Who is Mike Tyson? A boxer of exception who made the crowds stand up in the middle of the night on his name alone at his peak? A powerhouse of nature who has been through the highest and lowest levels? A guy who is no better than his unflattering reputation?
Not saying anyone can answer that. Nor does the man himself know how to answer it. With his name once again coming up as he punched a fellow passenger on an airplane, in this article, we take a look into his life with the false air of a play in 21 chapters. Stay tuned!
At 13 years old, his record counts no less than 38 arrests. And when he lost his mother to cancer three years later, the wound opened up that would never close: “I never saw my mother happy or proud of me. She knew only the bad side; she saw me coming home with new clothes that she knew I had not paid for. I never had a chance to talk to her, to know her better. emotionally it devastated me.”
Although he is a certified punk, Mike is regularly bullied by boys and girls his age because of his chubby appearance and the hair on his tongue.
More of an introvert, at age 9, he found refuge in pigeon breeding, a love that would stay with him for the rest of his life – in the early 2000s, the domesticated more than a thousand of them on his New York property.
“Pigeons are the first people I have loved in my life. I do not know why, but for me, they are not so different from humans.”
Sadly, when his friends heard about his new hobby, they came to visit him to steal his birds. One of them takes the opportunity to torture another and then rip off its head despite Tyson’s pleas. Suddenly, out of control, he, who up to then was not a brawler, hit someone in the face for the first time in his life.
According to his admission, he took “pleasure” in beating him up; from then on, he did not hesitate to throw punches, including against 30-year-olds who refused to pay him when he won the dice against them.
Imprisoned at the age of 14 at the Tryon School for Boys juvenile detention center following another arrest, Mike Tyson wanted to try his hand at English boxing. There, former professional Bobby Stewart (45 wins, 5 losses) imposed him to spend one month without committing any disciplinary offence before training.
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