The latter competed against Tommy Fury in early 2023, losing against the half-brother of WBC heavyweight champion Tommy Fury via split decision. Before the fight in Saudi Arabia, Paul earned an easy $250,000. All he had to do was get a tattoo of the vodka brand Au Vodka.
“I waited around, and two days later, he called and said, ‘Mike, I’ve got some tribal stuff.’ I said, ‘Woah, put another one over there’. I was like, ‘This is cool, I like this’. So he did it,” he added.
Zhilei Zhang (Chinese: 张志磊; pinyin: Zhāng Zhìlěi; born May 2, 1983) is a Chinese professional boxer. He held the World Boxing Organization (WBO) interim heavyweight title between 2023 and March 2024. As of June 2024, Zhang is ranked as the world’s fifth-best active heavyweight by The Ring magazine.
With money written all over the fight, it’s not hard to make sense of the fight between Paul and Tyson. While ‘The Problem Child’ will have his dream fight and the opportunity to fight his ideal, the allure of the flyweight boxing division ring and maybe a hefty paycheck pulled Tyson. But the question lingers. Who demanded the fight in the first place? Is it what we need right now?
Matters came to a head when Tyson and Givens gave a joint interview with Barbara Walters on the ABC TV newsmagazine show 20/20 in September 1988, in which Givens described life with Tyson as “torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could possibly imagine.” Givens also described Tyson as “manic depressive” – which was later confirmed by doctors – on national television while Tyson looked on with an intent and calm expression. A month later, Givens announced that she was seeking a divorce from the allegedly abusive Tyson, with the two officially separating on February 14, 1989.
According to the book Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson, Tyson admitted that he punched Givens and stated, “that was the best punch I’ve ever thrown in my entire life.” Tyson claimed that the book was “filled with inaccuracies.” Tyson and Givens had no children, but she reported having had a miscarriage; Tyson claimed that she was never pregnant and only used that to get him to marry her. During their marriage, the couple lived in a mansion in Bernardsville, New Jersey.
Shortly after the Olympics, Dino Duva was invited to Beijing to consult for the Chinese Boxing Federation. In Zhang, he saw not just talent but unprecedented ambition. At the time, Chinese boxers didn’t turn pro. Few of the country’s athletes did. “When you’re a national athlete in China, you get treated very well,” says Duva. “You’re supported by the government. They support your family. They give you bonuses and pay you well. But if you decide to make the move to become professional, they cut you off.” Zhang, Duva says, wanted more.
He took third place at the 2007 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Chicago, thus qualifying for boxing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won a silver medal. His fight was the last event of the 2008 Olympics. His coaches were disappointed he missed the publicity that would have accompanied the final gold medal for China. Despite that, he attracted a lot of attention by being the first Asian to win an Olympic medal in the unlimited weight class. At the 2012 Olympics, he was defeated on points in the quarterfinal by Anthony Joshua, the future unified heavyweight world champion.
Tyson regained one belt by easily winning the WBC title against Frank Bruno in March 1996. It was the second fight between the two, and Tyson knocked out Bruno in the third round. In 1996, Lennox Lewis turned down a $13.5 million guarantee to fight Tyson. This would’ve been Lewis’s highest fight purse to date. Lewis then accepted $4 million from Don King to step aside and allow Tyson to fight Bruce Seldon for an expected $30 million instead with the intention that if Tyson defeated Seldon, he would fight Lewis next. Tyson added the WBA belt by defeating champion Seldon in the first round in September that year. Seldon was severely criticized and mocked in the popular press for seemingly collapsing to innocuous punches from Tyson.
The tribal face tattoo on Tyson’s face is a powerful symbol that marks a milestone in his life. Furthermore, he got the tribal design in 2003, right before his fight against Clifford Etienne. In addition, the tribal design is a unique Maori design from New Zealand.
He is the titular character in Mike Tyson Mysteries, which started airing on October 27, 2014, on Adult Swim. In the animated series, Tyson voices a fictionalized version of himself, solving mysteries in the style of Scooby-Doo.
After moving to the United States in 2014, Zhang rarely visited China to see his parents, wife and son (born 2010 ) because he had to reapply for single-entry working visa every time. After a fight in China, he failed to get a visa and was stuck there for ten months between October 2018 and July 2019, missing a fight with Andriy Rudenko scheduled for November 2018 in Monaco. He was stuck for too long and asked his manager to terminate his housing lease and sell his car in New Jersey. He missed another fight scheduled in March 2020 in the United States after attending his father’s funeral. His flight scheduled for February 3, 2020, was two days after the United States implemented a COVID-19 travel ban on Chinese citizens. The 37-year-old Zhang had to wait another eight months for his next bout on November 7, 2020, with Devin Vargas on the undercard of the WBC lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Yuriorkis Gamboa.
