Mike Tyson says he offered zookeeper $10,000 to fight a silverback gorilla after renting out an entire zoo
Mike Tyson once offered a zookeeper $10,000 to let him into one of the cages and fight a silverback gorilla.
Recently, the legendary former heavyweight champion opened up about how he rented out an entire zoo for him and his wife at the time, Robin Givens.
“I paid a worker at New York’s zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin. When we got to the gorilla cage there was one big silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback’s snot box. He declined," he said, TalkSport reported.
The incident, however, did not discourage Tyson in the future to wrestle with powerful wild animals in the following years. For more than a decade between the 1990s and 2000s Tyson kept multiple white tigers in his home. In an interview, he had said that he had procured the tigers from behind the bars after he was convicted of rape and sent to prison for six years in 1992.
"I had three of them in my house. This is how it happened, I was in prison and I was talking to one of my friends who I bought exotic cars from. He was saying a friend he knew owed him money. And he said, ‘If he doesn’t pay me any money I’mma take some of these cars and trade them in for some animals.’ I said, ‘What kind of animals?’ He said, ‘Horses and stuff. Mike they have some nice tigers and lions too. If you got one of those that would be so cool.’ I said, ‘Yeah that would be true. Why don’t you order me a couple? I’m getting out in a couple of months.’ So when I got out I came home and I had two cubs," he said, as we reported.
However, he told last year that he had to get rid of one of his big cats after it allegedly ripped someone's arm off. “I did have a pet tiger, her name was Kenya and she was around 550 pounds. I had a great affection for her; I kept her, I slept with her, I kept her in my room. She stayed with me; I had her for about 16 years. But she got too old and I had to get rid of her when her eyes and her head got bad. Oh, and she ripped somebody’s arm off," Tyson said.
He insisted that his tiger had not attacked and killed one of the neighbors as news reports suggested at the time.
"No, not that’s not what happened. Somebody jumped over my fence where the tiger was and jumped in their habitat and started playing with the tiger. And the tiger didn’t know the lady so it was a bad accident. She jumped in the property where the tiger was at. They tried to [sue me] until they found out she jumped over the fence and she trespassed the tiger. And listen, when I saw what the tiger did to her hand, I had a lot of money back then, so I gave her $250,000 or whatever it was. Because she was just f***ed up," he said.
He also reportedly donated the rest of his tigers to a sanctuary after 14 years following the realization that he was not meant to domesticate wild animals.