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Tuesday 21 July 2015

25 Things You Didn't Know About Mike Tyson


BY , 
Mike Tyson is arguably the most polarizing sports figure of the last 25 years. He's been retired since 2005 and his last noteworthy bout—a heavyweight title match against Lennox Lewis—was way back in 2002. Despite these facts, Iron Mike remains one of the most recognizable figures in boxing and pop culture. His highlights include becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history at  the age of 20, 44 career knockouts, and a pop culture rebirth in recent years with roles in The Hangover, The Hangover Part II, and his one-man showMike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.
Matching The Baddest Man on the Planet's highs in life are disturbing transgressions and crushing lows which include a rape conviction, drug addiction, the death of his four-year-old daughter, and the squandering of an estimated $300 million in career earnings. Love or loathe him, there's no denying he's lived the life of 10 men. Though he's lived under a microscope ever since taking the heavyweight title from Trevor Berbick in 1986, there are still a number of interesting facts about Tyson's life that not many people may know of. From him receiving an honorary doctorate from Central State University to the time he fought seven prostitutes when he was high. In honor of Iron Mike's47th birthday, here are 25 Things You Didn't Know About Mike Tyson.

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 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.

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 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."

In 1990 he was the highest-paid athlete in the world, making more than Michael Jordan that year.

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 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's only ranked 50th on ESPN's 50 Greatest Boxers of All Time list.

Even though Tyson is one of the most famous boxers ever (he's likely only second to Muhammad Ali in terms of popularity), he barely cracked ESPN's list of the greatest 50 boxers of all time when the Worldwide Leader in Sports put the list together back in May 2011.
And in a piece defending the list, ESPN implied that some of their readers probably wouldn't be happy about his inclusion. "If one thing is guaranteed about this ESPN.com listing of the greatest 50 boxers of all time, it's that everyone who reads it will have an opinion," ESPN wrote before pointing out a series of questions readers might have, including one about Tyson. "Why is Mike Tyson in there at all?" Blasphemy!

He's in the WWE Hall of Fame.

Almost 15 years after making his WWE debut at WrestleMania XIV—and less than a year after getting inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame—Tyson was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame the night before WrestleMania XXVIII in March 2012. He paid a very high compliment to WWE when he was selected to be a part of the Class of 2012. "I am honored to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame," he told ESPN. "I was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time, but the most fun I ever had in the ring was with WWE."

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.

Tupac was murdered after leaving the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The champ and Tupac became friends after the rapper paid Tyson a visit while he was incarcerated for rape. Tupac and his entourage got into a confrontation with Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, a Crip member from Compton in the lobby of the MGM Grand following the Tyson-Seldon fight on Sept. 7, 1996. Anderson was allegedly a part of a group that had robbed a Death Row member earlier that year. Shortly afterward Tupac was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting near the Vegas strip and died six days later at the University Medical Center.
In 2010, Tyson said the biggest regret he has about his relationship with the slain rapper was not smoking weed with him. "He always wanted me to smoke weed with him, and I never did it, and I wish I did," said Tyson.

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."

His father, Jimmy Kirkpatrick, reportedly fathered 16 children.

Although Kirkpatrick fathered 16 children, only three of his kids were with Tyson's mother Lorna Smith Tyson. His father abandoned Tyson, his mom, and his two siblings, Rodney and Denise, when Tyson was just two years old. Iron Mike has fathered eight kids of his own by multiple women but is known to have a good relationship with them.

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.

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 neice.

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.

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.

50 Cent is still trying to sell the Connecticut mansion Tyson used to live in.

Have a cool $10 million to spare? Then you can live in the 17-acre, 21 bedroom, 25 bathroom home once occupied by the Baddest Man on the Planet and later on by the G-Unit rap mogul. Fif put the enormous home on the market back in 2009. First listing it at $14.5 million, now—four years later—the asking price is down to just under $10 million.

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.

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.

It was once a tradition for him to receive fight-day wake-up calls from female rock star, Joan Jett. However, he didn't receive a phone call from Jett the morning of his fight against Buster Douglas.

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.

He served as the best man at the wedding of real estate mogul Jeff Greene.

Years before Tyson sang in a wedding in The Hangover 2, he actually served as the best man at one for his long-time friend. Greene, who ran for Senate in Florida in 2010, asked Tyson to be his best man in 2007 when he married real estate executive Mei Sze Chan during a $1 million wedding celebration.

According to Jim Gray, Tyson denies raping Desiree Washington but admits that he's done "five to seven" far worse deeds in his life.

While in prison, Mike Tyson reportedly wrote a letter to sportscaster Jim Gray vehemently denying raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington. However, in the letter, the former heavyweight champ did admit to committing far worse acts in his life that he was not punished for so he felt his prison stay was deserved. Yikes. There aren't many acts "much worse" than rape so we can only imagine what transgressions Tyson was referring to.

Mike's first ever fight happened when a neighborhood bully ripped the head off of one of Mike's favorite pigeons.

Tyson has loved pigeons ever since he was a little boy. He says that "birds never judged me or made me feel inadequate." And he also says that, without pigeons, he probably never would have gotten into his first fight, which occurred after a bully antagonized him by hurting one of his pigeons. He beat the kid up on the spot. "By him hurting an innocent being that I loved and cherished," Tyson told the New York Times in 2011, "it was the catalyst to the fighter within."

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."
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