Mike Tyson’s love of cars and tigers has been well documented. Little did we all know, one led to the other.
The former heavyweight boxing champion described his experience in an appearance on “The “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Thursday, explaining how he was inspired to get himself some jungle cats.
“I’m in prison at the time,” he said. “So I’m in prison, I’m talking to my car dealer at the time and he has some cars that belong to a [mutual friend], and he’s discussing, ‘If he doesn’t pay for these cars, I’m going to sell these cars to somebody and get some horses.’”
“I said, ‘What, you can get horses? And trade horses in for cars?’ Because I had a lot of cars, I’d probably get some horses too. And he said, ‘Yeah man, you can get cougars, lions, tigers…’ I said, ‘You do?! Can you get me some tigers?’
“The guy said, ‘Imagine how cool that would be?’ Because I had a bunch of fancy cars, ‘Imagine that man, you’d be in an Aston Martin or a Ferrari. You’d have a tiger right next to you, man. That’s be so awesome.’ And I’m a young guy. I’m saying to myself, ‘Wow, that would be cool. Get me some cubs, man.’”
The white Bengal tigers became synonymous with the pugilist, who eventually had to sell his pets, which reportedly cost $70,000 to purchase and $4,000 a month to care for.
If cars are one of the worst investments a person can make, tigers have to be right up there as well.
Warning: graphic language.