At the height of his storied professional career, Mike Tyson was regarded as the most formidable fighter on the planet.
He captured world honours for the first time in 1986 when he dethroned WBC champion Trevor Berbick in the 2nd round of their bout in Las Vegas to become the youngest world heavyweight champion of all time – a record that remains unbroken to this very day.
He added the WBA and IBF titles to his collection shortly after with victories over James Smith and Tony Tucker, achieving undisputed status at heavyweight just one month after he turned 21.
Despite sharing the ring with a number of legendary heavyweights, including Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Larry Holmes, there was one man in particular that Tyson didn’t match up against during his tenure. That man was ‘Big’ George Foreman.
As revealed by Bob Goodman in a 2005 interview with Boxing Scene, ‘Iron Mike’ was reportedly scared of the late great Foreman, who was known for his thunderous punching power. Goodman said promoter Don King told him as much.
“‘Georgie, you’ll never believe this, but f-cking Tyson is scared sh-tless of Foreman and wants no part of him.’ I was there when Don was trying to make the fight. He was telling Tyson that Foreman represented huge money, plus he was old and slow and would be no problem.”
“Tyson got up and screamed at King saying, ‘I’m not fighting that f-cking animal if you love the motherf-cker so much, you fight him!”
Foreman reigned as the world heavyweight champion on two occasions during his career, with the respective title reigns coming exactly 21-years apart. A showdown between Foreman and Tyson had reportedly been in the pipeline, but never did come to fruition.
He is perhaps best known for his 1994 victory over the previously unbeaten Michael Moorer, who he stopped in the tenth round of their bout in Las Vegas to capture the WBA and IBF titles and become the oldest heavyweight champion of all time.
