Yes… You Read That Correctly… Mike Tyson Tried to Pay a Zookeeper $10,000 to Let Him Fight a Gorilla…
Despite all of his flaws, Mike Tyson was an unbelievable boxing talent in the mid to late 80s. He won 37 fights – practically all by KO and TKO – before Buster Douglas shocked the world by knocking out the unified champion in 1990.
Tyson would bounce back and go on to win a further 8 fights. Despite a rape conviction Tyson’s star never waned. His boxing career would never fully recover from the time he served in prison.
However, even today Tyson is a massive figure in popular culture. He has two books, appeared as himself in a number of TV shows and films like The Hangover. He voiced an animated version of himself in Mike Tyson Mysteries. With his tattooed face, Tyson cuts a unique figure. And it turns out he tried to fight a gorilla for $10,000.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BY6lFVXAKRJ/?hl=en&taken-by=miketyson
Crazy
Tyson has a deep love for huge wild animals. He’s also done some absolutely mad stuff. He has had pet tigers, he’s threatened to eat Lennox Lewis’s children. He bit Evander Holyfield. He’s also been arrested multiple times for drug use. Those are just a few examples of the sort of classic Tyson behavior we’re all used to.
Well, the story goes he went to the zoo one day with his first wife Robin Givens. Tyson bribed a zookeeper to let them walk around after it was closed – you know the sort of things you can do when you’re a massively successful multi-millionaire.
Beatdown
As they were enjoying the zoo, they came across a gorilla bullying some of the other primates. Tyson – a huge animal lover – was upset by this, and obviously, his natural response was to offer the zookeeper $10,000 to let him go into the cage and punch out the gorilla.
“I paid a worker at New York’s zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin,” Tyson said. “When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big Silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback’s snotbox! He declined.”
Of course, he didn’t let you! That’s absolutely mental! That gorilla would have ripped Tyson’s arms off and used his head as a drum…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfRMD-zgpmQ/?hl=en&taken-by=miketyson
Insane
Let’s put this properly into perspective. Your average gorilla is six to 15 times stronger than a human. No ju-jitsu move that we would typically use against a stronger opponent will work on them because the difference is too big. They’re also physically more powerful than humans because of their physiques.
We’re just not designed to compete with them in the strength department. That’s why we’ve got bigger brains – to figure that out. And Mike Tyson wanted to fight one. He wasn’t even offered $10,000, he was the one volunteering to pay it. This was before the days of Youtube too, so his death wouldn’t even have gone viral…
