Mike Tyson pulled no punches in his criticism of Hulu over their upcoming series about the boxer’s life, calling the streaming service a “slave master” that didn’t compensate him for Mike.
“Don’t let Hulu fool you. I don’t support their story about my life,” Tyson wrote on Instagram Saturday. “It’s not 1822. It’s 2022. They stole my life story and didn’t pay me.”
Tyson continued, “To Hulu executives I’m just a n****r they can sell on the auction block.”
In a separate post, “Iron Mike” thanks UFC honcho Dana White for not helping to promote the Mike series, which premieres August 25 on Hulu.
“Hulu tried to desperately pay my brother [White] millions without offering me a dollar to promote their slave master take over story about my life,” Tyson wrote. “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.”
Reps for Hulu did not respond at press time to Rolling Stone’s request for comment regarding Tyson’s statements.
When the first trailer for Mike arrived in July, Hulu called the eight-episode limited series “an unauthorized and no-holds-barred look at the life of Mike Tyson,” suggesting that the boxer had no role in the creative process; Mike was created by the team behind the similarly unofficial Tonya Harding biopic I, Tonya.
“We just wanted to tell an unbiased story and have the audience decide what they think or feel,” showrunner Karen Gist said Thursday at Hulu’s TCA presentation. “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.”