Boxing legend Mike Tyson is lashing out against the Hulu biopic “Mike” once again, saying the streaming giant stole the story of his life without permission.
“Don’t let Hulu fool you. I don’t support their story about my life,” the 56-year-old former world heavyweight champion posted to his Instagram account. “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****r they can sell on the auction block.”
In the caption, Tyson wrote, “Hulu is the streaming version of the slave master. They stole my story and didn’t pay me.”
The day before, Tyson praised UFC president Dana White for refusing to promote the documentary.
“Hulu tried to desperately pay my brother @danawhite millions without offering me a dollar to promote their slave master take over story about my life,” Tyson said. “He turned it down because he honors friendship and treating people with dignity. I’ll never forget what he did for me just like I’ll never forget what Hulu stole from me.”
“Mike” stars Trevante Rhodes as Tyson and promises to “explore the wild, tragic and controversial life and career of heavyweight champion Mike Tyson – one of the most polarizing figures in sports culture,” per the IMDb description. The miniseries is scheduled to debut on August 25.
Tyson has been railing against “Mike” for months. In a now-deleted Instagram post from February, he wrote, “Hulu’s announcement to do an unauthorized mini-series of the Tyson story without compensation, although unfortunate, isn’t surprising,” the celeb wrote at the time, per Deadline.
“This announcement on the heels of social disparities in our country is a prime example of how Hulu’s corporate greed led to this tone-deaf cultural misappropriation of the Tyson life story. To make this announcement during Black History Month only confirms Hulu’s concern for dollars over respect for black story rights. Hollywood needs to be more sensitive to black experiences especially after all that has transpired in 2020.”
Showrunner Karen Gist defended the existence of “Mike.”
“We just wanted to tell an unbiased story and have the audience decide what they think or feel,” Gist said at Hulu’s Television Critics Tour panel last week.
“Challenging what people think they know about Mike and hoping that they come away from the series with something else to think about. Whether you like him or hate him, does the story make you question how complicit society has been? That was the intention, that was the North Star for the writers’ room as we were crafting stories.”