Mike Tyson
Credit: Reuters Photo
Mike Tyson, one of the greatest and most controversial boxers in the sport’s history, is no stranger to the fine art of promotion. At 58, and long past his athletic prime, he was still able to add a layer of curiosity to his upcoming, made-for-TV boxing match against the YouTuber Jake Paul by telling Interview magazine that God had told him to come out of retirement while he was experiencing the hallucinogenic effects of smoking toad venom.
“You rub it down until it become fine sand, and then you smoke it,” Tyson said of a substance produced by the Sonoran Desert toad during an interview with Rosie Perez, an actress and avid boxing fan. “Then you meet God. And this is what God told me to do.”
Tyson, a former heavyweight champion who has not had a professional bout since 2005, is scheduled to fight Paul, 27, on Friday in a live spectacle on Netflix, which has been pushed with a behind-the-scenes documentary series. It helps, of course, that Paul’s YouTube channel has more than 20 million subscribers.
But leave it to Tyson to generate his own publicity.
Tyson told Perez that he first smoked toad venom — which, according to herpetologists, is a poison, not a venom — about seven years ago with the assistance of a shaman. And while Tyson did not see God, he said, he felt God’s presence. And what was that feeling?
“That I’m nothing,” Tyson said, “but I’m everything.”
He went on to describe a “spiritual death” of sorts.
“It’s good to be afraid because you realize there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Tyson said in the interview. “That’s what the toad is all about: dying with dignity, and not being afraid of dying.”
While Tyson did not specify his toad venom of choice — he referred to it as the “spiritual medicine called the toad” — the secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad, which produce a hallucinogen known as 5-MeO-DMT, or Bufo, have attracted a following among people who have turned to psychedelics to treat mental disorders and addiction.
But in addition to issuing warnings about the illicit use of the venom, which is classified by the government as a Schedule 1 substance, scientists have voiced concerns about over-harvesting that could lead to collapses in native toad populations.
Tyson has his own theories. He told Perez that toad venom had not been legalized because “everybody might start loving each other.” He went on: “And we don’t want that, do we?”
Tyson said that he had smoked toad venom more than 80 times — and counting.
“Now,” he said, “I’m a professional. I can’t live without it.”
Tyson, who grew up in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, emerged as a teenage phenomenon in the 1980s, combining lightning-quick hands with ferocious power to overwhelm more experienced opponents. At 20, he became the youngest heavyweight champion in the sport’s history. But his career was pockmarked by personal problems, and he spent three years in prison after he was convicted of rape.
He subsequently returned to the ring, where he regained his heavyweight titles, and later played a fictionalized version of himself in the 2009 film, “The Hangover.”
But aside from participating in a handful of exhibitions, Tyson has not fought in years. Many have described his coming bout against Paul as little more than a publicity stunt and an easy payday, with both men expected to be paid tens of millions of dollars. In his interview with Perez, Tyson said that money had nothing to do with it.
“This fight is not going to change my life or my finances or nothing,” said Tyson, who acknowledged that the fight was his idea. “You got a YouTuber that has 70 million fans. And I’m the greatest fighter since the beginning of life, so what does that make? That makes an explosion of excitement.”