Mike Tyson's insane 30th birthday bash was attended by Trump, Oprah and '19 lady suitors'
Mike Tyson turned 54 on Tuesday (June 30), and we're hoping the boxing legend had a great birthday party. However, the celebration couldn't have been anywhere near as crazy as Iron Mike's 30th birthday bash, which featured the likes of Donald Trump, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, and 19 "lady suitors."
Tyson admitted in his autobiography, 'Undisputed Truth', that he "spent a fortune flying in friends from all over the country and putting them all up in a nearby hotel" ahead of the lavish party.
"We had 13 different chefs, each one cooking in their own kitchen. Everyone from Oprah to Donald Trump to Jay-Z to street pimps and their hos were there. There was a guy hand-rolling cigars," Tyson recalled. "You entered the house on an actual red carpet. Once you got past the 40 big Fruit of Islam bodyguards stationed outside."
"I was so egomaniacal that I reserved the 19 bedrooms in my house for girls who I wanted to sleep with. I actually told Crocodile, 'See all these girls? They're mine.'"
It's true that Tyson's sprawling mansion in Connecticut had 52 rooms in total. He later sold it to rapper-producer 50 Cent. However, the "crocodile" he mentioned isn't a reference to a real-life croc at his party (which is arguably not too much of a stretch for the slugger). Tyson, here, is referring to Steve 'Crocodile' Fitch, a close member of his entourage at the time.
Tyson was sliding off the rails by 1996. Although he had been released from prison and had defeated Frank Bruno to be crowned WBC heavyweight champion once again, he admitted that his "grandiosity began to stomp all over my humbleness." Kid Dynamite was set to throw an extravagant 30th-birthday bash, just 69 days before his scheduled fight against Bruce Seldon. To make room for his conquests, Tyson even moved his then-girlfriend Hope out of the house. "Hope was pissed at me," he said. "She had been staying at the house, but I moved her out and put her up at the hotel so the room would be available for one of my lady suitors."
"She was hurt. Hope was an extremely attractive woman and the girls I was sleeping with were nowhere near her stature," Mike remembered. "[Hope told me] 'Mike, this woman you're bringing in is just so atrocious and unclean, she's going to dirty my bed. You're gonna have to burn the mattress if she sleeps on the bed."
After his bout with Seldon, Tyson said he had "hardly trained for that fight" -- and it's no surprise considering the expensive birthday party he threw less than 10 weeks before taking on his opponent. "I didn't think much of Seldon as an opponent; he wasn't much of a competitor," Tyson further added.
Despite the incessant reveling, Iron Mike's ferocity inside the ring was unmatched. Like most of Tyson's opponents, Seldon went done to punches within two minutes of the first round -- giving the champ his belt back. "I had fought eight rounds since getting out of jail and I had earned $80 million," Tyson later noted, referring to his first four bouts post-prison.