Mike Tyson’s criminal past catches up with him as he meets a fan before fight with Jake Paul who claimed the former undisputed heavyweight champion ‘robbed him’ as a kid
Mike Tyson has been confronted by a man who accused the boxing icon of robbing him as a youth – and the former baddest man on the planet showed he has come a long way since his troubled, crime-filled youth as he reacted to the news.
Tyson – who was the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990 – is set to face YouTuber Jake Paul in Texas on Friday night.
It will be Iron Mike’s first professional fight in 19 years and the 58-year-old has spent the majority of this year training hard in the gym for his return to the ring.
During a Netflix show previewing the bout, Tyson returned to his hometown of Brownsville – one of New York’s roughest neighborhoods in the 1980s – and bumped into a man who wanted a photograph with him.
‘You robbed me when I was eight years old on Amboy and Pitkin,’ the man said, referring to the corner of Pitkin Avenue and Amboy Street in Brooklyn.
Tyson was shocked by the remark and asked, ‘I robbed you?’ before turning to the camera and saying, ‘Now he’s blaming me for robbing him.’
Fifty-eight-year-old Mike Tyson (left) will fight Jake Paul, 27, in Arlington, Texas on Friday night
The man fired back: ‘He robbed me when I was a kid, bro. By the Woolworth’s store. You remember Woolworth’s?’
Tyson smiled and apologised to the man.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
The man smiled back, not holding a grudge, and said, ‘No, don’t worry about it, baby.’
Tyson opened up about his difficult childhood in his 2013 autobiography, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.
Born in Cumberland Hospital in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in 1966, Tyson never really knew his father, Percel.
And the man his mother, Lorna Mae, told him was his ‘biological father,’ Jimmy ‘Curlee’ Kirkpatrick Jr, was an infrequent presence in both their lives.
Boxing trainer Cus D’Amato transformed young Mike Tyson (pictured together) into a boxing phenomenon
‘Iron Mike’ is widely considered as one of the most terrifying heavyweights of all time
Tyson became the undisputed world champion in 1988, adding The Ring and the lineal titles to his collection after knocking out Michael Spinks in the first round (pictured demolishing Trevor Berbick in 1986)
By the time Tyson was seven his mother had lost her job as a matron at the Women’s House of Detention in Manhattan, and she and her children had been evicted.
The future champion began a career of petty crime aged seven – clambering into houses through windows older boys were too large to fit through and stealing whatever he could get his hands on.
His early boyhood took on a relentless rhythm of crime sprees which saw him hauled in by police only to be taken home and brutally beaten by his despairing mother.
By the time he was 12 he was a ‘zonked out zombie’ on Thorazine and a regular attendee of reformatory school, or ‘special-ed crazy school’.
Tyson cannot recall many light spots from his childhood, but one that stands out happened during a stint in the reformatory school at Sporford.
He once recalled: ‘We watched a movie called “The Greatest” about Muhammad Ali. When it was over… we were shocked when Ali himself walked out on that stage.
‘I thought, I want to be that guy.’
