Mike Tyson's very first fight happened by accident after a man killed one of his pigeons.
Tyson developed a love for the birds when he was a youngster in Brooklyn, New York.
Only last year, he invited Muhammad Ali's grandson Nico Ali Walsh to see his feathered friends in his $100,000 pigeon loft.
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'Iron' Mike grew up in a rough area where crime was prolific but he learned compassion from pigeons.
And it was a situation with the birds that resulted in his first ever tear-up at the age of 10.
A bully stole one of his pets and then when Tyson confronted him, he brutally killed the pigeon and rubbed the blood on Mike.
That irked Tyson, but he wasn't going to do anything about it until his friends urged him to.
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And everything changed from that moment he caught him flush with a right hand.
"My first fight happened by accident," Tyson recalled in the book IRON AMBITION: My Life with Cus D’Amato.
"I had used some of my pilfering money to buy my own pigeons. I kept them in an abandoned building next to mine.
"This guy stole one of my birds and when I confronted him to get it back, he pulled it out of his coat and twisted its neck off and rubbed the blood on me. I was furious but I was scared to fight, until one of my friends egged me on. 'You’ve got to fight him, Mike.'
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"So I hit with a right and he went down and I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. Then it dawned on me how cool Wise looked doing the Ali shuffle so I just started shuffling and everybody started clapping. My first taste of applause."
Tyson would go on to become the youngest heavyweight champion in history and finished his decorated career with 50 wins, six losses and two no contests from 58 fights.
His obsession with pigeons remains and he once ruthlessly dumped his girlfriend after she cooked and ate one.
Topics: Mike Tyson
Josh Lawless