Mike Tyson plans to get a full face tattoo after tonight's fight with Jake Paul and after breaking his abstinence from sex and drugs.
The 58-year-old former heavyweight champion debuted a unique tribal design that extends around his left eye and cheek in 2003, and plans to add it after his breakthrough bout at the AT&T Center in Arlington, Texas.
“I'm thinking of getting a tattoo,” he told the Post on Thursday night, hours before his showdown with Paul, 27. “I want it all over my face, my whole face. It is,” he added.
When asked what the design would look like, Tyson said: “I won't reveal anything, but it will be interesting.”
Tyson was shocked when he became the first famous celebrity to get a facial tattoo, but 20 years later, the likes of Post Malone, Jelly Roll, Cardi B and even Justin Bieber have also gotten tattoos. It became more mainstream. I regret the ink.
“I think it's liberating,” Tyson said. “I don’t care if someone doesn’t put me on a plane or put me on a yacht. [The face tattoo] It allows me to be me. ”
Still, it can be shocking to see others wearing them. “Sometimes I forget what I'm wearing and I look at other people and think, 'Wow, that person looks really crazy.'”
As tonight's fight time ticks down, Tyson has a plan in place to stay in the right frame of mind.
“Before I go to the competition, I'm going to bed, take a warm bath and watch a karate movie,” he said. “Then I take a cold shower before the game.”
Plus, Tyson, a devout Muslim, will have prayers.
“I never prayed or wished I could kick someone's ass during a fight,” Tyson revealed. “I believe God loves the other man as much as he loves me. I hope he doesn't kill me. But I didn't win.”
Some critics have derided the fight as a cash grab, but Tyson, who will receive an estimated $20 million for his participation in the bout, insisted that was not the case.
“Money doesn't mean nothing,” he said. “The money I make here is not going to change my life. I have a great life. My cannabis company is the largest in the world. Money has nothing to do with this. If anything, It’s about ego.”
In preparation for his big match, Tyson, who married his third wife Lakiha Spicer in 2009, refrained from sex for six months, abstained from marijuana for a year and abstained from his favorite psychedelic drug for the same amount of time.
“I'm the type of person who is willing to sacrifice for success,” Iron Mike said. “I'll do whatever I can sacrifice to achieve my goals. I'm focused on the fight…I'm not worried about anything except winning.”
But once the fight is over, Tyson plans to party.
When asked what he would indulge in first, Tyson said, “Anything I want to do. Marijuana, psychedelics, whatever. It's the first thing I can get my hands on. But now, it's all secondary to work.”
But he retains a strange memory of indulgence. “The last psychedelic I did was frog venom. It's like dying while your heart is still beating.”
Apparently, there was no sedative in Tyson's system at Thursday night's weigh-in, and it exploded when Tyson slapped Paul in the face.
Tyson explained how this happened. “I had socks on and he had shoes on. He stepped on my toes because they had holes in them. I wanted to think it happened by accident. But now I think it was on purpose. I think it happened. I had to protect myself.”
“I think he's lying,” Tyson dismissed claims that Paul has bet all $40 million of his wallet on the fight.
Tyson claims that his rough youth, spent on the mean streets of gentrified Brooklyn in the '70s and '80s, gave him a very different perspective from YouTube star Paul.
“We were always hungry, always starving. My mother was a sex worker and lost welfare,” Tyson recalled.
“[Paul] is a topic of much discussion. I think television made him. YouTube made him. But he has no substance. I've fought real fighters, world champions, and some of the best in the world. They don't go on the Disney Channel and box up kangaroos and stuff. Jake is more of a clown. ”
Tyson knows a thing or two about entertainment. In particular, Tyson appeared in a memorable cameo in the 2009 hit buddy movie “The Hangover” with a tiger in a hotel room.
This scene, he says, is not far from reality.
“I had four pet tigers,” he said of the jungle creatures he acquired as a child and raised until his death around 2010. “They slept in my bed together. I was a bad guy. I shouldn't have lived with them like that. I'm lucky they didn't kill me.”
Despite this, he has ambitions to own another tiger, adding: I want one. ”
If Tyson wins in the boxing ring tonight, he may step into Paul's turf by saying, “Maybe I can become a YouTuber,'' but regardless of the outcome, even at his age, Tyson may step into Paul's turf. Regardless, he thinks he will play more games in the future.
“I'm going to fight people. That's what I do,” he said.
