For close to three decades now, Mike Tyson has been the one person that everyone was afraid of. Race nor size mattered, Iron Mike was the last person you would want to see in a dark alley.
But even people like Mike get scared too.
In an interview on SiriusXM Opie’s Radio recently, the former boxing champion admitted to having been sexually abused as a child by a man who pulled him off the street. Tyson said he was seven years old when the abuse happened.
While discussing his childhood and what made him a successful boxer, Tyson comes out and says, “These guys bullied me and sexually abused me.” Jim Norton, the show’s co-host, then asks how old he was when he was sexually abused.
The NY Daily News had this excerpt of the interview
“I was a little kid, 7,” Tyson told co-host Jim Norton. “Old man, yea.”
“Was it one time or ongoing?” Norton asked.
“No, one time,” Tyson said. “Never seen him again….snatched me off the street.”
“He abused you and just let you go or did you escape?” Norton said.
“Well, I ran,” Tyson said.
Tyson says that he is not embarrassed or ashamed by the experience. Tyson stepped out of the ring in 2005 and, according to a statement from his rep, he is “in a good place in his life with sobriety, family and career.”
© 2014, Mehka King. All rights reserved.
