In 1992, Tyson was convicted of rape and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released on parole after three years. After his release in 1995, he engaged in a series of comeback fights, regaining the WBA and WBC titles in 1996 to join Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to have regained a heavyweight championship after losing it. After being stripped of the WBC title in the same year, Tyson lost the WBA title to Evander Holyfield by an eleventh round stoppage. Their 1997 rematch ended when Tyson was disqualified for biting Holyfield’s ears, one bite notoriously being strong enough to remove a portion of his right ear. In 2002, Tyson fought for the world heavyweight title, losing by knockout to Lennox Lewis.
On social media, fans often share photos and stories related to the Mike Tyson tattoo, showcasing their own Tyson-inspired tattoos or expressing their admiration for his iconic ink. The tattoo serves as a center of fan engagement and discussion.
Bobby looked over at Cus and he said it was like watching a movie. Cus’s face turned red and he looked over at his friends who were there and everyone was smiling. Bobby later told me it was like Cus’s body had miraculously transformed. “His whole face lit up. You ever see a guy that gets scared and his hair stands up? Well, Cus had no hair but that’s what it reminded me of. His eyes opened wide and it was like ‘I have life again.’”
One day I went into this neighborhood in Crown Heights and I robbed a house with this older guy. We found $2,200 in cash, and he cut me in for $600. So I went to a pet store and bought a hundred bucks’ worth of birds. They put them in a crate for me, and the owner helped me get them on the subway. When I got off, I had somebody from my neighborhood help me drag the crate to the condemned building where I was hiding my pigeons. But this guy went and told some kids that I had all these birds. So a guy named Gary Flowers and some friends of his came and started to rob me. My mother saw them messing with the birds and told me, and I ran out into the street and confronted them. They saw me coming and stopped grabbing the birds, but this guy Gary still had one of them under his coat.
Whitmill sued Warner Bros. in April, saying that he did not give permission for the company to mimic the motif for actor Ed Helms’ character “Stu” in the movie. He claimed the filmmakers copied the design that he tattooed on Tyson in 2003 in Las Vegas.
However, the story of Tyson’s face tattoo actually goes back several years earlier. According to Tyson himself, he was inspired to get the tattoo after seeing a similar design on the face of a Maori warrior during a trip to New Zealand. The Maori are an indigenous Polynesian people who have a rich cultural heritage and traditions that date back thousands of years. One of their most well-known customs is the practice of facial tattoos, which are known as moko.
If you see someone with an interesting tattoo, you will likely ask him why he chose it, when he decided to get the tattoo that would stay on his body forever, or what it means to him. The same is true for Mike Tyson, who holds special meaning behind each of his six tattoos.
In time, another communist appeared on Tyson’s body – Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, a personality as dubious as he was famous. The bloody Latin American politician, who fanatically imposes the order known to him alone in one country or another, fits perfectly with the boxer’s turbulent biography, where aggression often went beyond the ring.
Etienne’s life tragically spun out of control in a way many feared Tyson’s would after he finished fighting. But at least Etienne got to share the ring with one of the most feared and famous heavyweights of any era – even if the whole event is there a super heavyweight division in boxing mainly remembered for just how bizarre it all was.
“You would think Tank is a brawler, but he really is a boxer-puncher. He moves well. He moves his head well. He can beat you all kinds of ways. He can knock you out. Or he can box you. Cruz reminds me the most of who I was. He comes at you with bad intentions. And he keeps coming at you. He gave Tank his toughest fight. Right now, I hope the younger kids wear the Tyson Pro equipment because it is the best—not because it has my name on it. My biggest concern, and my most important concern is the safety of the fighters, and to make sure they’re protected.”
The gold caps on his teeth are gone, as are the frenzied trappings of celebrity: the nonstop partying, the cars, the jewelry, the pet tiger, the liters of Cristal. Mike Tyson — who was once addicted, by his own account, “to everything” — now lives in what might be described as a controlled environment of his own making, a clean, well-lighted but very clearly demarcated place. The 44-year-old ex-heavyweight champion is in bed by 8 and often up as early as 2 in the morning, at which point he takes a solitary walk around the gated compound in the Las Vegas suburb where he lives while listening to R&B on his iPod. Tyson then occupies himself with reading (he’s an avid student of history, philosophy and psychology), watching karate movies or taking care of his homing pigeons, who live in a coop in the garage, until 6, when his wife, Lakiha (known as Kiki), gets up. The two of them go to a spa nearby where they work out and often get a massage before settling into the daily routine of caring for a 2-year-old daughter, Milan, and a newborn son, Morocco; they also run Tyrannic, a production company they own. It is a willfully low-key life, one in which Tyson’s wilder impulses are held in check by his inner solid citizen.
