Fighters back in the day used to abstain from sex in the lead up to bouts to boost energy but not Mike Tyson.
According to Tyson’s chauffeur during the 1980s, Rudy Gonzalez, the former heavyweight champ would “bang the s–t” out of random women before entering the ring.
The reason?
Because he didn’t want to kill his opponent.
Tyson would have sex to “loosen up” before his bouts because he feared he was filled with so much adrenaline, that he might end up killing one of his opponents, Gonzalez told The Sun.
“One of the greatest secrets with Mike was that he needed to have sex in the dressing room before fights,” he said.
“He had to get laid to disengage some of the strength he had. So I had girls tucked away in bathrooms and changing rooms.
“Mike would say, ‘If I do not get laid, I will kill this guy right now.’ Sometimes he’d go in with them [the women] for a minute, bang the s–t out of them, snap his neck and say: ‘OK, this guy is going to live tonight.’
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“His biggest fear was that he would kill someone in that ring. He knew he could do it.”
Gonzalez further explained: “It is no exaggeration to say Mike was like a train hitting these guys. Having sex was his way of disengaging that power and loosening up a bit.”
Tyson’s former driver said he would occasionally burst into tears in his dressing room before the fight because his emotional state was heightened.
“He had an anxiety problem where he would be in despair with anxiety of not feeling good enough or not wanting to screw it up,” Gonzalez claimed. “Mike had the fear that if he screwed this up, he would end up back in his old neighbourhood or be locked up.”
In his biography, Mike Tyson admitted he was suffering from gonorrhea when he defeated Trevor Berbick to become the youngest heavyweight champion ever in 1986.
His childhood was tough. He was abandoned by his father around the time of his birth, and his mother died in 1982, when Tyson was just 16.
He was also sexually abused by a stranger at the age of seven.
Speaking of the emotional pain he carried from his childhood, Tyson said in 2012: “I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something … I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her … It’s crushing emotionally and personally.”
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