Mike Tyson had a Pride contract to fight Fedor
The first meeting with Sakakibara and Mike Tyson took place in April of 2006. The location was China. Mike Tyson,…
The first meeting with Sakakibara and Mike Tyson took place in April of 2006. The location was China. Mike Tyson, during his imprisonment, had become deeply inspired by revolutionary Mao Zedong. He was in China getting a tattoo of the notorious former leader of China. Sakakibara’s killing words were “creating a world tour.”
Tyson was a huge MMA fan from the very beginning. He had even worn a Vitor Belfort t-shirt at a meeting with reporters. One drawback, as we have seen most recently, an accomplished boxer could not go into the PRIDE ring solely with one skill, for the competition pool was very deep at this time. Two other major draw backs were the fact he had his license suspended by the NSAC and Japan frowned upon allowing convicted felons to fight in their country.
This is where the idea of a “world tour” came into Sakakibara’s mind. His matches would be boxing matches, first with Mirko Crocop, and eventually with Fedor Emelianenko, two strikers that had a chance at boxing with Tyson in the PRIDE ring. The plans were for these fights to be held in Russia, China, and other venues in Europe.
A fight in Japan and the United States were planned for the future, pending the results of the legal hurdles involved in getting him licensed.
Using Tyson in this fashion, PRIDE would be grabbing a share of the market that the UFC was unable to attain.
At the PRIDE presser in Las Vegas of that year, Mike Tyson showed up under the notion of being a PRIDE fighter that DSE was happy to have joined the organization. After that, the plan stopped. Tyson was nowhere to be found.
Questions were raised after the press conference and during the event, but DSE executives were reluctant to give an honest answer. DSE said no matter how hard they tried to get Tyson on board, Tyson rejected all offers.
As for Mike Tyson, these events became a common occurrence. From Bob Sapp calling out Mike Tyson at a K-1 event, when Tyson was on his way to the event from his hotel room, Tyson decided “I don’t want to go.”
One thing for certain, DSE did have an official contract with Mike Tyson. If there were a breach of this contract, Tyson would be monetary obliged to compensate DSE accordingly. As with many Tyson deals, that meant nothing.
One DSE employee stated that Tyson had incurred enormous debts from doing things such as this and that DSE was pretty much helpless in this regard. DSE’s position was that Tyson had already incurred millions in debt that he didn’t care about a measly few hundred thousand dollars.
The Tyson story, after all of this, became a fairy tale. Nothing was every brought of it again.