Mario Costa, a 70-year-old Jersey City bar owner, was standing in the lobby of the Toyota Music Factory, an event center on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas, chewing on the stub of an unlit cigar and pondering the latest turn in the operatic and notorious life of one his oldest friends, Mike Tyson.
“I had one of the kids from the hood call me up and ask, ‘Why’s Mike doing this? Does he need the money?’ I think it’s just the challenge. You always have that in you. It’s the nature of the sport.”
Costa had first met Tyson in 1984, when the boxer was just an 18-year-old amateur on the brink of one of the most ferocious and dominating runs in history of American sports (37 straight wins, 33 of them by knockout, the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world). Now, Tyson was 58 years old and nearly two decades removed from his last professional fight, but he…
