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Once universally feared 31 and reviled, The Baddest Man on the Planet, who infamously threatened to eat another fighter s children, finds himself back in the public consciousness with his one-man stage show, autobiography and HBO Special Undisputed Truth. However, it is in his newfound role as boxing promoter for Deerfield Beach FL-based Iron Mike Promotions 31 that Tyson truly seems at home. Tyson spent Tuesday afternoon at the brand new gym within the former Acquinity Sports headquarters catching up with his young, talented stable of fighters.
Tyson witnessed some tough training from the likes of newly-signed Erickson 31 Lubin, the eighteen- year old whose recent signing to Iron Mike Promotions ruffled feathers with Team USA Boxing. However, it became immediately apparent Tyson was here to impart invaluable knowledge, teaching 31 Lubin the intricacies of the bobbing style that allowed Tyson to become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.
Indeed, even savvy pros like light welterweight brothers Anthony and Lamont Peterson listened to Tyson s words of encouragement as they went through 31 their intense training for a January show in their hometown of Washington DC. (Coincidentally, Lamont took on former two-time world champion Joan Little Tyson Guzman in three rounds of intense, pay-per-view worthy sparring.)
Champ, your disdain for your former promoter Don King is pretty well known and seemingly well founded. Now that you wear a promoter s cap yourself, how do you plan to do things differently 31 for your fighters?
Don King s a whole different entity you know. My objective is just to make sure the fighters, um, get the best fights, the right fights and the fights that will make them look better. You know, it s not like who wins, who wins. If it s a competitive fight, a fight that allows him to look his best, you know we re not looking for easy fights; we want to get the best out of our fighters.
And you can t get the best out of him if he s fighting a guy that s really a stinker, that s moving around a lot and he s not gonna bring out the best in a fighter. My objective is just having very competitive fights. Don King s just too involved with everything and my only objective is to keep the fights exciting. 31 When you think about fights now, you really look at it; if everybody s fighting their own guys then it s pervasive what s going to happen. 31 You re gonna have all these promoters only fighting their own fighters, not fighting other promoter s fighters there s no excitement there.
Until fighters start upping the ante, finding out who s the best fighter on the planet, boxing s really always gonna have a black eye and that s why MMA is always gonna be superior to boxing 31 because 31 we re not bringing the best out of our fighters, we re not bringing the best out of our whole conglomerate as far as the boxing world s concerned.
You have an upcoming show January 3rd, with super featherweight Argenis Mendez defending his World title against Rances Barthelemy on ESPN s first Friday Night Fights of the New Year. During last year s final Friday Night Fights, fans saw a reconciliation of sorts between you and former trainer and ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas. Has there been any further contact between the two of you since then?
Well, Teddy s not interested in reconciliation, I did that for me. That wasn t necessarily to make anybody else, um, feel as if we re friends. 31 I just didn t want that burden over my head. I made my amends; this is only to improve myself as a human being and as a productive person in society.
Right after that he wanted 31 me to come to one of his charities, you know, what kind of stuff is that? You know, looking for an opportunity 31 to benefit in some kind of way, and I really wasn t for that, but that was just to clear my head.
You know, I was wrong in that incident, I was wrong. He could have handled it different but there was more going on back then, but I was wrong and I made my amends. That s what I did, to work on my program and keep my side of the street 31 clean.
Not good, not good. It opened some really yucky feelings. That was the reason why I was avoiding doing the book for three years. And the reason I was using drugs to avoid those feelings. By compromising 31 with the book it just brought those nasty feelings again and I was just very grateful that I was able to get through 31 the feelings and make the book, allow the book to become a success.
Right now it s been very difficult because I ve been all around the world and it s very difficult to be hands on, I want to be hands on. Listen, I m the promoter but I really want to be a trainer, you know. I guess, to really be honest with
