Mike Tyson admits he was high on drugs during fights

Discussion in 'Boxing' started by Saved_in_Blood, Nov 13, 2013.

  1. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...nd-using-a-fake-penis-to-avoid-detection.html

    Former heavyweight champion's new memoir reveals fighter spent significant spells addicted to marijuana and cocaine, and his novel way of circumventing testing.


    Mike Tyson was high on drugs during some of his major fights and used a fake penis filled with someone else's urine to fool drug-testers, he has admitted for the first time.


    The former world heavyweight boxing champion disclosed in a new tell-all memoir that he spent a significant stretch of his turbulent career addicted to cocaine and marijuana.


    “I was a full-blown cokehead,” Tyson wrote in Undisputed Truth, published on Tuesday. Recalling his shock 2004 loss to Britain's Danny Williams, he revealed he was taking drugs until shortly before the fight.


    Tyson, now 47 and retired, described his ferocious appetite for drink and drugs that dated back to trying cocaine at the age of 11 and first being given alcohol as a baby in New York.

    He said that he was high before taking to the ring for a match against Lou Savarese in Glasgow in June 2000 – and came up with an ingenious method to prevent detection by the sport's official testers.

    Confessing he had taken "blow" and "pot" before the bout, he said: “I had to use my whizzer, which was a fake penis where you put in someone’s clean urine to pass your drug test.”

    He blamed a $200,000 fine for testing positive for marijuana after a 2000 fight against Andrew Golota in Detroit on the fact that he was tested before having a chance to get the 'whizzer' from a member of his team, whom he claims typically carried the device from fight to fight.

    Tyson explained he had taken cocaine before a notorious televised press conference with Lennox Lewis in New York in January 2002, which descended into an onstage brawl between the rival camps.

    “I lost my mind,” Tyson recalled. “I looked over at him and wanted to hit the guy.” As the pair of heavyweights tussled, Tyson bit into one of Lewis's legs.

    Tyson, the youngest boxer ever to win the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles, said he regrets that his drug use led to “Herculean" mood swings.

    After several years of rehabilitation treatment - between staging a one-man show, appearing in the film The Hangover and socialising with A-list celebrities such as Victoria Beckham - Tyson said in August this year that he was close to death due to his chronic alcoholism.

    However in his memoir he said his prodigious consumption had made sense at the time. “The history of war is the history of drugs,” he wrote. “Every great general and warrior from the beginning of time was high.”

    Tyson's days of wild partying had already begun when he faced Britain's Frank Bruno for the first time, in Las Vegas, in a bout that had millions of British supporters gripped in February 1989.

    While admitting that he was in such poor shape that “Bruno should have kicked my ass”, Tyson dismissed the notion that he was hurt by Bruno's memorable left hook at the end of the first round.

    The blow left Tyson staggering for the first time in his professional career and notoriously caused the British commentator Harry Carpenter to forget his impartiality and say on-air: “Get in there, Frank”.

    “People made a big deal that I was wobbled with the punches, but that wasn’t so,” Tyson claimed. Having regained his composure, the American went on to claim a technical knock-out in round five.

    By the time the pair met again seven years later, Tyson had been convicted of raping Desiree Washington, a contestant in the Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis, and jailed for three years.

    Tyson continues to deny rape and railed against what he claims to be the injustice of his punishment. Yet he disclosed that his sentence was comfortable: he ate lobster in prison and even embarked on an affair with his drugs counsellor.

    While in jail he also took the opportunity to read great literature by authors such as Marx, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but drew the line at Hemingway, whom he described as “too much of a downer”.

    He recalled being booed by “rabid" English supporters, who sang about him being a rapist, as he approached the ring for his rematch against Bruno in Las Vegas in 1996, However Bruno, who was defending his WBC Heavyweight Championship, “smelled of fear” and was dispatched a minute into the third round.

    Four years later, however, British boxing fans adored Tyson, he said, and gave him a welcome “like Beatlemania” when he arrived to fight British heavyweight champion Julius Francis in Manchester.

    He fondly recalled a visit to Parliament being boycotted by women MPs due to his rape conviction but said at that stage of his life he enjoyed being a hate figure.

    Describing one of the most controversial moments of his career – his biting a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's left ear during their match in June 1997, Tyson admitted that he had lost composure but insisted that he had been driven to it after being repeatedly headbutted by Holyfield.

    Tyson painted a vivid portrait of his life from a young thug and thief on the streets of working-class Brooklyn. He took up boxing while in a young offenders' institution and began his career in “smokers” – illegal fights held in gyms and attended by gangsters and pimps – before making it as a professional.

    He comprehensively detailed his years of international womanising during the height of his career that led him through three marriages and to fathering eight children with a string of different women.

    And he explained how he repeatedly found himself on the brink of financial ruin despite earning tens of millions of dollars per fight at the height of his boxing career.

    At one point he forgot about a holdall containing $1 million in cash, and on another occasion gave a hefty payout to a woman who unsuccessfully sued him after being bitten by his pet tiger. “I felt bad, so I gave her $250,000,” he said.

    Watch the use of masked profanity please.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 13, 2013
  2. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    These...these are a thing?
     
  3. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    What? You don't have one?
     
  4. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    did we expect the guy to not be high on something? i mean come on, his job was to pummel another human being in the head whilst being pummeled himself.
     
  5. Unreal Combat

    Unreal Combat Valued Member

    I am actually not really all that surprised. You have to be on something to bite someone's ear off, lol.

    It does make you wonder about the legitimacy of other fighters though.
     
  6. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    So are drugs now good or bad?:confused:
     
  7. Count Duckula

    Count Duckula Valued Member

    Yes, and I've been told by people who are into amateur sports, that this is quite a common thing, and a serious problem for anti doping tests that are not performed under extreme supervision. You can get them in all variances of natural skin color, from albino to black.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2013
  8. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    good!
     
  9. belltoller

    belltoller OffTopic MonstreOrdinaire Supporter




    [​IMG]
     
  10. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Well that's a major shift in thinking for the martial arts community (most of them)
    Gonna take some time to adjust!
     
  11. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    in my experience, i don't see any differences between martial artists and non-martial artists as far as recreational drug use as a whole.

    do you?
     
  12. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Yes. Drugs and health don't mix. Map is as much about health as martial arts
     
  13. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    define "drugs". what would you include?

    if you're going to tell me that if someone takes a couple doses of marijuana a couple times a month, or has a couple drinks of alcohol a month is "unhealthy", then i'm going to respectfully disagree.

    i would also make the distinction that cocaine, heroin, crytal meth., barbituates, amphetamines would be classified as "unhealthy", not only because small amounts make people dependent, but also because of toxicity.

    i think we can all agree that abusing any drug, including otc presumably legal ones (i'm including caffeine in this too), is a bad thing.

    doing cocaine before a fight? i would classify that as abuse.
     
  14. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    Difficult to answer.

    I've always been very anti drugs, but you've included alcohol and caffeine in your list and I do drink coffee (and lots of it) and drink occasionally.

    I think for the sake of argument here we need to narrow drugs down to those that are currently classified as illegal, be that either class A, B or C.

    So we should leave out caffeine and alcohol, but include steroids, tranquilisers, etc.
     
  15. Moi

    Moi Warriors live forever x

    Guess there's no need for me to answer yhen?
     
  16. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    i drink coffee daily too! usually 2. i drink 2-3 drinks of alcohol per month. and i've never tried cocaine, heroin, meth., pcp, all that crazy stuff. and never will.

    marijuana is legal in some countries and now in some states in the united states. the line is a bit fuzzier there. but yeah, steroids used for non-medicinal purposes should also be part of the "bad" list.
     
  17. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    i'm honestly just wondering what you would deem as "unhealthy". do you include beer? what about advil? my father in law takes 10 advil a day. i would classify that as "unhealthy" personally. he won't listen to me though.
     
  18. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    This is a good point in that people will be people. However, when you sign up as a professional, you need to be just that and conduct yourself accordingly. Coke and weed both help to dull pain, and whether some feel weed is a big deal or not is not the issue. In black in white on all (most) of the sports banned substances list weed is there... so wrong is wrong.
     
  19. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    It's unhealthy for the liver. You should try to get him to at least take milk thistle or Liv52 to help him protect his liver.
     
  20. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    Damaging drugs IMO are the ones that make you steal, rob, kill, etc to get them. Cocaine, opiates, meth, all of that stuff people will do.

    A few drinks? I myself don't drink, but there's a long history in my family of alcoholics, so I choose not to use that or weed. I have to take medication for anxiety, and while I am not chemically dependent on it, I am medically dependent on it which IMO is a different story.

    If one can have a few drinks and then go weeks or months without feeling like they NEED or HAVE to have it, that's fine... it's when you feel like that's what helps you get through your life when I think it's a problem.

    Steroids are illegal, thus they shouldn't be used, but there are many studies out where testosterone and many oral steroids are used to help AIDS or other forms of sick patients to gain weight back or to aid with asthma, etc.
    Then again, doctors prescribe corticoids or opiates like candy. One is very bad for breaking down ligaments and tendons, and the latter is HIGHLY addictive. It's a huge outbreak of people hooked on pills these days because they are easier to get.
     

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