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Nobody Could Act Normal Around Michael Jackson — Even Mike Tyson Called Him Sir

October 10th, 1988. Richfield Coliseum, Cleveland, Ohio. Mike Tyson walked into that arena the way he walked into every room that year. Like the air owed him something. 4 months earlier, he had knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds, not 91 rounds, 91 seconds. Spinks barely had time to process what was happening.

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Tyson was 22 years old, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, and the entire building reorganized itself around him as he moved through it with Don King at his side. There was not a single person on that planet who would look Iron Mike Tyson in the eye and not feel something shift in their chest first. Then Michael Jackson walked out onto that stage, and something happened to Tyson that had never happened to him before. He felt small.

Not in a bad way at first, more like the room had found a different center of gravity, and he was still adjusting. Don King gave Michael the peace sign as he passed. Michael gave it back without breaking stride. Tyson gave Michael the peace sign. Michael put his hand down and kept walking. That was the entire exchange.

Tyson stood there for a moment, working through it. He told himself, “He just didn’t see me.” Because the alternative, that the most famous person alive had looked straight through the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, didn’t compute. “I knew he didn’t play me,” Tyson said years later. “He just didn’t see me.

I knew that.” He kept telling himself that. They went backstage after the show. Michael came over, talked to Don King, didn’t say a word to Tyson. So, Tyson walked up to introduce himself. Michael Jackson looked at him and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Not as a put-down, not as a joke. He was genuinely trying to place the face, just couldn’t get there.

Tyson replied, “No, I’m just a fan. Pleasure to meet you, sir.” He said sir. Mike Tyson, who had put 35 men on the canvas and never once backed away from anything, called Michael Jackson sir and walked away. In the car afterward, something had been decided. He was done with Michael Jackson. Every time Michael’s name came up from that point on, Tyson had the same response, which he eventually said out loud in interviews without any apparent embarrassment.

“I hated his guts. Every time Michael Jackson’s name came up, I said forget that guy.” He carried that for almost a decade. The part that took Tyson so long to understand, the thing that took most people a long time to understand, is that none of what happened in Cleveland was personal. It wasn’t even about Tyson.

It was about something much stranger. What happens to a person when they’ve been that famous for that long? Michael had been performing in front of crowds since he was 6 years old. He’d been the biggest name in any room he walked into since he was 10. By 1988, fame wasn’t something that happened to him. It was the water he swam in.

His frame of reference for other famous people was fundamentally different from theirs, because he’d always been on the other side of the equation. The normal social maps, who matters, who you should recognize, how to read a room, had stopped working the way they work for everyone else a long time ago. He wasn’t ignoring Tyson.

He genuinely wasn’t always certain who people were. Steve Harvey found this out firsthand. Though by the time he did, the circumstances were about as different from a Cleveland arena as you can get. August 15th, 2004, a Sunday morning, the day before Michael was due in court for a hearing in his child molestation trial. He called Harvey and asked if he could take him to church.

Not for press, not for cameras. He needed to pray somewhere, and he couldn’t get himself there without it becoming an event. Harvey picked him up. Michael came out wearing a military jacket. Harvey later said the jacket cost around $20,000. He looked at it and said, “Mike, you look like Captain Crunch.” Michael laughed and got in the car.

For a few blocks, it was just two men on a Sunday morning. Harvey kept both windows up. The plan was simple: get to the first AME church in Los Angeles, get inside quietly, sit down, be a person for an hour. Then Michael’s window went down, just a few inches, just for a second. What happened next took about 4 seconds and was completely unmanageable.

>> [snorts] >> People appeared from directions that made no sense, throwing themselves at the car, grabbing at door handles, screaming. Harvey hit the button to close the window and kept driving, probably faster than before. Michael sank back into the leather seat, didn’t say anything, didn’t look surprised or upset, or even particularly bothered.

He settled back and looked at the road ahead. He had been living inside that exact thing for so long that the shock had left him years before Harvey was even old enough to drive. This was just what Sundays were. They made it to the church. The congregation prayed for him. He signed autographs, talked to kids, did the things you do when people love you in a way that has nowhere to go.

On the way out, his limousine got chased down the street. Michael just looked out the window. Harvey told that story for years afterward, not [clears throat] because it was funny, though parts of it genuinely were, but because it was the most concentrated example he’d ever seen of someone who had simply accepted the shape their life had taken.

Chris Tucker saw a different side of it. Tucker and Michael became close through the mid to late ’90s, and the stories Tucker tells are interesting specifically because they’re not about the spectacle. They’re about what happened in the space around it. They used to go to the movies together. Tucker explained the logistics on Conan O’Brien’s show.

Michael had to sneak in right before the film started dressed entirely in black. Hood up, mask on. Tucker would be sitting in his seat already and at some point he’d turn around and there was Michael right next to him already settled in. Hey Chris, how long have you been here? About 5 minutes. I’m sorry. Did I scare you? Sorry Chris.

Security would come by with popcorn. The lights would go down. And then Tucker noticed something that surprised him. Michael was the loudest person in the theater. Laughing before jokes fully landed, reacting out loud to every turn in the story, completely absorbed in what was on the screen like he was watching something nobody else could see.

Tucker sat there watching him and understood something. The disguise wasn’t really about going unnoticed. You can’t go unnoticed if you’re making more noise than anyone around you. It was more like a set of conditions, a ritual that had to be in place before Michael felt like he had permission to sit somewhere and just exist without being performed at.

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