Local Handyman Company Scores Knockout with Mike Tyson Super Bowl Ad

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA -- Many in the metro DC area are familiar with the jingle for a local handyman company, “If you can’t we can, Michael and Son!” It’s a commercial that is in heavy rotation on local TV stations and one that many might not admit to singing along to every time it airs.

During Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, viewers in the metro DC region heard the catchy jingle but this time, it was an internationally famous face that was doing the singing: Former pro boxer Mike Tyson. Suited up in a Michael and Son handyman uniform, Tyson sings: “If you can’t we can, Michael and Son!”

The company was able to get the boxing legend for the ad through mutual friends, The Washington Post reported.

The ad was created by Springfield, Va.-based ESB Advertising, which released the ads Sunday on YouTube -- one ad showing Tyson interrupting a boxing match wearing a Michael and Son uniform and another with him just singing the jingle. A third video posted to YouTube is a behind the scenes look at creating the two ads.

Tyson and his real-life son Amir, a local college student, star in the commercial. (Amir’s mom is Tyson’s ex wife, Dr. Monica Turner, who is a pediatrician in Bethesda.)

The Michael and Son Super Bowl ad featuring Tyson jumping in to save the day in a boxing ring was shot at The Sphinx Club in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 14, according to the behind the scenes video of the making of the 30-second ad, posted to YouTube by the ad agency.

In the spot, Amir plays a boxer losing to his opponent when miraculously and seemingly out of nowhere his father, Mike Tyson, dressed from head to toe in a Michael and Son outfit, storms into the ring and knocks out the “Vanilla Gorilla” in one swift punch. He then quotes Michael & Son’s famous tag line, “IF YOU CAN’T, WE CAN!” before shattering the glass of the director’s camera- POW!

Watch the behind the scenes making of the ad here, including some fun outtakes of Tyson practicing the jingle: