Image via Getty/Lintao Zhang
Who is Mike Tyson? To a younger generation of people who never watched him fight in his prime, he’s the guy you saw punch out Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover. Those of you who did get to watch Iron Mike go to work in the 1980’s and early 1990’s remember him as the most feared fighter on the planet, a man who towered over the heavyweight division for over half a decade.
That long-term shift in perception reflects the duality of Tyson’s life, even at his peak. When he had it all going for him in the ring, Tyson was a force of nature, leaving men bloodied and battered on the canvas. But he never found a way to channel the rage that fueled him, and it led to some shocking, even criminal missteps in his personal life. Jailed for rape in 1992, Tyson came back battered physically and mentally from his time in prison, and paid for his transgressions as his career spiraled down the drain. There was nothing more compelling than a Tyson fight when he had it all working, but once he lost his edge, he resorted to goon tactics in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
Think you know Tyson? Maybe you do, at least on the surface. But there’s a lot more to the man than meets the eye, and there are enough crazy stories from his life to last at least six lifetimes. He is both the youngest heavyweight champion ever and a man whose mental state sometimes bordered on insanity, a hip-hop hype man and a Phil Collins aficionado. Love him or hate him, Tyson is probably one of the most fascinating people alive, and that's what makes the idea of the soon-to-come Tyson biopic so fascinating.
These are some of the best, craziest, and sometimes deranged things you may not know about one of the greatest boxers ever.
He was a friend of Darryl "Hommo" Baum, the same man accused of shooting 50 Cent nine times back in 2000.
Prior to allegedly shooting 50 Cent in May 2000, Darryl "Hommo" Baum served as Tyson's bodyguard. So two weeks after Baum was killed in June 2000—apparently in retaliation for the 50 Cent shooting—Tyson dedicated his fight against Lou Savarese to him. "I love you with all my heart," Tyson said. "Oh, God, I'm mad." Aside from dedicating the fight to Baum, Tyson also allegedly put out a $50,000 "hit" on members of a street gang that he believed to have played a part in Baum's death.
He is the inspiration for a character in 'Street Fighter II,' but they had to switch the name to avoid a lawsuit
Tyson is best known as the face of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!, though he was reportedly only paid $50,000 to be the face of his own game. Following his rise as a boxer and the success of that game, video game publishing giant Capcom attempted to capitalize on his image as well, and created a boss character named M. Bison for Street Fighter II. The character looked a lot like Tyson, or at least as much as a video game version would look on primitive hardware.
But most Street Fighter fans will know that Tyson looks nothing like the character named M. Bison, and that’s because Capcom had to switch the names of two characters in order to avoid a legal dispute. The African-American boxer character switched names with another character, and his avatar officially adopted the name Balrog in the full release, while his namesake M. Bison lived on as a boss character in future Street Fighter games.
He was the highest-paid athlete in the world in 1990, making more money than Michael Jordan.
According to Forbes Iron Mike made an estimated $28.6 million in 1990. MJ finished tied for eighth on that year's list, having raked in a $8.1 million (keep in mind this was before he won his first title). Buster Dougals (who had his shocking knockout defeat over Tyson in February that year) and Sugar Ray Leonard occupied the second and third place spots, respectively.
He appeared on a song with Madonna and Chance The Rapper
Tyson may be famous for some of the most outlandish quips in history, like telling Lennox Lewis he wanted to eat his children, but he doesn't exactly have what you'd call a voice for singing. That hasn't stopped him from popping up on songs in the past, mostly in a spoken word capacity; he's best known in the music world as the hype man on Canibus' LL Cool J diss track, "Second Round K.O."
And while that combination made sense, Tyson made a somewhat random appearance on Madonna's 2015 album, Rebel Heart. He and Madonna are both "Iconic" in their own unique ways, but it's hard to figure how this one came together. Maybe next time he'll get behind the mic and actually rap a few bars.
He beat up seven prostitutes once when he was high.
The assault, which took place in a hotel room in 2009, occurred after Tyson used morphine, cocaine, and alcohol. He credits the incident with helping him get sober. "It was the lowest point of a very low life," he told Robin Leach in an interview in April 2012, "but it was my own knockout punch to clean up life, get whole, get well-and I haven't done anything in three years now. I'm clean. I'm sober."
He caught Brad Pitt sneaking around with his former wife, Robin Givens
It seems like a pretty dangerous move to cheat on Mike Tyson—have you seen how violent he can be?—but his ex-wife Robin Givens decided she'd had enough. With the couple nearing a divorce, Tyson told The Real Daytime that he spotted Brad Pitt with his soon-to-be-ex at the home the couple shared together. The rest is history.
"I was driving before I go to my divorce lawyer, I decided to go by the house we lived in and get a rump session before I go back and tell my lawyer," said Tyson. "Nobody's there, as I'm getting ready to leave to go to my car, there's a car that comes out, a BMW. I knew it was her car because I bought the car. So when I saw the car come out, I think maybe it's her and one of her girlfriends from the show, but it's not, it's a guy. And then I got mad, and of course I'm jealous at that time."
Thankfully for Pitt, Tyson didn't lay down the law. "We met each other and stuff, that was my first engagement [with him], he's a really nice guy."
The Simpsons boxer character "Drederick Tatum" was designed to be a parody of Tyson.
Armed with a criminal record, a high-pitched voice, a lisp, and a mansion filled with exotic animals, Tatum was essentially the animated version of Tyson. He was known for his bad temper and for going to jail for pushing his mother down a flight of steps. The first episode that he appeared in was "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" on February 7, 1991.
He contracted and was suffering from gonorrhea before his championship bout with Trevor Berbick in 1986.
By winning the fight, Tyson became the youngest heavyweight titleholder ever. But years later, he admitted that, during the match against Berbick, he was "burning like a Good Humor in July."
He beat up a garbage man for hurting one of his pigeons
The average kid’s toughest opponent are his friends on the playground, but Tyson found himself faced by another antagonist: his local garbage man. Tyson has had a lifelong love for pigeons, and when his favorite childhood bird died, a sanitation worker came to take the crate he was stowed in and throw it in a trash compactor. Let Tyson explain the rest.
“I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand, he was out cold,” said Tyson, “convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard.” That’s one way of putting it.
He abstained from sex for five years when he was an up-and-comer because he believed that having sex before a fight made him a weak boxer.
For the record, Iron Mike isn't the first boxer to subscribe to the "no sex before a big fight" theory. Everyone from Manny Pacquiao to Amir Khan has also admitted to toning things down in the bedroom in the months leading up to a fight. But most boxers don't take it to the level that Tyson did at the start of his career. Don't worry, though. According to him, he's more than made up for missing out on those five years since then.
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He had to pay Robin Givens $10 million in alimony despite separating less than a year after being married.
During a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters, Givens described her marriage to Tyson as a "living hell." He later admitted to physically abusing her—"She flew backward, hitting every [expletive] wall in the apartment," he said of one particular incident—and the two were officially divorced on Valentine's Day 1989, just a little more than a year after they had gotten married.
Former trainer Teddy Atlas said he put a gun to Tyson's head after Iron Mike allegedly groped Atlas' 11-year-old ne
During a July 2012 interview on ESPN's Dan LeBatard is Highly Questionable, Atlas confirmed that he had, in fact, put a .38 caliber gun to Tyson's head back in 1983 when the young boxer was just 16. He claims he did it because Tyson touched Atlas's 11-year-old female family member inappropriately on the buttocks. But the incident actually led to Atlas getting thrown out of the storied Catskill Boxing Club by Hall of Fame trainer Cus D'Amato, who had adopted Tyson a short time earlier.
In 1987, Nintendo's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! sold over a million copies.
The popular game eventually went on to sell more than two million copies. It's also been praised by critics over the years. In 2008, Nintendo Power ranked it as the sixth-best Nintendo Entertainment System game ever.
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He was borderline obese as a child; weighing nearly 200 lbs. by the age of 13.
In a 2011 interview, Tyson admitted that he used to skip school when he was young because of his weight. He reportedly weighed 200 pounds by the time he was 13. "I was skipping school because I used to be an overweight kid with glasses," he told Access Hollywood. "So every time I went to school, people would just kick the crap out of me."
He swore revenge for Muhammad Ali as a teenager, and he delivered in the ring
A massive fight fan at 14 years old, Tyson looked on as his hero, Muhammad Ali, was brutalized by his former sparring partner, Larry Holmes. Tyson used to listen in on calls between his mentor, Cus D'Amato, and Ali, and one night he mustered up the courage to promise Ali he'd get revenge on Holmes, as he described to Conan O'Brien in 2016.
The best part? Tyson delivered on that promise, laying a royal smackdown on Holmes in four rounds of boxing. He knocked down the former heavyweight champion three times in one round, delivering on the promise he made to the man he looked up to.
Tyson used a fake penis to pass drug tests before his fights
When you have the type of money Tyson did in his prime—the man did make more than Michael Jordan at one point, after all—it affords you a whole lot of partying. And Tyson took advantage of that fact, to the point that his drug use had to be factored in during pre-fight prep. To get by the drug-testing, Tyson claims he whipped out a fake penis.
"You take it out - it has somebody else's urine in it, of course—you hope it's not a woman's urine and they take a pregnancy test," Tyson told Chelsea Handler in 2013. "You just make noise, and normally if you're a guy and you pull it out in front of the [the drug tester], they're like, whoa, whoa.”
Maybe just don't do drugs? This seems like a lot of effort.
It was once a tradition for him to receive fight-day wake-up calls from female rock star, Joan Jett. However, he di
Prior to his fight against Larry Sims on July 19, 1985, Tyson received a wake-up call from Jett. When he won the fight, he decided to turn the wake-up call into a tradition and had Jett call him on the morning of all of his fights. It was the start of a tight friendship between the two. But Jett was unable to call him on the morning of his February 1990 fight against Buster Douglas—and millions of Tyson fans are still upset as a result of it.
When he was imprisoned, Tyson converted to Islam, and gave himself the name Malik Abdul Aziz.
It took Tyson awhile, but he completed "Umrah"—a holy pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia that all Muslims are highly encouraged to make—in July 2010. "I just left the Holy City of Mecca," he tweeted, "where I was blessed to have been able to make Umrah...Inshallah (God willing), Allah will continue to bless me to stay on the straight path."
He received a lifetime ban from boxing after biting Evander Holyfield's ear. The ban lasted only a year and a half.
In addition to being banned, Tyson was also hit with a $3 million fine for biting off a piece of Holyfield's ear. But he got creative and found a way to pay it off. In 1998, he made an appearance at WrestleMania XIV and was reportedly paid $3 million for his services. He served as a "special outside enforcer" for a WWE Championship match between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels.
Tyson once said he was bummed out that he never killed someone in the ring
Boxing is a dangerous, violent sport, and with that territory comes a healthy respect for the sort of damage an opponent can do to you. Most guys say they want to “destroy” or “dominate” their opponent, but Tyson had another objective in mind: he wanted to actually kill an opponent. Here’s what he had to say after being asked whether he ever feared he might kill someone.
“Yes, but I was so disappointed that I didn’t,” said Tyson. Although I'm happy now that I didn’t."
Completely normal thing for a human being to say.
He has a tattoo of Chairman Mao on his bicep.
In a 2010 interview with GQ, Tyson admitted that he used to get in trouble in prison on purpose so that he could be by himself and read things written by the former Chinese communist leader. "I read his book when I was in prison," he said. "Down in the hole. They thought they were punishing me in that little room-no toilet, no bed. I got myself put down there so I could read Chairman Mao and not have to deal with all that prison bullshit. The thing that stuck from his Quotations book: 'No investigation, no right to speak.' If you aren't going to look deep, just shut up." Wow, deep.
Central State University granted Tyson an honorary doctorate in 1989.
Ironically, Tyson dropped out of high school when he was just a junior and never graduated. But Central State gave both him and Don King honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters degrees. "Mike demonstrates that hard work, determination, and perseverance can enable one to overcome any obstacles," Central State president Arthur Thomas said at the time. Hmmm...No high school degree required?
He once owned three pet Bengal tigers.
We've seen a lot of really dumb athlete purchases over the years. This one was particularly idiotic, though, because the tigers cost Tyson approximately $200,000 per year in food alone. No wonder he was able to blow through so much money so fast during his career.
Tyson once offered to pay $10,000 for a chance to punch a gorilla
As usual, it’s a lot better to just let Tyson explain this one.
"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin (his wife). When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big Silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas,” said Tyson. “They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined.”
Not sure what that gorilla did to Tyson to deserve that rage, but who are we to ask questions? It’s probably best to avoid getting our own snotboxes smashed.
He once stomped out Don King in front of a bunch of senior citizens at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
After Tyson was made aware of the fact that a large amount of money was missing from him, he confronted King about it in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel and beat him up in front of a group of older white women. "I handled it immaturely," he said in his documentary, Tyson. "I attacked him... They must have thought I was some black heathen or something."