Mike Tyson used to wear world title belt to NIGHTCLUBS… but only began boxing after bully broke his pet pigeon’s NECK

AT THE peak of his deadly powers Mike Tyson would parade his world title belt around in NIGHTCLUBS.

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

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 poverty-stricken neighborhood of Brownsville.

Despite weighing over 13 STONE as a young boy, Tyson was picked on for the way he talked and for his love of pigeons.

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

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

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

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

Tyson was arrested almost 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 centre counsellor Bobby Stewart introduced Tyson into boxing.

He was such a natural that Stewart insisted legendary coach Cus D’Amato had to 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 a son of his own, training, housing and fathering the future boxing great.

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

“And Mike’s thinking to himself, ‘Who is this loony old white man? But I’ll go with him.’

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

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

Sadly, D’Amato died in 1985, just a year before his prediction came true of Tyson becoming boxing’s youngest heavyweight champ of all time.

He was not there to witness Tyson demolish Trevor Berbick in two savage rounds at the age of just 20 – but Finkel was.

And he remembers: “Sitting in the front row, I’ve had a lot of 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 equilibrium was gone and Mike was 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 squashing me!’

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

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

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

“Now he’s on an ascendancy, knocking people out with devastating anger. He was rather intimidating.”

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

But when he went crashing 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 were gonna fight other people.”

Tyson did later reclaim the title in 1996, just a year after coming out of prison having spent three years behind bars for a rape conviction.

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

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

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

But Finkel reveals Tyson – 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 have the desire.’

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

“And he said, ‘That’s it.’ But now he’s 58 and he’s stepping into the ring with someone that at any other time earlier would have been something easy. It may not be easy anymore.”

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

The two-time champ – who did face Roy Jones Jr in a 2020 exhibition – takes on YouTuber-turned-boxer Paul on Friday in Texas.

It will be a professionally-sanctioned bout competed over eight two-minute rounds – opposed to the usual three – with bigger 14oz gloves.

And it will be yet another chapter in the weird and wonderful career of Tyson – but it remains to be scene whether it will be the last.

Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk