Now with that said, we fast forward to today where Mike Tyson is in Canada to promote his one-man show “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.” Tyson visits a Canadian news show, where anchor Nathan Downer asks him a few softball questions about the show. Downer then queries, quite gently, about Tyson’s previous visit to Toronto, where he met with fellow suspect character in city Mayor Rob Ford. Ford, who is seeking to hold his position at the upcoming October Mayoral elections, was publicly endorsed by Tyson who stated he was “the best [Mayor] in Toronto’s history.”
Downer then asked if Tyson was the best person to be publicly endorsing a politician, given Tyson’s previous rape conviction, coupled with Ford’s own highly controversial private doings. This, we should point out, is a fairly standard query when it comes to politics, as if you’re not squeaky clean, then reputations of being untrustworthy tend to come up quite often.
Tyson, being the Champion of Linguistics that he is, reacted thusly.
The crux of the matter here, is that if you’re going to stick your neck – even barely – into the world of politics, then you can expect the same kind of scrutiny that politicians face. And if you just so happen to have had an extraordinarily public trial, conviction and incarceration for rape in your past, there’s a pretty darn good chance that’s going to come up at some point.
Bonus points in this instance go to Nathan Downer, who stared down the former undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World – at times proclaimed to be the baddest and most feared man on the planet – and didn’t even freaking blink.
Now, I’m not saying the dude’s got enormous cojones. But he certainly never has to worry about finding somewhere to sit down.
Photo: Ethan Miller via Getty Images.
