Those who lived through the golden age of Mike Tyson will remember perfectly how terrifying the New York pugilist seemed every time he stepped into the ring. He didn’t need a costume to generate fear; his gaze left his rivals cold. Fans simply wondered how long his opponent would stand. In recent years he has told a thousand times what his calamitous existence was like outside the ring. In fact, he was convicted of rape.
Unfortunately, since Cus D’Amato passed away, it was only a matter of time before he ‘crashed’. His legendary mentor, who did not live to see him crowned, provided him with a life away from bad company that lasted rather short. Now Tyson, who will face Jake Paul on November 15, wants to forget even his old nicknames, ‘Iron Mike’ and ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’.
At nearly 60 years of age (58) and just days away from returning to the ring for a professional fight, the youngest heavyweight champion in history renounces who he was: “I can’t stand being that guy. ‘Iron Mike’ and ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’ is a creation. There’s no one like that. People like that don’t exist. I just had the audacity to say it or maybe it was idiocy,” he said in an interview with CBS. Now the fighter confesses to being a family man and far from the life of excess he once knew.
Perhaps most relevant is that he even ‘abuses’ his legacy in the ring when talking about what his undisputed meant: “I can say I bled for garbage. It meant a lot at one time; when you’re a little kid, that was everything to you, but then you realize your priorities change. And you want your kids to be happy and do good things, and that’s what makes you happy. Titles are nothing.”
The curious thing is that after this existential outburst, ‘Iron Mike’ returned in an interview on talkSport to warn his next opponent and thus generate expectation: “He’s going to be running all over the place and I have to catch him and massacre him. Am I afraid for him? No, because he’s going to get in the ring. If my mother got in the ring, she’d have a problem with me. Whoever is in the ring with me has a problem with me. Don’t get in the ring if you don’t want to have that problem,” he said.
In the same interview, he also praised his next opponent, although he sees him as somewhat inexperienced: “He’s a good fighter, but he’s only had ten fights. That’s considered an amateur in our sport,” he said.
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