Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson appeared in an interview with Netflix to answer some of the most burning questions about his life. This comes less than two weeks away from his mega-fight against YouTube boxing sensation Jake Paul at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, live on the video streaming platform. So, what were the questions?
‘Iron’ Mike didn’t always make the wisest decisions in life, some of them were as wild as they could get. Famously, Tyson owned not one, not two, but three Bengal tigers that lived in his home. Eventually, as the beasts grew, Tyson donated two tigers to a local sanctuary. However, he lived with one for 16 years.
During the interview, the first question revolved around his life with tigers. “Is it true that you once owned three big cats and slept beside them?” Responding to this, Tyson said something only Mike Tyson can say, “I did have three of them, two at one time, and I did sleep with them.” However, he immediately revealed that it was a big mistake.
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“They’re very possessive and start fighting each other,” Mike Tyson explained. “They want to get close to you and the other one’s in the way, and then you wake up and these two big monsters are fighting… It’s really crazy. And if they fought too, they’d kill the whole house, plants die and everything. So I stopped really bringing them in the house and bought another house for them.”
The second question was about Tyson eating raw meat for his upcoming fight. Despite Tyson’s ferocious reputation, Tyson denied eating raw meat while roping in his wife Lakiha Spicer. “I would never eat [any] damn raw meat,” Tyson said, repulsed by the idea. “My wife eats raw meat, but I don’t eat raw meat. It’s the Japanese stuff, sushi.”
Meanwhile, the third question took him back decades in the past to the incident, which made him start fighting.
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Mike Tyson is a typical grandpa
Tyson’s OG fans know the unfortunate and sad incident, which forced Tyson into a world of violence growing up, and in a way, sparked his interest in fighting. The third question, probed Tyson about the same incident when a bully snapped one of Tyson’s pet pigeon’s neck. “He’s a bully, took my bird and broke its head,” he recalled.
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“He’s just a real bad guy at that time, He’s a good guy now, but back then, he was a kid, he was a bad guy,” Tyson said. He went on to explain why fighting suddenly had taken over his life, stating, “When I fought, people were like applauding me and then I loved it. That was the first fight I ever had.”
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Meanwhile, the final question brought out the grandpa in Mike Tyson, who was asked about the funniest thing he had read about himself on the internet. In a surprising twist, he responded, “I don’t read the internet and look at the internet. I don’t know how to get on the internet.” He claimed while he knows what to turn on to get on the internet, “I wouldn’t know what to press and how to press or what to spell to get on the internet.”
That being said, with just days left until his professional return to the ring against Jake Paul, Tyson’s latest interview with Netflix offered fans a rare glimpse into his life—something we can never get enough of. What was your favorite question or answer from the interview?
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Is Tyson's fight with Jake Paul a clash of eras or just a publicity stunt?