Mike Tyson

Catskill and Cus D'Amato

Michael Gerard Tyson was born on 30 June 1966 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Brownsville. As a teenager he was sent to the Tryon School for Boys, a juvenile facility in Johnstown, New York. A counselor there, former boxer Bobby Stewart, taught him the basics and introduced him to Cus D'Amato, the trainer who had taken Floyd Patterson and José Torres to world titles.

D'Amato brought him to his gym in Catskill, upstate New York, and became his legal guardian. Kevin Rooney did most of the training, with Teddy Atlas assisting for a time. As an amateur, Tyson won the Junior Olympics in 1981 and 1982 and the Golden Gloves in 1984, finishing 24 and 3. Two of those losses were decisions to Henry Tillman, who went on to win Olympic gold in Los Angeles.

D'Amato taught him the peek-a-boo style: gloves high against the cheeks, head always moving, slipping and weaving under punches. Tyson dipped before throwing hooks and uppercuts so the power came from his legs. At 1.78 m, shorter than most heavyweights, he fought on the inside.

The youngest heavyweight champion

Tyson turned pro on 6 March 1985 in Albany, stopping Hector Mercedes in the first round. D'Amato died that November. On 22 November 1986 in Las Vegas, Tyson stopped Trevor Berbick in the second round to take the WBC belt. At 20 years and 4 months he was the youngest heavyweight champion ever. He added the WBA title in March 1987 and the IBF title in August, the first heavyweight to hold all three at once.

On 27 June 1988 he knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds. On 11 February 1990 in Tokyo he lost his titles to James "Buster" Douglas, counted out in the tenth round, one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.

Comeback and final years

Convicted in 1992, he spent three years in prison and returned to the ring in 1995. In 1996 he regained the WBC belt from Frank Bruno and the WBA belt from Bruce Seldon. Evander Holyfield beat him in the eleventh round in November 1996; in the rematch on 28 June 1997, Tyson was disqualified for biting Holyfield's ears. Lennox Lewis knocked him out in the eighth round on 8 June 2002. He quit after retiring on his stool against Kevin McBride on 11 June 2005, with 50 wins, 44 inside the distance. He entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2020 he boxed a draw in an exhibition with Roy Jones Jr., and on 15 November 2024, aged 58, he lost a decision to Jake Paul.

From the ring to the screen

On film, Tyson first played himself: James Toback's Black and White (1999), Rocky Balboa (2006) and The Hangover (2009), where the tiger in the heroes' villa turns out to be his. Toback also made the documentary Tyson, shown at Cannes in 2008. In 2012 he took his one-man show Undisputed Truth, directed by Spike Lee, to Broadway; HBO aired it in 2013. From 2014 to 2019 he voiced his animated self in the series Mike Tyson Mysteries.

Wilson Yip's Ip Man 3 (2015) gave him his first real acting part: Frank, an American property developer and boxer who dares Ip Man (Donnie Yen) to last three minutes against him. Yen improvised some of the choreography on set, and Tyson broke a finger during an action scene. He has since returned to action films with Kickboxer: Retaliation (2018), alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vendetta (2022) and Asphalt City (2023), in which he plays the chief of a New York paramedic crew.