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Big if true: While announcing his new cannabis line, Mike Tyson says he would have been a better fighter in the ring, and less of a brawler outside of the ring if he’d started smoking marijuana earlier in his career.
“My life was just miserable, I was out of control,” Tyson told Yahoo! Finance reporter Zack Guzman. “I was fighting with everybody. If someone asked me for an autograph, I’d punch them in the face. I was just a mess, and then after I retired, I started smoking. What a mistake that was — I should have smoked my whole career. I should have smoked when I was fighting because it put me in this different state of mind. I’m very relaxed and the more relaxed you are, the better fighter you are, at least in my case.”
How much green does Tyson need to stay equilibrated? In 2019, he mused to a reporter that it could be as high as $40,000 a month.
His recent comments align with the plant-centric path that the former cocaine user has adopted in recent years. He has attributed a personal and emotional renaissance to the frog venom-derived psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT, and is working with a biotech company founded by fellow former pro-athlete, hockey player Daniel Carcillo, on a psilocybin-guided approach to treating brain injuries. His cannabis-titled podcast “Hotboxin’ With Mike Tyson” has featured weed-enhanced interviews from celebrities such as LL Cool J to Roseanne Barr. In 2018, he broke ground on a Mojave Desert ranch that he plans on dedicating to cannabis cultivation and tourism.
But it’s important to take the boxer’s comments with a grain of salt — certainly, it’s not true that “The Baddest Man on the Planet” never consumed marijuana while competing. In 2000 he tested positive for cannabis, and as a result, had a previous win reclassified as a no-contest.
55-year-old Tyson has made multiple comebacks to the ring over the course of his career — the most publicized being in 1998, when he made a return to competition after serving time for rape. Last November he came to a draw with Roy Jones in an eight-round exhibition match, and he recently confirmed to UK publication The Sun that he would be back to boxing in 2022, potentially to spar with one of YouTube’s Paul brothers, who are 24- and 26-years-old respectively.
In a Forbes interview, Tyson said that part of that astounding regenerative power has to do with cannabis — and psychedelics.
“I think of [psychedelics] as an enhancer,” Tyson said. “It makes me better, even in the ring. The punches don’t hurt as much, it has a lot to do with my comeback, the psychedelics.”
His new line Tyson 2.0 will be released in collaboration with integrative cannabis corporation Columbia Care Inc., and will reportedly feature cannabis products ranging from flower to pre-rolls, beverages, and edibles. Tyson has been selling his Tyson Holistic line of cannabis products since 2016.
