Mike Tyson reveals bizarre way he ‘killed’ his ego

Wally Downes Jr The Sun

The 52-year-old former heavyweight boxing king is building a cannabis resort and is a huge advocate for the medicinal benefits of the drug, The Sun reports.

But it was DMT, found in the Sonoran Desert toad of northern Mexico, that blew his mind at the start of 2019 and buried the human wrecking ball that helped build his fame and fortune.

In an emotionally charged and tearful interview on ESPN’s Art of Conversation with Dan Le Batard, Iron Mike said: “I don’t want to be that monster when I die, I don’t want to be remembered as that guy. He is very toxic and dangerous for my family and my wife. He doesn’t care about them but they are all I care about.

“But I know what it took to make that guy and the experiences we went through to make him so I know he will not disappear overnight.

“I really don’t have much regret. My violence, my drug habits, my reckless sexual escapades, my street fights and car accidents, all that time is over and I am still here so now it is about making a better life for my family. I am grateful for existing and having another life.”

DMT is an extremely potent but natural psychedelic that mysterious shamen have smoked for decades and people now flock to the desert for it in search of enlightenment.

And Tyson, at his most wild jailed for rape and guilty of biting a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear, says his life was changed forever by the experience.

He said: “Once I smoked it, everything went boom! When I came down my brain was functioning and I could talk but I was saying, ‘I f***ed up’.

“I killed myself because I killed my ego and my life totally changed.

“It sounds like a movie script but it’s the real deal and now I wake up smiling and laughing and I wonder, ‘What the f*** happened?’

“It lasts forever but it only took 15 minutes. As soon as I realised I was nothing, all my fancy stuff didn’t matter.

“When you think you know everything and then you realise you don’t know anything, then it is a big awakening. You can call it growth or divine intervention.

“I won’t say it is God but it was the death of my ego, I felt so naked and afraid because all I ever had was my ego and that made me a very special and famous person.”

Trying to explain Tyson’s revelation on ESPN sports radio show Golic and Wingo, Le Batard added: “He had his mind altered … he smoked poison from a toad in Taiwan and he says it killed his ego and when he emerged from that he says he emerged a different person.

“In killing his ego, he killed the identity that he had always had, which is, ‘I am the baddest man in the world, I am a fighter’.

“When that got killed, he felt different on the other side of it.”

Tyson’s terrifying power, trademark peek-a-boo style and freakish intensity were the perfect blend concocted by trainer Cus D’Amato.

The legendary cornerman plucked the once-bullied street kid from a New York reform school and gradually transformed him into heavyweight boxing’s youngest ever world champion.

Years of training and hours of studying between mentor and pupil created arguably boxing’s most terrifying fighter. But Tyson, choking back tears, remembers a throwaway comment while taking out the garbage that changed the course of history.

He said: “There is nobody I loved more than Cus.

“Cus believed in me and everyone thought he was a whacko, they all said I was too small and everyone was going to beat me.

“One day I was taking the garbage out and he said, ‘Man, I just wish you were bigger’.

“I took him back to the house and said, ‘Cus, I promise, I am going to make the whole world afraid of me, just watch and see’.

“He broke my heart when he said that to me.”

This article first appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission