Michael Tyson’s birthday today was born on June 30, 1966. He is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005.
He reigned as the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990 and was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles, as well as the only heavyweight to successively unify them.
Claiming his first belt at 20 years, four months, and 22 days old, Tyson holds the record as the youngest boxer to win a heavyweight title.
Tyson won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, 12 of them in the first round.
He won the WBC title in 1986 after stopping Trevor Berbick in the second round, and added the WBA and IBF titles after defeating James Smith and Tony Tucker in 1987.
The following year, Tyson became the lineal champion when he knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds of the first round.
He successfully defended his titles nine times, which included victories over Larry Holmes and Frank Bruno.
In 1990, Michael Tyson’s birthday today he lost the titles to underdog Buster Douglas, who knocked him out in the tenth round. Attempting to regain the titles, Tyson defeated Donovan Ruddock twice in 1991, but pulled out of a fight with then-undisputed heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield (who had defeated Douglas later in 1990) due to a rib injury.
In 1992, Tyson was convicted for rape and sentenced to six years in prison, although he was released on parole after three years.
After his release in 1995, he engaged in a series of comeback fights.
He won the WBC and WBA titles in 1996, after stopping Frank Bruno and Bruce Seldon.
Picture: Mike Tyson’s Daily Training Routine Was Insane Even by His Standards.
With his defeat of Bruno, Tyson joined Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield, and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to have regained a heavyweight championship after having lost it.
After being stripped of the WBC title in the same year, Tyson lost the WBA title to Evander Holyfield by an eleventh round stoppage. Their 1997 rematch ended when Tyson was disqualified for biting Holyfield’s ears.
Tyson was known for his ferocious and intimidating boxing style as well as his controversial behavior inside and outside the ring.
Nicknamed “Iron” and “Kid Dynamite” in his early career, and later known as “The Baddest Man on the Planet”,Tyson is considered one of the best heavyweights of all time.
Tyson holds the third longest unified championship reign in heavyweight history at eight consecutive defenses. He currently ranks No. 14 in BoxRec’s ranking of the greatest heavyweight boxers in history.
He was ranked No. 16 on The Ring’s list of 100 greatest punchers of all time and No. 1 in the ESPN.com list of “The Hardest Hitters in Heavyweight History”. Sky Sports described him as “perhaps the most ferocious fighter to step into a professional ring”.
He has been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame.
Mike Tyson’s birthday today his early life:
Michael Gerard Tyson was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1966.
He has an elder brother named Rodney (born c. 1961)[17] and had an elder sister named Denise, who died of a heart attack at age 24 in February 1990.
Tyson’s biological father is listed as “Purcell Tyson” (who was from Jamaica) on his birth certificate,[19][20] but the man Tyson had known as his father was Jimmy Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick was from Grier Town, North Carolina (a predominantly black neighborhood that was annexed by the city of Charlotte), where he was one of the neighborhood’s top baseball players. Kirkpatrick married and had a son, Tyson’s half-brother Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, who would help to integrate Charlotte high school football in 1965.
In 1959, Jimmy Kirkpatrick left his family and moved to Brooklyn, where he met Tyson’s mother, Lorna Mae (Smith) Tyson. Kirkpatrick frequented pool halls, gambled and hung out on the streets.
“My father was just a regular street guy caught up in the street world”, Tyson said. Kirkpatrick abandoned the Tyson family around the time Mike was born, leaving Tyson’s mother to care for the children on her own.
Kirkpatrick died in 1992.
The family lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant until their financial burdens necessitated a move to Brownsville when Tyson was 10 years old.
Michael Tyson’s birthday today his mother died six years later, leaving 16-year-old Tyson in the care of boxing manager and trainer Cus D’Amato, who would become his legal guardian. Tyson later said, “I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: she only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn’t pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it’s crushing emotionally and personally.”
Picture: Tyson in a press conference sharing his experiences in the ring
Throughout his childhood, Tyson lived in and around neighborhoods with a high rate of crime. According to an interview in Details, his first fight was with a bigger youth who had pulled the head off one of Tyson’s pigeons.
Tyson was repeatedly caught committing petty crimes and fighting those who ridiculed his high-pitched voice and lisp.
By the age of 13, he had been arrested 38 times.
He ended up at the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, New York. Tyson’s emerging boxing ability was discovered there by Bobby Stewart, a juvenile detention center counselor and former boxer.
Stewart considered Tyson to be an outstanding fighter and trained him for a few months before introducing him to Cus D’Amato.
Tyson dropped out of high school as a junior.
He would be awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Central State University in 1989.[29] Kevin Rooney also trained Tyson, and he was occasionally assisted by Teddy Atlas, although Atlas was dismissed by D’Amato when Tyson was 15. Rooney eventually took over all training duties for the young fighter.
Amateur Career:
As an amateur, Tyson won gold medals at the 1981 and 1982 Junior Olympic Games, defeating Joe Cortez in 1981 and beating Kelton Brown in 1982. Brown’s corner threw in the towel in the first round.
He fought Henry Tillman twice as an amateur, losing both bouts by decision. Tillman went on to win heavyweight gold at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Michael Tyson’s birthday today his popular culture:
At the height of his fame and career in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Tyson was one of the most recognized sports personalities in the world.
In addition to his many sporting accomplishments, his outrageous and controversial behavior in the ring and in his private life has kept him in the public eye and in the courtroom.
As such, Tyson has been the subject of myriad popular media including movies, television, books and music.
He has also been featured in video games and as a subject of parody or satire. Tyson became involved in professional wrestling and has made many cameo appearances in film and television.
The film Tyson was released in 1995 and was directed by Uli Edel.
It explores the life of Mike Tyson, from the death of his guardian and trainer Cus D’Amato to his rape conviction. Tyson is played by Michael Jai White.
Published in 2007, author Joe Layden’s book The Last Great Fight: The Extraordinary Tale of Two Men and How One Fight Changed Their Lives Forever, chronicled the lives of Tyson and Douglas before and after their heavyweight championship fight.
In 2008, the documentary Tyson premiered at the annual Cannes Film Festival in France.
He is the titular character in Mike Tyson Mysteries, which started airing on October 27, 2014 on Adult Swim. In the show, Tyson voices a fictionalized version of himself.
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