Mike Tyson believes he should never have been alive long enough to fight Jake Paul. Not because of injuries from fights, but because of AIDS.
Tyson recently told Interview Magazine he “shouldn’t even be here talking” after an experience years ago when he shared a sex partner with a friend and both of them died of the disease.
“Life isn’t over yet,” Tyson said. “We’re still fighting. We only make it out on the day of our death. There’s no way I should be here talking to you right now. All my friends are dead.
“They OD’d, they had AIDS. Me and my friend both had sex with this girl at the same time, and they both died of AIDS. I didn’t catch AIDS. Raw, too.”
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Tyson agreed he “has a spirit hovering him.”
“Amen. It’s something, sister,” Tyson said.
Mike Tyson, left, and Jake Paul face off during a weigh-ins at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas, ahead of their Nov. 15 heavyweight bout at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
At 58 years old, Tyson acknowledged he will eventually die at some point anyway. However, he doesn’t care about what legacy he leaves behind.
“What do I care about my legacy?” Tyson said. “I never knew what a legacy was, and people started throwing that word around so loosely. A legacy sounds like ego to me. I’m going to be dead soon. Who cares what somebody is going to think about me when I’m dead? We don’t talk about Charles Manson. No one cares about nobody when they’re dead and gone.”
Tyson was known to have an eccentric sex life in the prime of his career and was, at times, considered a “sex addict.”
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Tyson’s former bodyguard and chauffeur, Rudy Gonzalez, told the U.S. Sun in 2021 Tyson needed sex so frequently to maintain his lifestyle that he was instructed to keep “groupies” in the bathrooms and changing rooms at the venues before fights.
“I would have to find a groupie. It did not matter who it was. He’d say, ‘If I do not get laid, I will kill this guy right now,'” Gonzalez said. “Mike had to get laid to disengage some of the strength he had. So, I had girls tucked away in bathrooms and changing rooms.”
Mike Tyson speaks at the final press conference for his upcoming heavyweight fight against Jake Paul at Toyota Music Factory Nov. 13, 2024, in Irving, Texas. (Ed Mulholland/Getty Images)
Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992. Tyson, then 25, was arrested in July 1991 for attacking 18-year-old Desiree Washington in a hotel room. Despite claiming his innocence, Tyson was convicted and was required under federal law to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
In his memoir, “Undisputed Truth,” published in 2013, he recounted the lead-up to his trial.
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Boxer Mike Tyson on the field before a game between the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Sept. 15, 2024. (Kevin Jairaj/Imagn Images)
“I spent most of the six weeks between my conviction for rape and sentencing traveling around the country romancing all of my various girlfriends,” the memoir says. “It was my way of saying goodbye to them. And when I wasn’t with them, I was fending off all the women who propositioned me. Everywhere I’d go, there were some women who would come up to me and say, ‘Come on, I’m not going to say that you raped me. You can come with me. I’ll let you film it’.
“I later realized that that was their way of saying, ‘We believe you didn’t do it’. But I didn’t take it that way. I’d strike back indignantly with a rude response. Although they were saying what they said out of support, I was in too much pain to realize it. I was an ignorant, mad, bitter guy who had a lot of growing up to do.”
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