[Kilbey]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/sports/natio...ide050611.htmlArticle.

Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson authored yet another bizarre chapter Saturday night in what could be the end of his professional boxing career.

Tyson, 38, quit on his stool against unheralded Irish fighter Kevin McBride after a foul-filled sixth round.

After suffering his third loss in four bouts – two against fighters with shaky credentials – Tyson talked about possibly hanging up his gloves once and for all.

"I don't have the stomach for this anymore," Tyson said. "I most likely won't fight anymore. I'm not going to disrespect the sport by losing to this calibre of fighters."

Tyson, a heavy favourite heading into the bout, controlled most of the early action. However, he appeared to fatigue quickly after a few rounds, winging sloppy shots with the intention of scoring a one-punch knockout.

The sixth round is where things got dirty.

Tyson was penalized two points for head butting McBride and opening a gash over his opponent's left eye. He also appeared at one point to try to break McBride's arm.

At the end of the round, McBride pushed a visibly exhausted Tyson to the canvas and the former undisputed champion got his head stuck between the first and second ropes. He gingerly got up and wobbled back to sit on a stool in his corner.

When referee Joe Cortez came to check on Tyson, his corner said their fighter could no longer continue.

Tyson was ahead 57-55 on two of the judges' scorecards at the time the fight was called, while McBride had a 57-55 edge on another.

Tyson was paid $5 million US for Saturday's fight, while McBride received $150,000.

$5 million to get your butt kicked. And the guy who kicked his butt gets $150,000. That is why boxing today sucks.

[Ω]

Originally Posted by Kilbey

http://www.cbc.ca/story/sports/natio...ide050611.htmlArticle.



$5 million to get your butt kicked. And the guy who kicked his butt gets $150,000. That is why boxing today sucks.

They don't pay Tyson to box, they pay to see him flip out and do something stupid.

I personally think he has a career on WWE

[Superchicken]

Haha,

JR: "Oh my Gawd, Oh my Gawd, Oh my Gawd, it's the Tyson ear bite! The Tyson ear bite! Damn that Tyson! Damn him! I think I just repeated myself a lot, I think I just repeated myself a lot..."

[brapper]

tyson is a show. not a boxer.

[lavar78]

He's been done for a long time now.

[Anand]

The sad thing is that two of the three judges had Tyson leading the bout by a huge margin That is what is criminal about boxing. The only difference between this and the WWE is that the boxers are real but the judging is fixed. That is what is sad. Anybody that watched the fight saw Tyson getting beaten badly.

[Zimphire]

I remember Tyson's old fights.

The ones that would last less than a minute.

[Cody Dawg]

Poor bastard. He's only got $5 million to last him the rest of his life because that's probably all he'll have.

2003:

Tyson's finances down for the count
By Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press

NEW YORK — A diamond necklace worth as much as some houses. More than $300,000 in limousine rides. Sixty thousand dollars worth of rugs. Mike Tyson's Manhattan bankruptcy filing lays out the surprising ease with which the former heavyweight champion burned through hundreds of millions of dollars during his career.

Boxer Mike Tyson has "discovered that his debts far exceeded his assets," his attorney said.

Tyson, 37, now has pegged much of his hope for financial resurrection on a lawsuit against Don King that could go to trial in September, according to the filings. The suit claims King cheated Tyson out of millions after he got out of prison in 1995 and went back to fighting for the promoter.

"There's no question that the lawsuit could potentially be the largest asset of his estate," Tyson attorney Debra Grassgreen said.

Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champ at 20, grossing an estimated $300 million in the ring over the years. He is suing his former promoter for $100 million.

The boxer describes the litigation as part of his "substantial intangible assets" in a filing that traces the arc of his career beginning with the words, "I am a professional boxer and a former heavyweight champion of the world."

It goes on to recount his rape conviction, the 1997 bout when he bit Evander Holyfield's ears, and alleged financial mismanagement by King, whose spokesman did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

The filing catalogues numerous claims against Tyson, including millions of dollars in back taxes, lawsuits, child-support payments and more spending on luxury goods than many people make in a lifetime.

Tyson, for example, owes $308,749.60 to CLS Transportation, a limousine company that charges about $100 an hour for the eight-person stretch limos that Tyson favors, the company's chief operating officer, Leon Reitzenstein, said Tuesday.

The debt has been incurred since Tyson's loss to Lennox Lewis in Memphis, last year, Reitzenstein said.

"He has been with us for quite some time. He is a good client. We have no reason to believe that he'll leave us hanging," Reitzenstein said.

Tyson filed for Chapter 11 protection Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

Grassgreen said there are so many lawsuits filed by and against Tyson that it's nearly impossible to accurately describe his current financial status.

Earlier this year, as part of a divorce settlement, Tyson agreed to pay his ex-wife, Monica, $6.5 million from future earnings.

"It's very difficult to tell what the actual assets and liabilities are," Grassgreen said, although both categories almost certainly are in the tens of millions of dollars.

Tyson's debts are largely the doing of former managers and associates who mishandled his money, said his spokeswoman, Raymone Bain.

"Mike Tyson's personal expenditure has been far exaggerated," Bain said. "What has been expended on his behalf is triple, quadruple what Mike Tyson has personally spent."

Tyson is optimistic that he will be able to reorganize and pay his debts, Bain said.

"It's going to require some real work on his part," said Sandy Ain, attorney for Tyson's ex-wife Monica Turner. "It's clear that he has eroded an astounding amount of money over recent years."

Included in the "astounding" category is Tyson's purchase last year of a 40-inch white gold necklace with 80 carats worth of diamonds from a Las Vegas jewelry emporium. The tab: $173,706.05.

"We've developed very good relations so I don't believe he'll stiff me with it," said Mordechai Yerushalmi, owner of The Jewelers. "Compared to all the purchases he's made with me over the years, it's very little."

Besides his financial problems, Tyson is also facing possible jail time again.

He pleaded innocent last month to misdemeanor assault, harassment and disorderly conduct charges for pummeling two men during a brawl at a Brooklyn hotel on June 21. Tyson's lawyers claimed his actions were justified because the two men allegedly menaced the boxer first by telling him they were armed. Prosecutors say the assault went too far.

Tyson, who served three years in prison for rape in the 1990s, faces up to a year if convicted of the latest charges.

Link.

[Cody Dawg]

2005: Tyson will make about $250,000 from $5 million

By Ron Borges
NBCSports.com contributor
Updated: 2:52 a.m. ET June 11, 2005

Tyson is conning us - and himself


WASHINGTON - Mike Tyson says he's a new man. Considering his financial plight, he'd best be a new fighter as well.

Tyson returns to the ring Saturday night for the first time since he was beaten by British journeyman Danny Williams more than a year ago. Tyson is fighting an even less formidable opponent this time in Kevin McBride, an Irish heavyweight who was knocked out several years ago by a guy (Michael Murray) who had lost 17 of his previous 18 fights.

That being the case, Tyson has been the picture of calm and rectitude in the weeks leading up to what seems a glorified sparring session. He has been introspective in nearly every interview, talking about the many problems of his checkered past, his failures outside the ring as well as inside it and his desire to change. At times he sounds like he's auditioning for a role on Dr. Phil's television show.

This has led many to speculate that there is a new Mike Tyson in our midst, an older and wiser Tyson who will turn 39 on June 30, an age that has caused him to re-evaluate his life and try to turn it around after having blown all of the $400 million he grossed in purses and squandering what was once a unique talent.

Tyson doesn't deny any of these foibles, although he often seems to fall back on the difficulties of his youth as an explanation for most of it, as if no one else ever had a difficult time as a child. But the bigger issue at the moment for him is that he remains deeply in debt to the Internal Revenue Service and more than a few other creditors. To get out of that debt, he has to start winning in a hurry. Whether he's still capable of that is debatable, although that's won't be a factor against McBride, who Tyson called "a tomato can'' Wednesday.

That was a pretty unkind remark coming from a guy who keeps talking about wanting to become a better person, but if accuracy is any defense, Tyson is covered. McBride is nothing more than a sacrificial lamb whose presence at the MCI Center will allow Tyson to earn $5 million, although he will leave with little of it. It is a fight that will tell the world nothing about what Tyson has left as a boxer, which is probably not an accident because there's a sneaking suspicion that what he has left is like what he has left from his purses — not much.

"It's not about being the best fighter in the world or the worst fighter in the world,'' Tyson said this week. "It's about being a better person. A championship belt doesn't define who I am as a person.''

Tyson has already proven that the last two times he wore such belts but for a guy who still owes various creditors over $20 million it had best become about being among the best fighters in the world because that is the only way he's ever going to get the albatross of debt off his back.

When Tyson filed for bankruptcy protection he claimed to be $34 million in debt after having earned over $400 million. He still owes more than $12 million in back taxes to the IRS and will, of course, owe them an additional 38 per cent or so off his purse Saturday night, meaning the selection of a nonentity like McBride was as much a financial decision as a professional one after losing to Williams in his last outing.

If one does the math, of the $5 million he will receive on Saturday Tyson will net about $250,000. That's after roughly $2 million in taxes and another $2 million that will go to the bankruptcy court and another $750,000 that will end up in the hands of his ex-wife, Monica Turner, who is said to have worked hard to make this weekend's card in Washington a success and with good reason.

That leaves $250,000 but Tyson will still have to pay new trainer Jeff Fenech and assorted other camp personnel as well as other creditors so what he nets is, simply put, not much. Yet he has to continue fighting for dwindling paydays because he has no choice and he has to fight guys like McBride for as long as possible because his handlers know he needs several big wins to get himself at least to the end of what promoter Darryl Stuckey claims is a three-fight option deal he's negotiated with Tyson that is supposed to lead to a big-money title fight with WBC champion Vitali Klitschko.

For Tyson to get there he must win two or three more fights and he must also find a way not to derail himself outside the ring as he has in the past. That, one fears, as much as any new found sense of self-awareness is what is fueling the present round of "Mike Tyson warrior-philosopher.''

"I'm a bankrupt guy,'' Tyson said this week. "Having money is not going to make you a decent person ... When it's all over, I don't want people to say Mike Tyson was dishonorable and didn't pay his debts.''

That's a great sentiment but how does a "bankrupt guy" buy a $2.1 million, 7,788 square foot home outside of Phoenix, as Tyson recently did?

Where does he come up with the $420,000 down payment he said he had to place on it to secure a mortgage? How does he make the $11,000 monthly mortgage payment? And who pays for the gas in his Rolls Royce, Hummer SUV and BMW coupe?

Link.

Edit: I did say I felt sorry for him and now I only feel partially sorry for him. I see that his ex wife is the one pushing the guy to get his head pummeled in and any pride he has left taken away by throwing fights - she wants money. What a cautionary tale.

[tikki]

Originally Posted by Ω

I personally think he has a career on WWE

Been there. Done that.

[ambush]

Originally Posted by Kilbey

http://www.cbc.ca/story/sports/natio...ide050611.htmlArticle.



$5 million to get your butt kicked. And the guy who kicked his butt gets $150,000. That is why boxing today sucks.

Capitalism demand/offer principles.

Move along, nothing to see here.

[mitchell_pgh]

Sad... He was an amazing fighter at one time. I feel a combination of bad attitude, poor management and poor decisions has destroyed his career.

[:XI:]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

Poor bastard. He's only got $5 million to last him the rest of his life because that's probably all he'll have.

2003:



Link.

Aw, $5 million. Poor bastard.

[Anand]

Originally Posted by :XI:

Aw, $5 million. Poor bastard.

Of which 4 million went to the IRS and 750K goes to his ex-wife. That leaves him with 250K. His is a poor bastard. Sadly, he will be dead by 45.

[buggsuperstar]

Originally Posted by Superchicken

JR: "Oh my Gawd, Oh my Gawd, Oh my Gawd, it's the Tyson ear bite! The Tyson ear bite! Damn that Tyson! Damn him! I think I just repeated myself a lot, I think I just repeated myself a lot..."

JR would be proud.

[GlobalNomad]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

I remember Tyson's old fights.

The ones that would last less than a minute.

There is nobody that could touch him back then... NOBODY
Like in his what first 20 fights, 19 were knock out.
He was a machine.

[:XI:]

Originally Posted by Anand

Of which 4 million went to the IRS and 750K goes to his ex-wife. That leaves him with 250K. His is a poor bastard. Sadly, he will be dead by 45.

He still ends up with more than I and indeed, most people have. I'd take a kicking for a quarter million.

[olePigeon]

He blew through $300 million. I have zero respect for the man.

[OAW]

Tyson has been washed up as a fighter for some time now. I was a big Tyson fan back in the old days. And I held on and followed him in some of his more recent fights after the Holyfield losses because he would show occasional glimpses of the old Tyson. But here recently I just couldn't go out of my way to see him fight anymore. If he came on cable/satellite then fine .... but if it was on Pay-Per-View then I just couldn't do it. I can't believe they actually got people to take a PPV hit for Tyson after his last 3 or 4 performances.

OAW

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by Anand

Of which 4 million went to the IRS and 750K goes to his ex-wife. That leaves him with 250K. His is a poor bastard. Sadly, he will be dead by 45.

Oh, well. Too bad for him. That's the breaks.

[ManOfSteal]

Tyson's not done yet...just ask Jenna Jameson!

So much for the "missionary" work he wanted to pursue....

[Kevin]

She better wear ear muffs. And not mind being called "mommy"

[Ghoser777]

Definitely not hot.

[ManOfSteal]

Is it fair to say that...

He'll hit it.® (literally?)

[Ghoser777]

I hope not! She's a national treasure

[Showolf]

Originally Posted by GlobalNomad

There is nobody that could touch him back then... NOBODY
Like in his what first 20 fights, 19 were knock out.
He was a machine.

Yes! I agree completely... I can remember placing a microwave bag of popcorn in the microwave just when the fight was starting and before I could hit the start button, the fight was already over!