Mike Tyson once offered a zookeeper $10,000 for the opportunity to fight one of the zoo’s silverback gorillas, it has emerged. The former heavyweight champion of the world, once known as “The Baddest Man on the Planet,” had the idea while visiting a New York zoo with his then-wife, Robin Givens. As you can probably guess, this is a showdown that never happened.
- Tyson had rented out the entire zoo. You may not expect Mike Tyson to be a romantic, but romance was indeed on his mind when he rented out the premises so that he and Givens could walk around uninterrupted and enjoy a nice day together. However, once he got to the primate section, the desire to fight a gorilla took over, I guess.
- Why would you want to fight a gorilla? That’s a good question and one which the 53-year-old has no real answer for. All Mike Tyson knew is that as soon as he saw the silverback gorilla in the cage, he was overwhelmed by the desire to go in and try to deliver a K.O. its way.
- Maybe the gorilla was a bully? That’s how things seemed in Tyson’s eyes. In a resurfaced interview with The Sun, Tyson recalled, “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 me smash that silverback’s snotbox! He declined.”
- The zookeeper did Tyson a favor. Heavyweight champ at the time or not, gorillas are powerful animals and he would have been destroyed by it, no doubt.
- Tyson insists he’s learned better when it comes to animals. While wanting to fight a gorilla and previously keeping tigers captively doesn’t point to the traits of an animal lover, Tyson says he’s changed his ways and has much more respect for wildlife these days. “I was foolish. There’s no way you can domesticate these cats 100 percent. No way that’s going to happen,” he admitted in an Instagram Live interview with Fat Joe. “They’ll kill you by accident, especially when you’re playing rough with them, you’re punching them back. They get hyped up, hit you back and you’re dead. I’m just happy I educated myself. I was doing the wrong [stuff]. I shouldn’t have had them in my house, believing they were domesticated. I was wrong.”
