Mike Tyson, whose sports biography is known to all boxing fans, is considered by many to be a brutal athlete who earned the nickname “Iron Fist” for good reason, achieving all his victories with the help of a knockout. But few people know that he has eight children from different marriages, with whom he shows himself to be a sentimental and caring father.
Tyson, who competed as a heavyweight, is considered the most famous boxer of our time. The athlete received the nickname “Iron Fist” because he knocked out his opponents in the first minutes of the fight. Mike Tyson won most of his victories by knockout: 44 out of 50. The athlete was listed in the Guinness Book of Records
Not many people knew that the heavyweight boxer was only 178 cm tall with a peak weight of 96-108 kg. Some gained, others lost weight. Mike Tyson became famous largely thanks to the scandals, of which there were many in his biography, and not just his sporting victories. It never even occurred to anyone that there was a time when he himself was beaten.
Childhood
For Mike Tyson, born on June 30, 1966 in New York in the famous Brooklyn borough, at the beginning of his biography there were no signs that he would make a career as the strongest boxer of our time. In addition to Michael himself, there were two older children growing up in the family - brother Rodney and sister Denise. As a child, Mike was fascinated by pigeons.
As a child, he was a very quiet and calm child who could never stand up for himself. The boy was often offended by older teenagers from youth gangs, taking away his money and sweets. For the first time, the boy gave a tough rebuff to the offender because he broke the neck of his beloved pigeon before his eyes. 10-year-old Mike severely beat the bully, after which the teenagers accepted Tyson into their social circle.
Interesting!
If little Mike had not become a difficult teenager, he would hardly have become a famous boxer. It was in a correctional facility that he met the legendary Muhammad Ali, who came to meet with difficult teenagers.
Mike Tyson's wife and Brad Pitt
For many years, the boxer did not divulge the public to the juicy details of his personal life, and only a few years after the divorce he said that he found his wife in the hot embrace of Brad Pitt.
Despite the fact that the reasons given when filing the lawsuit for the divorce included violence on the part of Mike, another detail that led to the separation of the spouses was that Tyson found his wife Robin Guines in bed with Pitt.
Mike said that he was filled with hellish feelings and was ready to kill both of them. What kept him from this act is unknown, but if Mike had not coped with his emotions, perhaps a bloody drama could not have been avoided.
It turns out that the love affair between Robin Givens and Brad Pitt arose a long time ago, and this secret was accidentally revealed.
After her divorce from Tyson, his first wife received ten million compensation - a fifth of his fortune, which at that time was estimated at fifty million dollars.
Sports career
The young man began boxing at a school for juvenile delinquents in New York. Its first coach was former boxer Bobby Stewart, who worked there as a physical education teacher. To motivate his ward, Stewart set him the condition to study well.
Tyson's second coach was Cus D'Amato, who was able to set the young athlete up to achieve better results. It was this coach who developed Mike Tyson’s famous fighting technique, which played a decisive role in his sports biography.
Since 1981, the athlete had a successful career in amateur sports and was about to join the American team to participate in the Olympic Games. However, this did not happen, and since 1985 the athlete becomes a professional at the age of 18. Tyson became the youngest heavyweight boxer to win the championship title.
From the moment he began performing in the professional ring, in addition to victories, the athlete was accompanied by a series of scandals and fights. In 1992, he was jailed after being accused of raping Miss Black America Desiree Washington. In prison, the athlete converts to Islam and takes a new name, Malik Abdul Aziz.
The athlete was released early at the beginning of 1995 and began training. In 1997, he again found himself in a scandalous story: in a fight with Evander Holyfield, he bit off his opponent’s ear, for which he was disqualified and fined $3 million.
Almost immediately after, he again finds himself in a scandalous story, having got into a fight with the paparazzi in an elite hotel in Cuba. At that time, with a height of 178 cm and a weight of 104 kg, the boxer had a punch with a power of 800 kg.
Mike Tyson, whose personal life also had many scandals, fought his first fight after disqualification in 2004, against Danny Williams. “Iron Mike” technically lost this fight, as he injured his knee shortly before.
After the first defeat, the athlete, who underwent knee surgery, had a long recovery. The athlete will return to the professional ring again in a year. His opponent was Irish boxer Kevin McBride, who was considered a weak athlete, but Tyson began to yield to him from the very beginning of the fight. The athlete refused to compete in the last round, and as a result, the Irishman was awarded the victory.
After this fight, 39-year-old Tyson ended his sports career in 2005.
Knockout for Tyson: the boxer’s daughter was killed by exercise equipment
At St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, on May 26 at about 12 noon, the four-year-old daughter of the famous American boxer Mike Tyson, Exodus Tyson, died. The baby's death was the result of an accident that happened to her on May 25. Having assessed the critical condition of the child, doctors came to the decision to disconnect Exodus from the artificial respiration apparatus.
Monday, which later turned black, was an ordinary day for the Tyson family. The athlete father was in Las Vegas on business, the mother was cleaning the house, and the 7-year-old son had to look after his sister. But, unfortunately, no one is immune from tragedies.
Exodus was playing in a room equipped with sports equipment, and apparently by accident, not realizing the danger of her actions, stuck her head into the loop formed by the cable from the treadmill. The police explained that the cord hung almost to the floor and ended in a loop into which the girl stuck her head. She did this so unsuccessfully that she could not get out on her own and almost strangled herself. The unconscious child was discovered by his seven-year-old brother, who called his mother. The woman freed her daughter from the trap and called an ambulance.
“It was just an accident. During the investigation, we did not identify anything suspicious. Cases involving children are the most difficult for the police. Such incidents stay with you forever throughout your career. We always hope for a miracle that nothing bad will ever happen to the children,” said a Phoenix police spokesman.
At the time of the incident, Mike Tyson was in Las Vegas, but upon learning of the incident, he immediately flew to Phoenix. A local TV channel showed him entering the hospital. Unfortunately, the girl died almost in the arms of her father.
“There are no words to describe the tragic loss we have experienced. We are grateful to everyone who supported us and worried about our daughter. Our family asks that you respect our feelings and not interfere with our privacy during this difficult time,” the family said in a press release. The time and place of the funeral are not published.
Mike Tyson - after the death of Exodus, the father of five children (from different wives), who are now 20, 18, 13, 11 and 7 years old. They say he is a loving but quick-tempered father. Mike himself did not bring much joy to his parents. He hardly knew his father; he left the family when Mike was only two years old. His mother died shortly after he turned 16 - by that time he had already turned from a street thug into a promising boxer, but he hardly lived at home.
The mother of the deceased Exodus is the common-law wife of Mike Tyson. The former boxer was married twice. In the late eighties, Mike married aspiring actress Robin Givens. Their marriage lasted only about a year and was full of scandals.
Mike's second wife was nurse Monica Turner, with whom he was married from 1997 to 2003. From this marriage, Tyson left two children - a girl, Rain, and a boy, Amir. The divorce took place at the initiative of Turner, who accused Mike of treason. As it turned out, it was not unfounded - in 2002, Miguel Leon, the brother of the deceased Exodus, was born.
Let us note that, ironically, Mike Tyson will have to go through a difficult moment in his life precisely when problems and scandals seemed to be a thing of the past. About a month ago, the film “Tyson” was released on wide screens, winning a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. And on June 5 in the United States (June 11 in Russia), the comedy “The Hangover” is released in wide release, where Tyson plays himself and performs in an unusual comic role.
The Rise and Fall of Iron Mike
For boxing fans, Mike became a true legend. He started his career in the ring very early. He was only 13 years old, weighed 90 kilograms and had muscles that no one else his age had. Mike Tyson, on a bet with his school teachers, did a chest press with a barbell weighing 100 kilograms.
The path to the big ring was opened for him by Bobby Stewart, who was familiar with the legendary manager and coach Kai D'Amato. D'Amato worked with boxers like Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres, both of whom were huge. Floyd Patterson was also the youngest heavyweight world champion in history. Over time, Mike Tyson took this title away from him. Mike Tyson and Bobby Stewart arrived in the Catskills in the spring of 1980. They entered the ring together to give D'Amato the opportunity to see Tyson in action. “This is the new heavyweight champion of the world!” D’Amato said then. This is exactly how the professional career of the great and terrible “Iron” Mike Tyson began.
In the amateur ring, Tyson delighted the audience with his tough fighting style, indestructible power and magnificent knockouts. And in 1985 he turned professional. After this, Mike Tyson fights one after another and wins all of them. In 1986, in Las Vegas, in the second round, Mike knocked out Trevor Berbick and became the WBC world champion. Then there were Mike Tyson's victories over WBA champion Bonk Smith and IBF champion Tony Tucker.
In the ring, Mike Tyson continued to beat everyone, which finally killed his caution and sense of proportion. However, the real disaster struck on February 10, 1990 - in the ring in Tokyo in a duel with James Douglas. In the tenth round, James Douglas dealt a very strong blow, and the invincible Tyson began to stagger and could not even cover himself with his gloves. And then Douglas sent Tyson to the ring floor. Knockout!
This defeat stunned Mike Tyson. At first, he didn’t even show up in the training room. But gradually the fighter began to come to his senses and again won victories.
However, bad inclinations still did not allow Tyson to regain the champion title.
On September 9, 1991, the Indiana Grand Jury voted to indict Mike Tyson on three counts, including rape. Mike Tyson was sentenced on February 10, 1992 to four years.
After returning from prison, Mike Tyson again regained the WBA champion title in 1996. But subsequent events overshadow Mike Tyson's sporting achievements. In the ring he became simply uncontrollable. Just look at the fight with Evander Holyfield, when Tyson bit off a piece of his opponent’s ear. After this, disqualification followed again.
However, in January 1999, "Iron Mike" returned and knocked out South Africa's Francois Botha. And in February he went to prison again for fighting. From where, however, he soon came out.
In the next fight against Allin Norris, Mike Tyson, after the bell struck, announcing the end of the first round, struck his opponent with a left hand from below. Norris, who did not expect this, fell to the floor and injured his leg in the fall. The judges were at a loss, and the sports leadership of the state of Nevada was faced with the question of what to do with Mike Tyson this time.
On January 29, 2000, in Manchester, the notorious heavyweight Mike Tyson defeated British champion Julius Francis. And then there was a fight for the world champion title in the heavyweight category according to the IBF and WBC. Tyson tried to take away honorary titles from Briton Lennox Lewis. It didn’t work out, and the fight itself was extremely tough.
“Iron Mike” never returned to the ring...
Based on materials from The Daily Telegraph, Arguments and facts
Life after sports
Leaving professional boxing was a difficult decision for the 40-year-old athlete. He had a lot of debts and loans. To repay them, he performed in American cities with exhibition fights, but the money he earned was not enough to pay off all his debts. In 2003, the athlete was declared bankrupt.
Interesting!
Having completed his sports career, Mike decided to try to make a career in cinema, in which he began acting back in 1995. The athlete most often played himself. In 2008, he made his debut as a producer of a documentary film about himself, and also took part in television projects.
He is still interested in pigeons in his free time, and devotes most of his time to promoting his promotion company and producing projects. After finishing his sports career, the champion began to have health problems. With a height of 178 cm, after losing his athletic form, his weight increased significantly. In 2007-2009 he weighed 160 kg.
As a child, Tyson had lung problems. During the scandals in the late 80s of the last century, the boxer became addicted to alcohol. Later, drug addiction was added to alcoholism, which Mike could not get rid of until 2010.
All this had a very bad effect on his well-being, but the athlete managed to cope with excess weight and stopped drinking alcohol and drugs. Tyson was able to lose weight up to 120 kg by eliminating animal foods from his diet. Now he leads a healthy lifestyle, raising his many children from different marriages.
