By: Sean Crose
“I smoke every day,” Mike Tyson said after his high profile exhibition bout with Roy Jones on Saturday night. ” I never stop smoking.” Tyson, as those who have been following his exploits recently know, wasn’t referring to cigarettes. He was referring to marijuana, a drug which he swears by. ” It has no effect on me from a negative standpoint,” he said of smoking pot. Indeed, when speaking to the media about his priorities on Saturday, he mentioned his family, his clothes and his joints. Needless to say, the man known as Iron Mike has been involved in the legalized marijuana business as of late.
Sure enough, at times during the press conference, Tyson’s words seemed to take on a hippie vibe. “We don’t even know how old we are,” he stated philosophically at one point. “The energy makes us as old as we want to be.” Far out. In truth, the pay per view broadcast of the Tyson-Jones fight was a pot centric affair. Snoop Dogg, who performed and helped broadcast the event, smoked what appeared to be a joint live on the air. Broadcaster Mauro Ranallo even joked about receiving a contact high.
Although some might not approve of Tyson’s love of marijuana, there’s no doubt he is no longer acting like the public terror her used to. “The old Mike Tyson no longer exists,” he said outright during the press conference. Tyson didn’t even lose patience during the fight when Jones took to holding him so that the former heavyweight champion couldn’t get a clean shot in. “He was a platform to become me,” Tyson said of his younger, more reckless self.
The former great even went so far as to credit social media influencers like Jake Paul, who fought on Saturday’s card, for helping kick start the sport of boxing. “UFC was kicking our butts,” he said, “now we’ve got these YouTube boxers.” As far as Tyson is concerned, the powers that be “should just give them a belt…these guys brought it back.”
New outlook or not, Tyson still showed on Saturday night that he could hit with “bad intentions.” Although he didn’t drop Jones, he swung, and sometimes landed, well on the former pound for pound icon. He may not have been the Tyson of old, but it was clear the spark was still there. Needless to say, the fifty four year old family man wants to keep engaging in exhibition fights like the one he had with Jones. And it’s clear he still wants to keep getting high.
“I like who I am,” he said. “I never liked who I was before.”
