Though he preferred to live a normal life without all the limelight and media attention, he came under the knife once again after being arrested on suspicion of DUI and felony drug possession. He spent 24 hours in jail and offered 360 hours of community service. To save himself off the year-long sentence, Tyson checked himself into a rehabilitation centre.
Born on June 30, 1966, Michael Gerard Tyson didn’t initially seem like the kind of boy who would grow up to be a fearsome and powerful fighter. According to ESPN, Tyson described himself as “a little fat kid with glasses” who was frequently hounded by bullies.
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During this time, he constantly made headlines. In separate incidents, he’d gotten into a brawl outside the ring with fighter Mitch Green, crashed his car into a tree, and attacked a news crew that had caught him on a morning run.
It was a stunning turnaround for the champ who once seemed so unbeatable, so exciting, and of course it brought an immediate backlash. In the popular mind, Tyson was now a brutal thug who could not control his impulses, and had landed where he should have been all along. Before long Tyson was in trouble, accused of assaulting a guard, and placed in solitary confinement. Before long, odd stories began to leak out, that Tyson was reading up on communism. Perhaps this was a response to rumors that Don King was squandering his fortune, that Tyson might be a penniless proletarian by the end of his jail term. There were stories that he had converted to Islam. People wondered if Tyson was a changed man. At any rate, he emerged from prison on March 25, 1995, having served only three of his six years.
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Tyson has been married three times; the first was to the TV actress Robin Givens when he was 21, after a fevered courtship. The yearlong marriage proved disastrous, culminating in an infamous 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, in which Givens described the marriage as “pure hell” — while he sat passively beside her, drugged on manic-depression medication. (“I’m tripolar,” he tells me laughingly when I ask him how he’d diagnose his condition today.) He went on to have two children with Turner; he also considers himself a father to Turner’s daughter Gena. Turner, who is on friendly terms with Tyson, filed for divorce in 2002, citing adultery. Along the way, Tyson, a notorious womanizer, sired two more children — 8-year-old Miguel and Exodus — with Xochitl. Tyson keeps in touch with all of his brood, speaking especially proudly of his oldest son, 13-year-old Amir, who is six feet tall. “He’s just nervous and afraid of life,” he says, sounding an apprehensive note. “But he’s doing so well. . . . There are no bad influences. I have so many hopes for him.”
From Tyson’s official (and verified) Facebook page come words of wisdom about the new generation of backtalkers who hide behind their screens when they have something to say. The former champ thinks little of critics who conceal themselves behind a keyboard.
Tyson resides in Seven Hills, Nevada. He has been married three times, and has seven children, one deceased, with three women; in addition to his biological children, Tyson includes his second wife’s oldest daughter as one of his own.
Years later, in January 2023, a New York woman filed a lawsuit accusing Tyson of raping her outside a nightclub in March 1991 and seeking $5 million in damages. The case was moved to U.S. District Court in Albany later that year, and a trial date hasn’t been set.
During this period, Tyson’s problems outside the ring were also beginning to emerge. His marriage to Robin Givens was heading for divorce, and his future contract was being fought over by Don King and Bill Cayton. In late 1988, Tyson parted with manager Bill Cayton and fired longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, the man many credit for honing Tyson’s craft after the death of D’Amato. Following Rooney’s departure, critics alleged that Tyson began to show less head movement and combination punching.
In his prime, the 5-foot-10 Tyson generally competed at just under 220 pounds. His day-to-day weight became much higher after retirement. He revealed in November 2020 he had lost around 100 pounds, thanks to a new vegan diet and a lot of time on a treadmill, ahead of an exhibition fight against Roy Jones Jr.