Legendary promoter Bob Arum has explained why he was reluctant to take former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson under his wing when he was just starting to take his first steps in professional boxing.
"We had a show on ESPN every weekend. We worked at that pace for 15 years promoting fighters on those shows. Mike was just starting out, and we booked a whole series of fights for him. But the problem was that this guy was very intimidating and would destroy any fighter in one round that we gave him. This was not good for a TV station that relied on selling commercial time. Also, Tyson was very badly behaved outside the ring.
The only way to work with him was to give fights as often as possible. We had enough fighters in his division on the program, but not enough to give him fights once or twice a week. So his team started looking elsewhere for opportunities for his fighter," talkSPORT quotes Tyson as saying.
Recall, on July 20 in Arlington, USA, 57-year-old Tyson will fight 27-year-old blogger Jake Paul.
