- A regular person like you or me could take a punch from Mike Tyson, the former champion said, providing we had a "willingness to die."
- Tyson said it's not about being athletic, per se, but more so having the mental fortitude to take blows and keep moving.
- Wondering what it would feel like to get hit by a heavyweight boxing champion is nothing new.
- Insider asked Deontay Wilder's trainer Jay Deas what it would be like to get thumped by the American. He laughed and told us it would not end well.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Mike Tyson said even an ordinary person could take a punch from him if they had a "willingness to die."
It is a question followers of combat sport from afar may have often wondered — how hard do heavyweight boxers really hit?
The actor Sylvester Stallone said boxing, like life, is not about how hard you can hit; it's how hard you can get hit — and keep moving. That's how to win at life, Stallone said in his immortal boxing movie franchise "Rocky."
Now, Tyson, who was famously the youngest man to become the heavyweight world champion aged 20 in 1986, has echoed the fictional Rocky Balboa. He said being able to absorb a brutal blow has nothing to do with a person's athletic abilities, but, rather, their mental approach.
"What is a normal person?" Tyson said on a "Safe Distance with Mike Tyson" podcast on his popular YouTube channel.
"It has nothing to do with being an athletic person. It's about your morale. Fighting has a lot to do with morality too. It's not about taking it, it's the willingness to die, that's what life is," he said.
"When you stand up to it, you no longer have to fear it."
What would happen if a heavyweight today hit you in the face?
Because of a shared passion for finishing fights early, the former WBC heavyweight world champion Deontay Wilder has become known as a modern-day Tyson of sorts.
Before the American's loss to Tyson Fury in Las Vegas two months ago, Wilder enjoyed an intimidating record of 41 knockouts from 42 wins with one draw.
At that point in his career, he had knocked down or finished every single opponent he had ever faced in a professional ring.
Insider was at the MGM Grand throughout fight week to get the inside scoop on the stories that mattered most. Stories like what would happen if Wilder hit the average person in the face.
His trainer, Jay Deas, laughed at the question when we asked him.
Deas said it "would not be good," that the person would likely end up in a heap on the floor, and that Wilder has accidentally punched him during training sessions inflicting volleyball-sized bruises.
Mike Tyson's former trainer Jeff Fenech, meanwhile, said that if the 53-year-old ex-champion returned to the sport today, he could easily knockout Wilder, though Tyson famously lost his last two fights in the mid-2000s to lesser-skilled fighters he would have destroyed during his heyday.
- Read more:
- Mike Tyson once offered a zookeeper $10,000 to open a cage so he could 'smash' a silverback gorilla in the face
- Mike Tyson said there were times in his career when he thought he was a 'Demi-God' after Eminem tearfully told the ex-heavyweight champion he worshipped him as a kid
- Mike Tyson said that to be successful in life you have to sacrifice happiness, because there's so much competition in the world
- Mike Tyson said he looks forward to death because living is a 'struggle,' and takes more courage than dying
- 'Sometimes I feel like a b----': Mike Tyson cried on his podcast because he feels 'empty' and misses being 'an annihilator' in the ring
- Mike Tyson talked on a podcast about the time one of his famous pet tigers attacked a woman trespassing at his house: 'She was just f---ed up'
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