Former boxer and current fight promoter Mike Tyson opened up on Opie Radio on Sirius XM about having been snatched from the street and sexually abused when he was 7 years old by an older, unknown man.
After talking about his demons, ego and how he escaped his abductor that day in Brooklyn, New York, Tyson was asked if he drastically changed after that incident. His answer: "I don't know if I did or not."
A Heavyweight Past
In 1989, actress Robin Givens divorced Tyson after one year of marriage, claiming that she had been the victim of domestic abuse, both before and after the nuptials. Recently, Givens spoke about after seeing the video of NFL star Ray Rice knocking out his now-wife.
"And then when I saw the second video of him actually punching Janay Rice unconscious, I thought, this is what happened to me," Givens wrote in an op-ed piece for Time. "The only difference was that when I came to, a doorman was carrying me over his shoulder, out of my fiancé's apartment, and into a car. I remember what my ex-husband told me later, which was that I bounced off two walls and I then was out."
Tyson addressed the tumultuous relationship with Givens in a 2013 interview with The Daily Beast.
"With Robin, I was young. I was a d--k. I've never been good at relationships," Tyson said. "My mother's never been good at relationships, and my father's never been good at relationships. All my friends always had another woman in their life. I call it my 'baseline bottom' -a lot of drugs, liquor, violence, and sex, where I'm not trying to improve myself as a person. I have intimacy problems."
"The Hangover" and "The Hangover Part 2" guest also commented on his 1991 arrest for rape and subsequent conviction. Tyson was convicted for the rape of 18-year-old Desiree Washington, Miss Black Rhode Island. He served three years of a 10 year sentence.
"I didn't rape her," Iron Mike told The Daily Beast. "They wanted to convict me more than anything in the world. There's not a person in the history of that state that got convicted for rape that did less time than I did. They wanted to be known for the state that convicted me. If the hanging judge really believed I did that, they would have given me 60 years."
Seventeen years ago, Tyson stepped back in the ring and the comeback king became famous again, but this time for biting Evander Holyfield's ear off. Tyson temporarily lost his boxing license.
Tyson appeared as an abuse-victim-turned-death-row-inmate on an episode of "Law & Order: SVU" in February 2014. The Sweeps week episode was watched by the show's smallest audience ever, according to The Washington Post.
The day after the episode aired, Tyson told Katie Couric that his history of rage was not focused on women.
"I was violent towards everybody," Tyson told her, according to The Washington Post.
Tyson has gained a reputation for being a bit of "an animal," but could his tough upbringing and past sexual abuse be the key to his anger?
The Comeback King
In February 2014, Tyson celebrated six months of sobriety, according to CBS Chicago.
"Every day I'm fighting," Tyson told the "McNeil and Speigel Show." "Any day can make me relapse ... Your conduct is sobriety. How you look at women, how you interact with people - that's all sobriety ... You got to work on your conduct. It's all about being a good person ... That's what sobriety's about, improvement as a person ... I've come a long way."
Tyson reiterated his maintained sobriety in May 2014.
"Hey, I've been, yes I am (sober), and I've been that way since my last discussion about it," Tyson told the NY Daily News. "It's a struggle, but as of now I'm winning. I can only deal with the moment, and as of this moment I'm dealing with it very well."
