“Now he knows what it’s like when everybody is out to get you,” Tyson told the New York Post. “He’s probably never known that to this extent. All those people he sat down with and gave him [things], now those people are saying, ‘We’ve got to get rid of him at all costs.’ ”

Trump became an adviser to Tyson in the late 1980’s, and he staged many of the then-heavyweight champion’s fights at his casinos in Atlantic City. In 1992, when Tyson was convicted of raping a beauty-pageant winner, Trump suggested that, instead of going to jail, the boxer could donate a share of the proceeds of a blockbuster fight with Evander Holyfield to the woman and possibly other rape victims.

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It was widely presumed at the time that Trump’s main motivation was to get one of those lucrative shares himself, by hosting the fight at one of his casinos. He cast doubt upon the rape accuser’s story, saying (via Mother Jones), “I don’t know, after knowing Mike, I don’t know how it did happen. But it was a jury. It was a jury verdict.”

As Tyson recalled in January (via the Daily Beast), the real estate mogul “was just helping me with my court case.” He said he and Trump were “really good friends,” and added this bit of Iron Mike insight:

“We’re the same guy,” he told the Daily Beast. “A thrust for power, a drive for power. Whatever field we’re in, we need power in that field. That’s just who we are. “Balls of energy,” Tyson continued. “We’re not even who we think we are. We’re fire. We’re made of this crap — water, motion, dirt, diamonds, emeralds. We’re made out of that stuff, can you believe it?”

In light of that feeling on Tyson’s part, perhaps it’s easier to believe that, in October, he endorsed Trump for president, this despite being a practicing Muslim. He told the Daily Beast that Trump’s stated plan to stop all Muslims from entering the U.S. was “just not gonna happen. … But that doesn’t mean he can’t be president, you know what I mean?”

“I think it’s a pretty awesome thing that he’s doing so well,” Tyson said in his recent comments to the New York Post. “People are combining together to make sure he doesn’t win. He’s probably telling himself, ‘They hate me more than they hate [President] Obama.’ You know it’s crazy when people who fought so hard to get rid of Obama would now rather keep him because they hate Trump more than they hate him.”