Former heavyweight world champion Mike Tyson blew his £411m ($500m) career earnings in just 15 years on women, luxury items and rehab. Tyson lost the millions earned across the course of his career thanks to some pretty outlandish spending habits.
In 1988, Tyson spent a whopping £1.8m ($2.2m) on a 24-karat gold bathtub as a Christmas gift for his first wife, Robin Givens, only for the couple to divorce a year later. There was also the iconic purchase of his three Bengal tigers which came with an eyewatering price tag of £58,000 ($70,000) each. But ‘Iron Mike’ has revealed that his final million dollars were spent on rehab to combat his substance abuse.
“When you’re making that much money it lasts for a long time,” he said on The Pivot podcast. “That didn’t die right away, it took like 15 or 16 years to go broke. I’m throwing s*** like ‘hey baby, you like that car? Ok you come and spend the weekend with me’, just crazy s*** you can do with your money.
“I spent the last money that I had from fighting on rehab, around a million bucks. I had enough money left like two million dollars and I bought a house in Phoenix. The house was difficult to sell, but somebody loved it and boom they gave me the money. This is God working.”
To supplement his healthy salary, Tyson is back partaking in lucrative exhibition boxing bouts with another rumoured to be taking place this year after the success of his fight with Roy Jones Jr in 2020.