Mike Tyson has no interest in being charmed by Jake Paul.
We are now just days away from what is projected to be one of the most watched fights of the 21st century.
Tyson wasn’t impressed by Paul’s gift[/caption]
It’s a wild west of a contest – a 58-year-old former undisputed heavyweight champion taking on a 27-year-old YouTuber-turned-boxer at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas live on Netflix.
At one point, it looked as though it would never happen when Tyson pulled out of their initial July 20 fight date with an ulcer flare-up.
But both men have now landed in Arlington to carry out their pre-fight media obligations.
To kick off fight week, the pair sat down for a face-to-face interview that didn’t disappoint.
At their launch press conferences Tyson was playful and nonchalant but in their latest piece of pre-fight media ‘Iron Mike’ had a different look in his eyes.
After hearing Paul predict a knockout victory for himself, Tyson replied: “He dreams a lot, this is not going to come true young man.
“Next week we will see… I think he thinks this is going to be a pretty easy night but this is not going to be an easy night for you.”
The most notable moment of the face-to-face came when Paul gifted Tyson a pigeon – a bird the boxing legend has had a love for dating back to childhood.
“This looks like a low-budget pedigree,” said Tyson as he handled the pigeon. “I’ll feed him to my falcon.”
His cold-blooded response left fans in shock when they saw the clip.
Tyson said he would ‘Feed it to his falcon’[/caption]
One supporter wrote: “Mike since young has always looked after his pigeons so that comment from Mike means night night for Jake now.”
Another tweeted: “He is not in a making friends mood.”
A third added: “Poor pigeon. I got emotional seeing the pigeon and knowing it will be dead any second.”
Somebody else simply put: “Ruthless.”
Tyson has kept pigeons since he was nine years old, claiming that they were an escape from the bullying he endured as a child for being overweight.
His love for the bird runs so deep that he even got into his first fight over one.
“My first fight happened by accident,” he recalled in the book IRON AMBITION: My Life with Cus D’Amato.
“I had used some of my pilfering money to buy my own pigeons. I kept them in an abandoned building next to mine.
“This guy stole one of my birds and when I confronted him to get it back, he pulled it out of his coat and twisted its neck off and rubbed the blood on me.
“I was furious but I was scared to fight, until one of my friends egged me on. ‘You’ve got to fight him, Mike.’
“So I hit with a right and he went down and I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do.
“Then it dawned on me how cool I looked doing the Ali shuffle so I just started shuffling and everybody started clapping. My first taste of applause.”
