Boxing
Mike Tyson Admits He Was ‘a Spoiled Brat’ Who ‘Just Lost It’ While Reflecting on Evander Holyfield Bite
When Mike Tyson looked back on one of the most shocking moments of his eventful career for a new docuseries, he cringed.
“Oh [expletive],” the legendary boxer, 60, groaned in Netflix’s Tyson, turning his head away after seeing footage of the infamous 1997 Las Vegas bout in which he bit off a part of opponent Evander Holyfield‘s ear, before trying to bite him again.
“It’s my fault. I can’t blame no one for that,” the former heavyweight champ quietly admitted in the series. “I’m a spoiled brat, especially a spoiled brat in boxing so I was being a brat. Just at the moment, he was headbutting me, he was kicking my [expletive], too. But I just lost it.”
Five years later, he did it again, biting Lennox Lewis at a 2022 pre-bout press conference before launching into a profanity-laden, homophobic rant against a reporter in the crowd.
“I was a [expletive] nut back then, huh?” Tyson admitted in the docuseries. “I’m sorry. [I was] just being a [expletive].”
“I don’t know what happened though,” he added, when pressed for an explanation. “I don’t judge my emotions, I don’t think I’m weak when I cry. It just happens. This camera, to me, is a narcotic. I’m so overwhelmed and overpowered by this narcotic I make a fool out of myself. It’s just that addicting.”
Those moments were hard to watch, the Hangover star told The Athletic in an interview published on Wednesday, October 14.
“Because I’m totally a different person,” he admitted. “It took so much violence in my life to make me the person that I am now. So when I see my old self, whoa, it takes me back.”
But he still has no regrets. “No. No, I don’t. I would like to regret it, but if I did, I wouldn’t have the situation in life that I have now. I have to accept that it gave me the great life that I have,” he told the outlet.
“I’m not a bad person. I don’t say bad things about anybody, but I have one of those deep, dark holes in me that it’s just hard to fill,” he explained. “I’ve felt that way my whole entire life. I’m just never enough. I need to be more.”
