The former WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight champion Mike Tyson spoke about the black chapters of his career before the start of his “Champion Tour”.
“I had to change in order to survive. I couldn’t survive in the boxing world any longer. I no longer existed,” Tyson told the news portal t-online.de.
The 51-year-old travels through Germany between April 19 and 28 and talks about his active career, which included drugs, alcohol and depression. “Hillary Clinton once said,’It takes an entire village to raise a child.'” “It took an entire village to get me off the drugs and all the alcohol.”
In the meantime he had become “a different person” and had tried out “new things”. Today Tyson tries his hand at acting (like in the movie “Hangover”) and plays his shows. “I wanted to go back to the’real world’ and just be’Mike’,” Tyson explained.
Tyson tries to leave his former self behind: “This man just wanted to fight and beat people up. He wanted to show people:’Hey, I am the greatest’. I always remember it could happen again if I don’t take it seriously.”