Ahead of Mike Tyson’s successful fight against influencer Jake Paul, he gave a revealing quote about his view on legacy. When 14-year-old reporter Jazzlyn “Jazzy” Guerra asked Tyson what kind of inheritance he wants to leave behind, the boxing legend gave an apathetic response that was either morbid or profound, depending on who you ask.
“It was intimidating,” says B. Michael, designer and stylist for Cicely Tyson
“I don’t know, I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy,’” Tyson said. “I just think that’s another word for ego. Legacy means nothing. It’s just a word that everyone clung to. It means absolutely nothing to me. I’ll just get through it. I’m going to die and it will be over. Who cares about the inheritance after that?
“Who the fuck cares about me when I’m gone?” he continued, before his voice trailed off. “Maybe my children, or my grandchildren.”
Many Tyson fans waited anxiously last week to see whether the former heavyweight champion would give influencer Paul the jitters of their lives. But they were disappointed at his lossleading them to believe that the match was just a money grab to keep the boxer’s head above water.
But as Tyson said in the viral quote to Jazzy, he’s not worried about those fans’ perception of him. He is more focused on making money and a chance to improve his strained relationship with his children.
“Family is everything. To my children I am no one, but that evening they will discover that their father is very special,” he said in an interview after an open training. “So on the night of the fight they’ll realize they better look at it the next time they talk trash to me.”
The 58-year-old champion uses the fight with Paul as an easy money grab would make sense given his previous financial troubles. As a young bull, his fights earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2003 he achieved a profit of $400 million per The New York Times. But between splurging on flashy clothes, mansions, cars, parties, and its infamous Siberian tigershe was forced to file for bankruptcy.
In other expenses, he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry debts, payments to former employees, divorce settlements and child support, the report said. To date, Tyson has a total of seven children, one of whom had passed away in 2009. In total, his bankruptcy filings showed $27 million in debt.
“I have been in financial distress since 1998, when I was burdened with significant debts to Showtime, tax authorities and parties to lawsuits. Since that time, I have continued to be unable to pay my bills, although my fighting earnings, various asset sales and lawsuit recoveries have enabled me to pay a large portion of my debts,” Tyson wrote in an affidavit.
Two years after filing he retired from professional boxingappearing sparsely in the ring for just $1 million. DraftKings Network It is estimated that Tyson profited $20 million from the highly anticipated fight against Paul. In the late 1990s, he earned an average of $30 million per fight, The Times reported.
Tyson has said in recent years that he feared his money problems would lead to him taking fights he could not realistically win. He spoke candidly ahead of his 2006 bout with heavyweight Corey Sanders, the first fight of “Mike Tyson’s World Tour,” a series of four-round exhibition fights.
“If I don’t get out of this financial quagmire, there’s a possibility I’ll have to be a punching bag for someone,” he said at the media conference in Youngstown, according to ESPN. “The money I make here isn’t going to help any of my bills from a great standpoint, but it’s going to make me feel better about myself. I’m not going to get depressed.”
Tyson’s health was a major concern before the match with Paul. Doctors advised him not to train in May after he suffered a flare-up of a stomach ulcer, leading to the fight being postponed from its original date in July. In a Netflix docuseries, Tyson says he vomited blood in the bathroom and fell to the floor. And after the fight ended, he revealed in a post to It led many to wonder why the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation approved the fight in the first place. Fans wondered that too whether the fight was scriptedripping apart footage and conspiring that Tyson avoided a wide open opportunity to knock out Paul.
According to Net Worth of Celebritiesthe fighter is still a millionaire and has an estimated net worth of $10 million. Since leaving boxing, he has maintained other assets, including television appearances on ‘The Last OG’ and ‘The Hangover’, as well as his own cannabis brand. Hopefully Tyson sees this fight as an opportunity to rebuild wealth on his own terms, and that he can work on building the parental bonds he values so much.
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