Premiering tonight as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series is the sports documentary, 'One Night in Vegas,' which examines the night of September 7, 1996 when Mike Tyson fought to claim another heavyweight championship and rapper Tupac Shakur was shot shortly after leaving the fight.

Shakur and Tyson were friends, a feeling of kinship linked them as each rose to stardom from poverty only to be thrown in prison. Following Tyson's victory, Shakur and "Iron Mike" were to celebrate at an after party, but the rap star never arrived. Shakur was brutally gunned down later that night, and the scene in Las Vegas quickly turned from would-be celebratory revelry to ill fated and inopportune tragedy.

Director Reggie Bythewood ('Biker Boyz'), with the full cooperation of Mike Tyson, will tell not only the story of that infamous night but of the remarkable friendship between Tyson and Tupac.

Blackvoices caught up with the writer/director as he spoke about working with Tyson and talking about that historic evening. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

What made you think of connecting Mike Tyson to Tupac?

Reggie Rock Bythewood: I think they were already connected. Whenever you think of what happened to Pac you just kind of admittedly go back to, "that happened the night of this Tyson/ Bruce Seldon fight." I think the thing that was surprising is really understanding the depth of their friendship. The last recording session that Pac ever did in life is when he went to a recording booth the day before the Tyson/Seldon fight and recorded a track for his boy Mike. I never really put that together before I started doing this documentary; so all of these discoveries were really just a fresh spin on things.

What was the reason behind the documentary?

RB: Well, first off, let me say that ESPN and producer Damon Bingham sat together and decided that they were going to do this. So they pulled me in. I was coming off of co-writing 'Notorious' and I had been on a previous documentary with Laila Ali. So when I first came into it I must say for myself that I was a little skeptical because I really loved 'Tupac's Resurrection.' That was a great documentary. There was a great Tyson documentary that was out and so I was skeptical as to whether or not there was something different about this night, different about their relationship, about them as individuals that I wanted to say. But one of the things that just started to evolve, number one just as sports fan, was just a really understanding that this was the last night that Mike walked out of the ring a champion and then just kind of investigating, kind of understanding and just in terms of sports history to understand what was going on and was there something that happened on this particular night that might have changed the course of his career. It was just an interesting thing to examine. I think the other thing that was just really interesting that was happening is that I never really set out, even though we have information that people have never heard before I never set out to say, "Hey, this is a fact that you don't know. Hey, this is a fact that you don't know." What it ended up becoming was that it became a character study and what was interesting to me was to hear what Mike was feeling, and what he was thinking when these events happened. It was really interesting for me to hear how they became friends. It was also interesting to see the cast of the characters, if you will, that surrounded themselves around Pac and Mike. Pac had people like Suge Knight around him and he had a special relationship with people like Dr. Maya Angelou. Dr. Maya Angelou came and visited Mike in jail. Just to hear these stories, I suppose part of my job is to hold a mirror up to society, hold the mirror up to Mike and Tupac and reflect in a way that we haven't seen before. I just thought that these stories that came through made it worthwhile for me.

How cooperative was Mike in reliving that night, as well as Tupac's mom?

RB: Mike was cooperative. It was really interesting. He was cooperative. When the cameras were off I would say that he was guarded. For example, we just had a premiere of the film in Harlem. I wanted to do it in Harlem and I wanted to do it in the community center in Harlem and so we did it at this place called The Dwyer Cultural Center. When Mike rolled up I would say that he was a little bit guarded, but when the film was over he stood up in front of the audience and trusted everybody and talked about how moved he was. It was almost like, him standing up that night, like we were seeing a changed person, at least at that moment. So he was cooperative but something happened, just like sometimes as a filmmaker you turn the cameras off and you get things that you wish you got on camera – that wasn't the case with Mike. It was just basically when the cameras were on is when he talked and when he opened up. The other thing I did was that the third day of shooting we went to the Tupac Shakur Center and sat with Sister Afeni and just told her what it is, what we were looking to do with the film and then we just had other people, a gentleman named Jamal Joseph who was a Black Panther back in the day – actually I think Jamal would say that he's still a Black Panther – and had a close relationship with Pac. So it wasn't just sitting there with Mike and just sitting down with Pac's family, but also all the other people that had an interesting perspective on him.

What do you want audiences to remember the most from watching this documentary?

RB: That's interesting. I think that I approach it a little differently. I think the way that I approach is that people are going to get different things from it. What I was not interested in doing at all was doing a documentary that just sensationalized this sort of event. I feel like all the documentaries have done that and I didn't want to do that. What I really wanted to do was not to make any attempts to present them as choir boys and I didn't make any attempt to say that they were bad guys. I just really wanted to do an honest portrayal of who these people were. I think some people have their perspectives challenged in terms of who they think Mike was and who they thought Pac was. But I just think it's an interesting look and a different way to look at it than we've looked at before.