The Greatest Tony Awards Opening Number Ever Included Mike Tyson

Jake Aron
2 min readDec 2, 2022

“Bigger” was written by Tony Award-winners Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda and performed by Tony Award-winner Neil Patrick Harris at the 67th annual Tony Awards in 2013.

Photo By Goldnpuppy — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26671662

Mike Tyson appeared in a show I was watching earlier today, which for some reason reminded me of his brief role in the Tony Award opening number “Bigger.”

The number begins with Neil Patrick Harris and his guitar. Harris guarantees “a truly legendary show,” which is a nod to his famous line in How I Met Your Mother.

Throughout the song, Harris is joined by Tonny-winning heavyweights such as Kinky Boots, and literal heavyweight Mike Tyson, who had a one-man show on Broadway in 2012. Although I can’t understand what Tyson says in the number, his inclusion, and his attempt to bite Neil Patrick Harris’ ear off, is my favorite part.

Harris is also joined by a magician and many child actors, who Harris claims are “the reason this whole season seems to look like Chuck-E-Cheese.”

Nothing does this Emmy-award-winning number justice other than watching it, which you can do below!

(Mike Tyson appears at the 3:13 mark)

This story was originally published as a student blog at https://www.broadwayworld.com.

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Jake Aron

I am a third-year student attending the University of Missouri. I am a Guinness World Record holder and was formerly part of the Disney College Program.