Mike Tyson is beloved on the internet but this is in part due to the fact he’s considerably mellowed out since his heyday.
Tyson is estimated to have made in the neighborhood of half a billion over the course of his professional boxing career – and had squandered it all by 2004. At that point he was $38.4 million in debt and bankruptcy was his only option.
Tyson’s professional career consist of 50 wins and 6 losses – including the disqualification for that infamous biting incident. Not to mention he’s spent time in jail.
But even when he was underage, Tyson was a troublemaker. One of his former coaches, Teddy Atlas, recently came out with a story explaining how he confronted a teenaged Tyson about lurid comments he had made about an 11 year old family member.
“Tyson had gone after a family member who was 11-years-old, a girl, and he had been pushing the boundaries more and more and more.
“His restrictions or care about how he treated other people became less and less.”
“I put him out of the gym for his behavior in school. What he was doing, threatening students, and basically putting his hands on girls in the hallways.
“He knew how to push those parameters. He understood the streets. He understood those rules, those laws. He understood people in those ways. Under those conditions, what he could get away with it.”
“I told him, ‘You made a choice to do this, whether or not you think you’re hurting me or you think you’re sending a message to me. You did send a message to me. You sent a message to me you don’t give a damn about other people, that you don’t care if you behave like an animal’.
“‘You will never do it again. You’ll be dead if you ever do it again. There won’t be a conversation. You won’t be seeing me. You won’t even know that there will be repercussions. You’ll just be gone. Understand that very clearly because It’s important for my family and obviously you.’
But even in his old age, Tyson is capable of rendering grown men speechless. This is what happened during a recent guest spot on Fox News.
“I wanted to kill them,” a stone-faced Tyson recalled when asked how he felt about his in-ring opponents. The comment prompted Carlson to laugh and exclaim, “Well, I can tell!”
“I’m laughing nervously,” Carlson continued
“Just think about who I am. I don’t want to go back there no more. I don’t want to be in that poverty state of mind anymore. Not from a physical perspective; I don’t want to be poverty-stricken here,” he explained, pointing to his head.
“So, would you sit and think about it before a fight — think about the guy you were fighting?” was Carlson’s next question, even if the answer seemed obvious.
“Absolutely,” nodded Tyson. “The more you hurt them, the higher you go in life. That’s just my mentality: the more you hurt them, the more people love you.”
“That’s pretty intense,” the Fox host reacted. “And true, I guess.”