Mike Tyson Channels ‘The Hangover’ With Epic Throwback Tiger Photo

Mike Tyson is known for his love for tigers and he recently shared a photo of him and one of his tigers when he was still in the prime of his career. Tyson posted a photo on Twitter that features him shirtless and sitting right next to his tiger. It’s clear the former heavyweight champ is not afraid of the Bengal.

So why did Tyson want to own tigers? Earlier this year, the 53-year old made an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and he explained how he was able to get the tigers on a pretty good deal.

“So I’m in prison at the time,” Tyson said according to Yahoo Sports. “So I’m in prison and I’m talking to my car dealer at the time and he has some cars that belong to a friend of mine — that’s both a friend of ours — and he’s discussing if [the friend] doesn’t pay for these cars I’m going to sell these cars to somebody and get some horses.

I said, ‘What, you can get horses? Trade horses in for cars?’ Because I had a lot of cars, I’d probably get some horses, too.

He said, ‘Yeah man, you can get cougars, lions, tigers.’ I said, ‘Dude can you get me some tigers?’

He said, ‘Man, imagine how cool that’d be. Imagine that man you’d be in the Aston Martin or Ferrari, you’d have a tiger right next to you, man.’

And I’m a young guy. I’m saying to myself, ‘Wow, that’d be cool.’ I said, ‘Yeah get me some cubs, man.’

When I come home I had cubs there waiting for me.”

Being in the same room with Tyson is intimidating enough. But him having tigers at his home had to make things difficult for Tyson to invite guests over.

That said, Tyson had the opportunity to get tigers and he took advantage of it. And when he was released from prison in 1995, not only were the tigers waiting for him, he was able to win the WBA and WBC heavyweight titles the following year. Tyson boxed for another nine years before calling it a career. He finished with a record of 50 wins and six losses.