Things You Didn't Know About Mike Tyson

Image via Getty/Lintao Zhang

Tyson is best known as the face of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!, though he was reportedly only paid $50,000 to be the face of his own game. Following his rise as a boxer and the success of that game, video game publishing giant Capcom attempted to capitalize on his image as well, and created a boss character named M. Bison for Street Fighter II. The character looked a lot like Tyson, or at least as much as a video game version would look on primitive hardware.

But most Street Fighter fans will know that Tyson looks nothing like the character named M. Bison, and that’s because Capcom had to switch the names of two characters in order to avoid a legal dispute. The African-American boxer character switched names with another character, and his avatar officially adopted the name Balrog in the full release, while his namesake M. Bison lived on as a boss character in future Street Fighter games.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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."

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The average kid’s toughest opponent are his friends on the playground, but Tyson found himself faced by another antagonist: his local garbage man. Tyson has had a lifelong love for pigeons, and when his favorite childhood bird died, a sanitation worker came to take the crate he was stowed in and throw it in a trash compactor. Let Tyson explain the rest.

“I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand, he was out cold,” said Tyson, “convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard.” That’s one way of putting it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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When you have the type of money Tyson did in his prime—the man did make more than Michael Jordan at one point, after all—it affords you a whole lot of partying. And Tyson took advantage of that fact, to the point that his drug use had to be factored in during pre-fight prep. To get by the drug-testing, Tyson claims he whipped out a fake penis.

"You take it out - it has somebody else's urine in it, of course—you hope it's not a woman's urine and they take a pregnancy test," Tyson told Chelsea Handler in 2013. "You just make noise, and normally if you're a guy and you pull it out in front of the [the drug tester], they're like, whoa, whoa.”

Maybe just don't do drugs? This seems like a lot of effort.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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Boxing is a dangerous, violent sport, and with that territory comes a healthy respect for the sort of damage an opponent can do to you. Most guys say they want to “destroy” or “dominate” their opponent, but Tyson had another objective in mind: he wanted to actually kill an opponent. Here’s what he had to say after being asked whether he ever feared he might kill someone.

“Yes, but I was so disappointed that I didn’t,” said Tyson. Although I'm happy now that I didn’t."

Completely normal thing for a human being to say.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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As usual, it’s a lot better to just let Tyson explain this one.

"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin (his wife). When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big Silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas,” said Tyson. “They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined.”

Not sure what that gorilla did to Tyson to deserve that rage, but who are we to ask questions? It’s probably best to avoid getting our own snotboxes smashed.

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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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