What’s the first image that comes to your mind if I were to say the words “Mike Tyson”?
- Unified the heavyweight championship boxing titles
- Bit Evander Holyfield’s ear
- Married and divorced Robin Givens
- Once starred in a reality TV series about racing pigeons
- That tribal facial tattoo
- Threatened to eat Lennox Lewis’ children
- Spent time in jail for felony rape
- That’s him in The Hangover
Well, if I were to say, “Mike Tyson, cartoon TV star,” you might check the calendar and confirm that it isn’t April 1st.
Yeah, I was also surprised.
But apparently there is a new cartoon in development – a cartoon that does indeed star the baddest man on the planet. I give you… “Mike Tyson Mysteries.”
Here’s the synopsis from the show’s press release.
MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES – In Mike Tyson Mysteries, a new half-hour animated adult comedy series, Mike Tyson is taking the fight from the boxing ring to the streets … by solving mysteries! Aided by the Mike Tyson Mystery Team — the Ghost of the Marquess of Queensbury, Mike’s adopted Korean daughter, and a pigeon who was once a man — Mike Tyson will answer any plea sent to him. If you have a problem that needs solving, Iron Mike is in your corner. The series incorporates live-action appearances featuring Mighty Mike himself, and the gloves come off as the former heavyweight champ and his team gear up for weekly adventures as they put unsolved mysteries down for the count. The series stars Mike Tyson, Norm Macdonald (Saturday Night Live), Rachel Ramras (MAD), and Jim Rash (The Way Way Back, Community). Mike Tyson Mysteries is produced by Warner Bros. Animation and premieres on Adult Swim this fall.
Okay…
I’m going to play along with this. See, this is going to air on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim late night animation / comedy block, and I would guess that Mike Tyson Mysteries follows in the footsteps of one of Adult Swim’s most popular offerings, The Venture Bros. And since The Venture Bros. offers a hilarious satire on those Hanna-Barbera action-adventure shows of the 1960’s (i.e., Jonny Quest, Danger Island), one can only surmise that Mike Tyson Mysteries is going to skewer the Hanna-Barbera / Ruby-Spears offerings of the 1970’s.
I mean, take a look at the promotional picture. There’s Mike Tyson in a warmup suit (similar to the Harlem Globetrotters and Super Globetrotters animated shows), there’s a ghost (hello, Funky Phantom), and an Asian sidekick (yep, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan). Add a reincarnated pigeon – well, that could be anything, but I’m going to associate it with Jabberjaw) and a big old minivan (do I really need to remind you of a TV show where the detectives traveled around in a minivan?) – and you have Mike Tyson Mysteries.
A quick search of imdb.com acknowledges that there is a new TV series called Mike Tyson Mysteries, and that Mike Tyson himself will play Mike Tyson. And among the show’s other voice cast – former Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” anchorman Norm MacDonald. Well, it’s nice that Norm MacDonald found work, rather than having him stumble through another lame cancelled-in-six-weeks sitcom.
And of course, if there’s going to be a Mike Tyson cartoon series, then certainly there has to be a Mike Tyson line of toys. That’s where toymaker Bif Bang Pow! comes in. Bif Bang Pow!, who manufactures licensed dolls and action figures from such shows as The Venture Bros., The Big Bang Theory and Star Trek, unveiled an 8-inch Mike Tyson action figure – complete with tracksuit and facial tattoo – at a recent toy trade show. Preorders for the heavyweight boxing legend action figure – which most likely could beat G.I. Joe right out of his kung fu grips – can be taken at this website.
I don’t know what to say. This could be the greatest satirical goof on 70’s animated TV shows, or this could be a bigger trainwreck than the time Tyson tried to face Clifford Etienne.
This I will say, though. If they do go through with this series… and it does actually air on Adult Swim… I only hope that they have Tyson face off against some evil “big bad” throughout the series. And if it means that the “big bad” gets an action figure of his own… that would be fun, too. And please, please let this “big bad” be Don King.
I mean, he decimated Mike Tyson’s boxing career… what’s to stop him from showing up on the show and saying, “I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids and that tattooed bum that couldn’t go the distance with Buster Douglas!”
And before any one of you says that no professional prizefighter would EVER appear as an animated caricature of himself as part of a Saturday morning cartoon cavalcade…
Let me assure you. Mike Tyson wasn’t the first boxer to do this.
THIS guy was. Way back in 1977…
Yeah, I was shocked, too!
Chuck The Writer 