Mike Tyson Used To Wear A World Champion Belt To NIGHTCLUBS… But Only Started Boxing After Bully Broke His Pet Pigeon’s NECK

AT THE peak of his deadly powers, Mike Tyson would parade around with his world title belt in NIGHT CLUBS.

But his iconic, complicated and somehow unfinished boxing career only started after a local bully broke the neck of Tyson’s pet pigeon.

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Legendary boxing manager Shelly Finkel first met Tyson when the heavyweight was just a teenager in the early 1980s.

They were both from Brooklyn, with Tyson born and raised in the poor neighborhood of Brownsville.

Despite being overweight 13 STONE as a young boy, Tyson was noted for the way he spoke and for his love of pigeons.

But it was after a bully killed one of his pet pigeons that his talent for fighting was discovered.

Finkel told SunSport: “Remember, Mike grew up really tough in Brownsville. He had it tough because he was a big kid with a lip.

“That was until that incident on the roof when one of the, I guess local thugs, wringed the neck of his pigeon and killed it, and Mike went crazy.

“And at that point Mike realized he had this power.”

Tyson was arrested nearly 40 times by the age of 13, which landed him in the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown.

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There, his juvenile detention counselor Bobby Stewart introduced Tyson to boxing.

He was such a natural that Stewart insisted legendary trainer Cus D’Amato see it for himself.

And D’Amato was immediately convinced he had America’s next heavyweight champion on his hands.

The mentor later brought Tyson in as his own son, training, living and fathering the future of boxing.

Finkel said, “Cus says, ‘This kid’s going to be heavyweight champion.’

“And Mike thinks to himself, ‘Who is this idiot old white man? But I’m going with him.’

“Cus wanted to fulfill his last dream which is to see another heavyweight champion he created, Mike wanted out of prison, it was a better life for him.

“It was basically an arrangement. And Mike told me he loved the old man like you can’t imagine, and I said I believe that.”

Sadly, D’Amato died in 1985, just one year before his prediction that Tyson would become boxing’s youngest heavyweight champion of all time came true.

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He wasn’t there to witness Tyson tear apart Trevor Berbick in two wild rounds at the age of just 20 – but Finkel was.

And he recalls: “Sitting in the front row, I’ve had many exciting moments in this sport that had a rank up there.

“Guy goes down, gets up, goes down, gets up, goes down. He hit him right on the temple. The balance was off and Mike was the champion.”

Tyson became an overnight sensation – and wanted everyone to know it.

Finkel said: “He kept that belt on him, it was the WBC belt, he slept with it.

“I saw him the following Monday, I was out that night and I saw him in a club, he gave me a hug and I said, ‘Mike, the belt is squeezing me!’

“He took it everywhere. It was just wrapped around him and he wouldn’t let it go and I got it.

“Here’s a kid from a very poor background, I know what Brownsville is because it was a joint area that I grew up in.

“It was poor, as poor can be, and if you lived past your 20s, you were lucky with the drugs, the gangs.

“Now he’s on the rise, knocking people out with devastating anger. He was pretty intimidating.”

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JAKE PAUL VS MIKE TYSON: ALL THE DETAILS YOU NEED BEFORE A HUGE FIGHT

Tyson went on a knockout streak never before seen in boxing and unlikely to be repeated.

But when he crashed to the canvas against James Buster Douglas in 1990 – so did his career and reputation.

Finkel, who was there that night in Tokyo to witness the 42-1 upset, said: “It gets to a certain point where you don’t believe the other guy deserves to be in the ring with you and you don’t train the way you would if you wanted to fight other people.”

Tyson later regained the title in 1996, just a year after he got out of prison after spending three years behind bars for a rape conviction.

Finkel later became Tyson’s full-time manager and had the job of rebuilding Iron Mike’s reputation.

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The former music mogul took Tyson’s career to Europe, Great Britain and all parts of America until two crushing defeats came in 2004 and 2005.

First, Tyson was beaten by Great Britain’s Danny Williams in Kentucky, before Kevin McBride put the final nail in the coffin in Washington, DC.

But Finkel reveals that Tyson – who is set to make a controversial comeback to fight Jake Paul – was beaten before the bell even rang against McBride.

He said: “Before his fight he said, ‘I just don’t feel like it’.

“I said, ‘Well, you’ve already trained and should be able to beat this guy anyway. And he didn’t.

“And he said, ‘That was it’. But now he’s 58 and he’s stepping into the ring with someone who, at any other time in the past, would have been somewhat longer.”

Finkel remains in touch with Tyson and his team, including third wife Lakiha Spicer, ahead of his return to boxing.

The two-time champion – who faced Roy Jones Jr in an exhibition in 2020 – takes on YouTuber-turned-boxer Paul on Friday in Texas.

It will be a professionally sanctioned fight contested over eight two-minute rounds – as opposed to the usual three – with larger 14oz gloves.

And it will be another chapter in Tyson’s weird and wonderful career – but it remains to be seen whether it will be the last.

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