would think um greece rome they had african troops they had italian spanish truth this world was more metropolis thousands of years before we were even born you're right you know and we always been together rome even in detroit they all had their african warriors on their side you know listen troy must have been a bad government because everybody got together to go against them everybody in the whole mediterranean all that they all went against choice so troy must have some really bad politics back then and like all of us nobody's been around before so like we all was around when everything was happening when um the ten commandments to all those nations we were still around don't look like only these people were around no we all were this way since the beginning of time you know amalgamation of people together it's just been that way all you know books and wars change things but we've always been together everybody's always we always have fights so we always marry different race people since the beginning of time and why do you think the country's so divided right now because it is because we're um people we where people are so easy to be led we think we're sophisticated but anybody could bring a book and brainwash it and make us believe it's like your friend the guy that i had a fire chat with it's so easy for him to imagine you told all the people hey let's all let's all invest in this company because this country's the future and we're going to go in the future with this company man those 15 to 12 000 people invest in a thousand dollars of this yeah that's right you know back i don't remember as much because i was a young kid we were young but back in the 60s there was all sorts of social unrest back then you kind of open up the fabric and you know tear the fabric open you look at it you see what's inside and you reinvent and you try to move forward and you heal things you patch things whatever it takes to to go forward as a country and i'm not sure what that unifying who that unifying messenger will be or what that unifying event could be but i think the fabric of this country will come together and be stronger through whatever bond and we have to admit we have to recognize that america is exceptionally diverse the most diverse nation on planet earth the most the most equal opportunistic anybody can come here we know we know people that have immigrated here and they're very successful multi-millionaires and i know black billionaires yeah and no one can make excuses i can't make a dollar here was it 70 of millionaires in america come from abject poverty yeah it's not an inherited system that that you know suppresses anybody however we have to also recognize there are people here that generationally are being left behind and so let's look at now it's not a we owe them money it's what do we need to do to institutionally what do we need to do for vocational training what do we need to do for job opportunities so they can live because amongst that group some of them will be workers and be very productive and and perform and and provide for a family others will say you know what i can put together a business several of us are going to get together and create a bigger and bigger enterprise and opportunity so we have to give them the tools to do that in education and a support network if you give me three hundred dollars a month well i have to learn some [ __ ] skills don't you know right and what if you gotta give me some money like even rate this minute why why would i train if you ever baby gets to chill out yeah that's just the real deal that's what we got caught up to and now we have that and now we have the entitlement era yeah imagine that public assistance and entitlement oh now you can't get people to work yeah we got a pizza place slices right here we can't get people to come to work because they make them more money on unemployment yeah and it's happening all over the country i think that's plan that's plans to make insurrection and stuff like that yeah independence it's used creative dependency it's you know once upon a time i lived in new york city i had a when i lived there i had a rent control apartment for 260 bucks a month i truly lived on 5 000 in one year i kid you not if somebody would have said hey tom if we gave you twelve thousand or fifteen thousand a year i'd still be in that apartment yeah i would have never worked harder too for that five thousand it was a small little thing but i was happy to have it man it was worth more than five hours absolutely absolutely new york yeah absolutely good little studio 250 000 in your pocket you got your house taken care of you can go out buy some clothes trick on some girls some properties get some drinks do all this stuff yeah why am i gonna do anything still be there right i think i'll do nothing right now today same way well there you go i told you you're going to hear nothing but honesty from mike and that's it and i know the gloves were off and uh you know he talks the way he thinks and the way he feels so you know we wanted it to be real so hope you enjoyed it if you enjoyed part one there's more to follow we sat down for almost two hours so you're gonna enjoy it stay tuned next part coming up soon that's it for today how do i always leave you same way be safe be healthy i mean this god bless all of you and yes i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 846,459

Keywords: michael, franzese, michael franzese, mafia, mob, mobster, mob boss, mafia boss, caporegime, colombo, colombo family, colombo mafia, gambino family, bonanno, bonanno family, american mafia, italian mafia, sonny franzese, mike tyson, tom patti, hotboxin, Iron Mike, Mike Iron Mike, Tyson, hardest puncher, tyson vs lewis, cus d'amato, iron mike, iron mike tyson, mafia and boxing, tyson cus damato, mike tyson coach, mafia captain, hotboxin michael franzese, mike tyson interview

Id: xDO6vVsPPsE

Length: 33min 34sec (2014 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021