Did a sexually transmitted disease change the course of boxing history 36 years ago in Tokyo?
At 42-1 odds, Buster Douglas, who was coming off a loss, was supposed to be a punching bag for Iron Mike Tyson, who entered with a 37-0 record and the title as the baddest man on the planet, but Mike was going through a secret health battle that very few knew about, veteran Vegas bookmaker Art Manteris now claims.
During an appearance this week on "The Colin Cowherd Podcast," Manteris explained what he has learned about Tyson's health and what may have led to the greatest upset in boxing history.
"Tyson was an emotional wreck," Manteris remembers, while noting that Douglas entered the ring having lost his mother. The big underdog dedicated the fight to his deceased mother, while in the other corner, Tyson's life was beginning to unravel.
There was the disastrous 1988 interview with Barbara Walters where his then-wife Robin Givens described the "torture" and "pure hell" associated with being married to Iron Mike, who sat right next to Givens as she destroyed him. The couple's divorce was finalized on Valentine's Day 1989.
Manteris told Cowherd that while Tyson's personal life was imploding, he also entered the Douglas fight while battling an STD.
"I came to learn later, after the fact, not before the fact, but I was told by a very good friend and, per my personal physician, who happened to be Mike's personal physician, that Mike had been suffering from an STD and was under heavy medication at the time of the fight," Manteris recalled.
"It wasn't the first time that he fought under those conditions," the bookmaker continued. "The first time, in the Trevor Berbick fight, it didn't hurt his performance at all."
The Berbick fight took place in 1986. Tyson fought nine times between knocking out Berbick and the Douglas fight. In his book, "The Bookie: Inside the High-Stakes World of Sports Betting ― A Legendary Bookmaker’s Tale of Gangsters, Celebrities, and the Art of the Game," Manteris contends Tyson was battling gonorrhea.
During a 2013 interview on Power 106 in Los Angeles, Tyson admitted to dealing with gonorrhea during the Berbick fight. "I was melting like a good human in July," Tyson remembered."
Mike then shared some wisdom as the show staff tried to guess how many STDs Tyson has had.
"You think they're good girls, but sometimes they don't know. They don't have the symptoms," Tyson said of the women he was sleeping with at the time.
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