Iron Mike’s trademark tattoo is copyrighted, which puts a damper on my Halloween costume for next year.
Mike Tyson has done a lot of bizarre things in his life, such as raping a woman at the peak of his boxing career, biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear, going bankrupt after being worth $500 million, owning white tigers and telling Lennox Lewis he was going to eat his children.
But for some reason the thing that will always stand out to me was when he decided to get a tribal tattoo on the side of his face. More than all his other flagrant displays of craziness this was the first time I remember saying, “What was he thinking?”
I mean he served jail time for the rape, Holyfield got plastic surgery, he can always make more money, the tigers can go to the zoo and he never ate Lewis’ children, but that tattoo isn’t going anywhere. Tyson could fix his trademarked lisp before that thing comes off his face.
It’s for that reason that we relate face tattoos with Tyson. For example when Gucci Mane got an ice cream cone tattooed on his cheek I invariably thought about Tyson and his cameo in “The Hangover.“
You can’t see or read about Tyson without fondly recalling him punching Zach Galifianakis in the face. So when Ed Helms wakes up with Tyson’s trademark tattoo on his face in a Bangkok bathroom in “Hangover Part II’s” trailer it’s hard not to laugh.
It turns out that S. Victor Whitmill, the tattoo artist who inked up Tyson’s dome, allegedly has a registered copyright on the tattoo design. He also claims he hasn’t granted anyone permission to use the design since Tyson got it printed on his face in 2003.
With “The Hangover Part II” due to be open huge at the end of the month on Memorial Day weekend, Whitmill is suing the film’s producers and Warner Brothers studios for violating his copyright. The artist wants to have the tattoo taken out of the film.
The odds of this actually happens are very slim, considering the large sums of money Warner Brothers can offer Whitmill, and how important this film is for their summer box office. But it could end up in a rather nice payday for the tattoo artist. That is unless Iron Mike goes all 1987 Nintendo Punch Out on his ass.
