Mike Tyson is walking around his hotel room in lower Manhattan wearing a white T-shirt with black lettering that reads: “From Brownsville to Broadway.”
It serves as an advertisement for his one-man play “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth” that opens July 31 at the Longacre Theater on 48th Street. It also relates to an improbable journey from a life of self-destruction to being a committed husband and father who finally feels good about himself and his future.
Tyson, 46, credits his wife Kiki Tyson, 35, for rescuing him from his state of despair and making life relevant again.
“I’m very happy me and my wife got together,” he says, “because I don’t know how I would have survived out there.”
He will tell his life story in riveting detail during the one man show directed by Spike Lee. Tyson will cover it all — from being a juvenile delinquent on the streets of Brownsville to becoming the youngest heavyweight champion of the world under the vision of Cus D’Amato to his tumultuous marriage to Robin Givens to biting Evander Holyfield ears to his drug addicted days after retiring from boxing.
But the tale of how he and his wife got together is just as fascinating and improbable. Kiki, born Lakiha Spicer, formally met Tyson when she was 18. Her father Shamsud-din Ali was an influential Muslim cleric in Philadelphia who knew promoter Don King and frequently took his daughter to boxing events.
King warned Tyson: “Stay away from her. Don’t go talking to that girl. Leave these people alone. These are not the people to mess with.”
“It was like moth to a flame,” Kiki says now.
By the time she was 23, they were dating casually while she was in New York, this after he had served a three-year prison term for rape. But there was no commitment on Tyson’s part.
“At that particular time I was an idiot and I believed that it was normal protocol that everyone should want to be with me,” Tyson said. “That’s what I was taught in life. I didn’t know people could really care about you because you’re really not that bad of a schmuck.”
They were on-again, off-again more than a kitchen light. They crossed paths at night clubs, where Tyson would enter with other women only to leave with Kiki.
“I could never really get him out of my system,” she says. “I would try and then we would get back with each other. He’s the only person I was ever able to fall back in love with several times. Usually when I’m done with someone I’m over it. I’d think I’d have him out of my system and then we’d start talking again and it was just on again.”
Their relationship took a serious turn when Kiki was sentenced to federal prison in 2008 for being on the family payroll of her father’s company, charged with making fraudulent city contracts, loans and donations to a Muslim school. Her father remains in prison.
Kiki, who maintains her and her family’s innocence, found out a week before entering prison she was pregnant with Tyson’s child. She served six months and had their daughter Milan soon afterward.
She reconnected with Tyson when both were in their darkest hours. Kiki was a new mother just out of prison, and Tyson was battling drug addiction.
“We were both destitute,” Kiki says.
They wanted to live together in Las Vegas to pool their resources, but Tyson’s probation wouldn’t allowed it because both were convicted felons. So they maintained separated residences but frequently visited each other.
“I wasn’t really thinking about taking care of no woman or having a commitment, even though it’s what I really wanted to do despite my past discrepancies,” Tyson said. “I wanted to be courageous and try to be a man and raise a family and respect a woman and never cheat. But I’d never done that.”
He would go on a three-day drug binge, during which Kiki didn’t know of his whereabouts. She panicked when internet reports said he had overdosed. She called the coroner’s office.
“I was shaking,” she says. “I just knew he was dead.”
“I’m sorry I put you through that,” he tells his wife now.
After hitting rock bottom, Tyson decided to make a change and commit to the woman who hadn’t left him despite his madness. They were married at a Las Vegas wedding chapel in 2009 and renewed their vows before family and friends last June. It’s Tyson’s third marriage; her first.
“I’m just happy I got involved with her,” Tyson says. “It’s truly a life-saving experience.”
Kiki co-wrote “Undisputed Truth” when it premiered in Las Vegas April 13-18. Lee liked the show enough to bring it to Broadway, where it will run through Aug. 12.
“This is going to be a bit grittier,” Kiki says. “It’s going to have that Spike Lee vibe.”
“I’m just happy she’s interested in doing this stuff,” Tyson says. “She made me see that it’s in our best interest to do this. I never really understood what was in my own best interest.”
Thanks to Kiki he does now.
george.willis@nypost.com