At4:20 p.m. on April 20 last year, Mike Tyson was standing in the middle of New York’s Times Square to celebrate the expansion of his cannabis brand, Tyson 2.0, in his home state. As the crowd pushed closer to the former heavyweight champion, who was protected by a metal fence and bodyguards, the man to his right, tall and fit with a shaved head and a beard, sparked a joint.

At the time, Tyson was abstaining from weed to prepare for his boxing match against Jake Paul, but Adam Wilks, had many reasons to celebrate. While most celebrity brands wallow on dispensary shelves and eventually fail, Tyson 2.0 has become one of the best-selling celebrity cannabis brands in the $30 billion (annual sales) legal market. And Wilks, the 39-year-old cofounder and CEO of the Las Vegas-based CarmaHoldCo, is the man who made it happen.

“Mike wants to be everywhere in the world,” says Wilks. “Every time a new country [legalizes cannabis], we're showing up, ensuring we are one of the first American brands to be there with Tyson 2.0, continuing to grow on a global scale.”

Carma, the parent company of Tyson 2.0, former professional wrestler Ric Flair’s cannabis brand Ric Flair Drip and multi-platinum hip-hop artist Future’s brand Evol, generated $200 million in revenue last year, Forbes estimates.

Tyson 2.0 is Carma’s crown jewel, bringing in most of the company’s revenue. The boxer’s marijuana products—including flower, vapes, pre-rolls and edibles made in the shape of Evander Holyfield’s ear, which Tyson notoriously bit during a 1997 match—are sold in some 20 states across the United States. Outside of America, Tyson recently opened a cannabis café in Amsterdam and Cape Town, South Africa and sells products in Thailand. The company, through a partnership with PHCANN International in Macedonia, also sells cannabis products in Germany, which recently legalized an adult-use market, as well as the U.K.’s highly restrictive medical marijuana industry. Later this year, Tyson 2.0 will open its first dispensary in the U.S.—in Jersey City, New Jersey, near the famed Ringside Lounge, where Tyson keeps a pigeon coop.

“Thus far, [Wilks] hasn't let me down and the company continues to scale and expand in cannabis and beyond,” Tyson tells Forbes.

Tyson 2.0 does not grow weed itself—the company works off an asset-light licensing model, cutting deals with franchisees who manufacture and sell Tyson’s branded cannabis products. Tyson also sells hemp-derived products online and through thousands of smoke shops across the country and globe, nicotine vaporizers, nicotine pouches, rolling papers, smoking accessories, health and wellness products like supplements and vitamins and even a Tyson-branded casino video game. While cannabis only accounts for about 30% of the company’s revenue, accessories, nicotine products and supplements make up the rest.

“I look at us more of an intellectual property brand house more than I do as just a cannabis company,” says Wilks, who worked in private equity before venturing into legal cannabis. He says Carma’s business model is inspired by Jamie Salter’s Authentic Brands Group, the licensing giant which owns a large portfolio of brands from Brooks Brothers to Forever 21 as well as the estates of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

“We are a very small version of Authentic Brands Group—the $30 billion gorilla,” Wilks says.

Wilks, like Salter, was born in Canada, where he got his first job selling tires at 18 years old. He eventually struck out on his own, starting Tire District Inc., which eventually he sold in 2010 for about $1 million. In 2011, Wilks and his father made their way to California, where they partnered with Aaron Serruya, a member of Canada’s first family of frozen yogurt, to start a chain of bulk goods stores called Buy N Bulk. A few years later, Wilks helped the Serruyas run the U.S. arm of their frozen yogurt chain, Yogen Früz, and then worked for the family’s Kahala Brands, which owns a suite of faded quick-service food brands such as Pinkberry, Cold Stone Creamery and Blimpie.

In 2018, Wilks joined Serruya Private Equity to invest in the cannabis industry and eventually became chief operating officer of Sol Global Investments and then CEO of Captor Capital, another cannabis investment firm. But in 2021, Wilks got a call from a friend who said that Mike Tyson wanted to talk about reviving his defunct cannabis company which had gone bust a few years earlier.

“We're talking and five minutes in Mike says we’re going upstairs,” Wilks says of that first meeting in a Los Angeles restaurant. “We're just hanging out on the rooftop, me and Mike smoking a joint.”

Soon David Blaine appeared out of nowhere, as magicians are prone to do, and started doing card tricks for the champ and weed investor. “The whole thing was crazy, it was a magical moment,” says Wilks, who decided then to step down from Captor and work with Tyson. “That's where the relationship really kicked off with Mike. We shook hands right there and I said, ‘Let's rock and roll.’”

Tyson, Wilks and two other partners cofounded Carma and launched the aptly named Tyson 2.0. Carma raised a total of $15 million from JW Asset Management, Arcadian Capital and other investors. Soon after, one of professional wrestling’s greatest champions, Ric Flair, joined Carma, who had trademarked “Ric Flair Drip” after hip-hop artists Metro Boomin and Offset referenced him in a song of the same name.

“That song gave me a whole new life,” says the 75-year-old Flair, who is retired from wrestling. Flair met with Carma, and he came aboard, getting a nice payday and an equity stake. “They wrote me a check for $250,000 and the rest is history,” says Flair.

In the crowded and competitive cannabis market, where the price of cannabis per pound has plunged since wide-spread state legalization, consumers are price conscious. Most celebrity weed brands don’t live up to the hype. Jay-Z’s much celebrated cannabis company Monogram recently wound down, while Seth Rogen’s cannabis company did not post any sales last year, according to data from Headset.

Jason Wild, a cannabis investor and president and chief investment officer of JW Asset Management, which has more than $600 million in assets under management, says that when he gets approached by celebrity brands, he always turns them down.

“‘No thanks,’” is his usual response, he says. “They generally don’t work. In the cannabis space, people sniff you out in two seconds if you're just trying to sell something based on some celebrity and the product itself is not very good.”

But he invested in Carma HoldCo because Tyson, who is known for his legendary pot consumption—even Ric Flair says he can’t go “joint to joint” with Iron Mike unless he wants to “go into suspended animation”—is the type of authentic celebrity that fans connect with and he puts in the work to promote his brand. Tyson and Flair can often be seen at dispensaries, cannabis trade shows and events, all in an effort to promote their growing brands.

“Carma has done a good job in terms of the ownership structure with their celebrities, they really have skin in the game, it's not just about how much the celebrities are going to get paid, regardless of the success of the brands,” says Wild.

Tyson is also actively involved in the company and its decisions. “A lot of celebrity brands slap a name on a product and expect it to sell,” he says. “That’s not how we do things. Every product goes through me—I test everything to make sure it’s up to my standards.”

Berner, who cofounded the cult cannabis brand Cookies, is also a rare example of a celebrity who has made his mark on the turbulent industry. And he gives props to Tyson and Wilks. “He’s the one guy who has been able to step into the celebrity cannabis space and make it make sense,” says Berner. “They crush it—they super-crush it.”

Carma is not stopping with Tyson, Flair and Future. Wilks says he is currently negotiating deals with a half-dozen big names—ranging from musicians to athletes to influencers—who can connect with a big audience and sell anything from weed to clothing to beverages.

“Cannabis is definitely one of our main focuses as far as a product category, but we also feel that considering we were able to achieve what we've been able to do in a regulated space, anything is possible,” says Wilks. “We’re really want to focus on being a licensing IP house, helping talent and influencers build brand portfolios globally, whatever that product might be.”