FRANK WARREN has opened up on his infamous hotel bust-up over jewellery with Mike Tyson.
Tyson was in the UK in 2000 as he bid to get his career back on track and beat Julius Francis in Manchester.
But that week he racked up an expensive bill at the jewellers, spending around £2million on flash bling.
The problem was he never paid it, and it was veteran promoter Warren who was left to deal with the aftermath.
So when Iron Mike returned to Britain in the June to face Lou Savarese, he was asked to pay what he owed.
But as Warren reveals in his new BT Sport documentary, the Baddest Man on The Planet assumed it had all been taken care of.
Warren, 69, said: “Day before the fight, Shelly Finkel comes down – who was looking after his affairs – and he said, ‘Look Frank, we ain’t going to fight’.
“And he just put all this jewelry down and I said, ‘What are you talking about? He said, ‘Well, he thought you was buying it’.
“I said, ‘Are you mental? Why on Earth would I be paying for that for?'”
Warren refused to take back the jewels, and confronted Tyson, but ended up taking a whack for his troubles.
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He revealed: “I was a bit silly for what I did here, I went up to his room and he’s got him, Tommy Brooks, who’s his trainer, really nice bloke and a couple other blokes.
“And he starts ranting. ‘Don King treated me better than this’.
“And I hadn’t even got to saying anything then crack – he’s hit me with a left hook right on the chin, just out the blue.
“So here’s the guy who’s going to fight for the world heavyweight title and there’s me, I must be god knows how much older than him and lighter than him.
“Bosh, he’s hit me so I’ve gone over. Didn’t expect it anyway.
“Got up and it’s just like all pandemonium in the room and all sorts of things were going on all over the place.
“There’s all these stories circulating afterwards about what happened, I was there, I know better than anybody what happened.
“I had his preacher, lovely man he was, he comes up to me and said, ‘You can promote him for life, because they were terrified he would go back to prison.
“I went ‘it’s not my style’ and I just said I ain’t giving him a sixpence, you ain’t getting any money out of me, that’s where I’m at.
“You wanna pay him, you can pay him what you like, that’s your business, and he’s paying for that jewelry and that is all that’s going to happen – and it happened.”
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
