MIKE TYSON, who at 20 became boxing’s youngest world heavyweight champion, has declared bankruptcy after burning through an estimated $300 million (£187 million) in earnings from the ring.
A lawyer for the boxer, who has lavished money on mansions, jewellery, Bentleys and even Bengal tigers, blamed financial mismanagement by others for his decision to file for Chapter II bankruptcy protection from creditors in New York on Friday.
“As a professional fighter, who relied on others to manage his affairs, he discovered that his debts far exceeded his assets,” Debra Grassgreen, his lawyer, said. “Now he has taken the lead in bringing order to his financial affairs.”
Tyson, 37, is mired in lawsuits. His wife has divorced him and he faces criminal assault charges — for an incident in which he fought two autograph-hunters outside a hotel — that could put him back in jail. He served three years for rape in the 1990s.
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A former street tough from Brooklyn, Tyson learned to box in a reform school and is perhaps most infamous for biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear in their 1997 world title fight, for which he was fined $3 million and lost his boxing licence.
Ever since his 1986-1990 reign as the heavyweight champion, he has been legendary for his free-spending ways. He once owned six homes, including a little-used mansion in Connecticut with 38 bathrooms, and was known to tip his staff $10,000 without blinking an eye.
His favourite tailor recently recalled how the former champion had summoned him from Los Angeles to Pheonix, Arizona, to watch a video of The Affair, a Second World War drama about a black American soldier who has an illicit romance with a British housewife. He wanted the tailor to design him a naval costume like one in the film.
Much of Tyson’s money, however, ended up with Don King, the boxing promoter, whom Tyson is suing for $100 million for allegedly cheating him after his release from prison in 1995 after a three-year sentence for rape.
“He didn’t have to steal all that money,” Tyson said recently. “I was giving him enough anyway.” When the two got together in Florida to try to settle their differences in May, Tyson allegedly punched one of King’s bodyguards after getting out of the promoter’s car in the middle of a motorway, according to a suit filed by the bodyguard. The police were not informed.
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But Tyson does face misdemeanour assault charges carrying a maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment after fighting with the autograph-hunters outside a Brooklyn hotel. The boxer has pleaded his innocence, saying that the two men, who were also charged, provoked him to defend himself.
Tyson, who says he took anti-depressants until he realised that they made him impotent, recently agreed to pay $6.5 million from future earnings in a divorce settlement after Monica Turner, his former wife, accused him of abuse. Last year he claimed that lack of funds prevented him from paying her the $10 million agreed earlier.