Boxing legend Mike Tyson said Monday he wants to take his one-man stage show on the road internationally, to countries including Saudi Arabia and India, if they will let him in.
Announcing a US tour of his “Undisputed Truth” show — which opened in Las Vegas in April and transferred to Broadway — the 46-year-old said being on stage gave him a “high” like drugs did during his notorious hell-raising days.
Tyson, a convicted rapist who was recently denied a New Zealand visa, said a trip to Australia last month had given him confidence in his abilities to connect with audiences in the United States and beyond.
“The Australian press they thought I was the abominable snowman until they got to know me. They thought I was scary... They thought I was gonna give them a knuckle sandwich like back in the old days,” he told reporters.
But they warmed to him, he said, adding in a media conference call, “That gave me such overwhelming confidence in doing it.”
Asked which countries he would like to take the show to, Tyson, a convert to Islam, said, “Any one of them, I don’t really care... Saudi Arabia. A Scandinavian tour, we can do a Philippines tour, any of them.
“You could even do tours where they don’t speak our language and have interpreters on speakers or something. (...) I’d really like to go to India, I think that’s going to be so awesome,” he added.