“When I started digging into the money issues, low and behold, I find out when Shelly was taking Mike to those fights out of the country, the foreign sales and the pay-per-view money, him and Frank Warren were trumping that money up and wasn’t giving Mike Tyson nothing. I mean nothing! Not a penny! Shelly has two corporations outside of the two that we knew about where he dealt his dirty deeds at. The way it looks to me, he has ripped Mike off for a little over $100 million. I got so angry when I looked up and found out a guy who I trusted and thought was honest, a guy who I thought was my partner, was nothing more than a penny-ante thief,” stated radio personality and advisor Ted Watley as he recalled the final years of Mike Tyson’s career. Don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look into the history of boxing as Watley explains in his own words how he came to work with Tyson and tells an intriguing tale of deceit, mistrust and broken promises that may have drastically altered the end of a historic career. Check it out…
I have personally been fine. I don’t keep up with boxing anymore. I have gotten back to playing golf every day. I used to play golf. I became a scratch golfer and then, in 1996, a guy came out to my radio station and shot me 5 times in the parking lot. When I got shot 5 times, I lost the use of my left hand, so I didn’t play golf for a little over 10 years. When we moved to Florida…I now live in a retirement community. We have 2 golf courses and I just went to retraining myself how to play golf one-handed. So now I play golf one-handed and I’m enjoying it. I had my first hole in one two weeks ago. I didn’t ever think I would get that. I have won quite a few tournaments. I have gone 2nd and 3rd quite a few times, so I have really enjoyed myself. Boxing is so destroyed to the point where I lost interest in it.
Ted Watley: Me and Shelly Finkel were friends for many years. He and I would talk on the phone 2 to 3 times a day for years and we weren’t talking about boxing. He was representing Tyson and I wasn’t paying no attention to his business with Tyson. I knew he represented Tyson. I always thought Shelly would be an honest man. I thought he would do right by Tyson and I never paid attention to it. I knew that he was doing a lot of fights out of the country and Mike seemed to be comfy with Shelly and that’s the way it was going. One day, while Shelly was talking to me, he mentioned that he and Tyson was having problems. I can respond to that. About a week later, Tyson shows up at my house to my surprise. He drove from Brooklyn to South Jersey wanting to talk with me. Mike and I had talked socially before that, but nothing of significance. I have worked with solving problems for Don King. I have solved problems in boxing for guys quite a few times. As a matter of fact, Murad Muhammad had a problem one time when he was with Razor and I helped put together the fight with Razor and Tyson. Don wasn’t speaking to Murad and I got them two back together and that materialized that fight. I have always backed up Larry Holmes and I will get back to him later.
So anyway, Mike came up to see me and he was telling me that people was robbing him and stealing his money. He didn’t know who or how to go about finding out who and asked if I would help him. I said to him that if I got involved with him, wherever the road goes, that’s where it will be. I wasn’t playing any favorites and if I did it for him, I was going to go wherever the problem goes. Wherever it goes, that’s where I will be. He said, “Hey brother, that’s what I need.” So when he left, I called Shelly and Shelly was elated that Mike came to me. Me and Shelly made an arrangement to where he and I would be 50/50 partners working for Tyson as his managers. I told Shelly to draw it up. I didn’t want to go through all of that with my lawyers and he and I were friends, so I told him to have it drawn up. “Get your lawyer to draw it up,” I said. He agreed to that and we proceeded to start representing Tyson.
How we started out was, I would go out to Arizona for 2 weeks and then I would come home and he would go out to Arizona for 2 weeks. We always switched it off back and forth. The thing that I really wanted to get involved in was they kept telling me that Mike couldn’t get a [boxing] license in New Jersey. I told Shelly that was something that I was going to deal with and I knew I could get him a license in New Jersey. When I told Shelly that, he didn’t seem to take that too serious, but anyway, I told him I would handle it. So when I got the Governor to agree to give him his license, I called Shelly up and told him to meet me in Trenton. Mike and I were on our way because we were staying in his house in Virginia. When we got there, Larry Hazzard was waiting for us outside on the steps and he walked us through. He had nothing to do with it and he was kind of shocked and surprised that the state of New Jersey had given him his license. He was the boxing commissioner and he didn’t know nothing about it. Shelly Finkel goes there and in the course of them giving Mike his license, they were going to give me my managerial license. So I said, “Shelly, do you have your managerial license?” He said, “No.” I said, “Well, give Finkel his too.” If you look at Finkel’s managerial license and you look at mine, the licenses were dated the same day. And if you look at Tyson’s license that he can box back in the state of New Jersey, it’s all dated the same day. Shelly’s license and my license have no expiration date on it. We have managerial licenses from the state of New Jersey with no expiration date on it. He has one and I have one. I got Shelly his and I was surprised that Shelly didn’t have a managerial license.
Anyway, Murad came to me and he said, “Ted, I got a deal for you.” I said, “What is that?” He said, “I can bring $60 million to the table for 3 fights with Tyson.” I said, “That would be fantastic. Let’s do it.” We put together a 3-fight deal and I thought Shelly would be elated. This was before we went to Trenton and got Mike his license that this deal that Murad brought to me materialized. I told it to Finkel and I thought Finkel would be happy. He can get that boy out of debt and get him his titles back. Brother, this would have been a win-win for everybody. To my surprise, Shelly did not like the deal. I didn’t know it at the time, but Murad asked me not to tell Shelly, but by Shelly being my partner, I had to tell Shelly.
I told Shelly that. He took that information and used it to tighten himself up with Mike and Mike’s ex-wife [Monica Turner]; having Shelly advise her. She was having financial trouble. They were about ready to lose the house up in Connecticut. If you look anywhere, there was discussion of money with Mike back then. I don’t care where you look, you will find Shelly Finkel in the mix each and every time. As I started doing my job and going through Mike’s issues, I said to Shelly, “Shelly, in the bankruptcy, your name is all over the bankruptcy deal. Why would your name be involved in Mike’s bankruptcy like this and you’re his manager?” I said, “That’s a conflict of interest. You can’t do that.” He said, “You sure?” I said, “I’m positive.” So then he scrambled around and tried to clean up some of his issues like that, but still, everywhere money showed up with Tyson, here come Finkel’s name. Even with the house in Connecticut, when they were dealing with that, here comes Finkel’s name. Finkel had the deal changed over to where the house would be given to his wife during the divorce settlement. Mike would end up with no home or nothing. He worked it out to where she would get it and by him doing that, it tightened her up with Shelly.
So now, she ends up with the house and Mike’s out. Mike thought it was a good thing because the kids would have some money coming if the house was to ever sell. If you look at Mike’s issues, Mike is the only athlete that I ever met that made sure his kids, each one of them, had an annuity policy worth $1 million. Each one of his kids. He would not rest until he got each one of them kids an annuity policy in case something happened to him or for when they got older and got grown, they wouldn’t have to worry about money. Shelly, who tightened himself up with Mike’s ex-wife, used her to help sway Mike to do the things he needed done. Now, when I started digging into the money issues, low and behold, I find out when Shelly was taking Mike to those fights out of the country, the foreign sales and the pay-per-view money, him and Frank Warren were trumping that money up and wasn’t giving Mike Tyson nothing. I mean nothing! Not a penny! Shelly has two corporations outside of the two that we knew about where he dealt his dirty deeds at. The way it looks to me, he has ripped Mike off for a little over $100 million. I got so angry when I looked up and found out a guy who I trusted and thought was honest, a guy who I thought was my partner, was nothing more than a penny-ante thief.
