Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson is an American Hall of Fame former professional boxer whose 20-year boxing career across 1985–2005 produced his 1986 first heavyweight-boxing-championship victory at age 20 — making him the youngest heavyweight boxing champion in boxing history. He was born Michael Gerard Tyson on June 30, 1966, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York City, into an African-American working-class family. His biological father Purcell Tyson abandoned the family before Mike's birth, and his mother Lorna Mae Smith was a homemaker. The Tyson family relocated multiple times across his childhood through working-class Brooklyn neighborhoods, and Mike was in juvenile detention by age 13.

His 1979 admission to the Tryon School for Boys juvenile-detention center in Johnstown, New York — at age 13 — produced his early-career encounter with American boxing trainer Constantine "Cus" D'Amato (the renowned American boxing trainer who had previously trained Floyd Patterson and José Torres). The 1980 Tyson-D'Amato adoption arrangement — across which Tyson left the juvenile-detention system and moved to D'Amato's Catskill, New York home and boxing-training facility — produced his adolescent American boxing-training public profile.

His March 6, 1985 first professional boxing-debut victory over Hector Mercedes at Albany, New York launched his 1985–1990 American boxing breakthrough. His November 22, 1986 World Boxing Council Heavyweight Championship victory over Trevor Berbick at the Las Vegas Hilton — by second-round technical knockout — at age 20 years and 145 days — made him the youngest heavyweight boxing champion in boxing history.

His 1986–1990 undisputed heavyweight-boxing-championship reign across the WBC, WBA, and IBF heavyweight-boxing-championship belts produced his late-1980s American boxing public profile. His February 11, 1990 first defeat — at the hands of James "Buster" Douglas in Tokyo, Japan, by 10th-round knockout — shaped his later biographical narrative. His subsequent 1992 Indianapolis rape-conviction-and-imprisonment (across which he served three years of a 6-year prison sentence at the Indiana Youth Center across 1992–1995), his 1996 boxing-career-comeback victory over Frank Bruno (which produced his second WBC Heavyweight Championship), and his June 28, 1997 "Bite Fight" against Evander Holyfield (across which Tyson bit off a portion of Holyfield's right ear in the third round) shaped his later biographical narrative. He retired from professional boxing in 2005.

His name Mike is the English short form of Michael (from the Hebrew Mikha'el). Mike has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.