Mike Tyson has been backed to make his return to the boxing ring (Image: Getty)
Former heavyweight boxing world champion has been backed by former coach Teddy Atlas to make a return to the ring following his defeat to .
The 58-year-old, who retired from the sport back in 2005 after losing to Kevin McBride, made a sensational return to the professional setting back in November against the YouTuber-turned-boxer. The pair were due to go toe-to-toe last July, but ‘Iron Mike’ was forced to pull out of the bout after .
Ahead of the November meeting, Tyson showed off preparations for the contest, with many boxing fans believing he could roll back the years on fight night. However, it was anything but after the 58-year-old failed to land anything siginificant throughout the heavyweight dust-up and eventually suffered a
In an interview with , Atlas has backed his former pupil to fight again, providing he has some regret following the defeat in Texas two months ago. “I’d find it curious if Tyson would want to fight again,” he said. “Maybe he’s mad at himself because maybe there was a deal to just kind of show up and now maybe he’s mad, and maybe he does feel some regret for doing something that maybe Cus D’Amato wouldn’t have agreed with. To go in the ring and let people see him for less than he was throughout his career.”
“Should he fight again? The easy answer would be ‘no’. Physically something could happen. He is 58. All of that. The easy answer would be, no, but I’m not going to give you the easy answer. The answer is, yes [he should fight again], if it’s important to him for the rest of his life to be comfortable, if this [defeat] made him so uncomfortable.”
“If that last fight with Paul made him feel less than he wants to feel for the rest of his life, then he should fight. Then it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying forget about your health. But I’m going to say, forget about those risks, you already put yourself in that position. If you have to redeem yourself in some way and have to do it again for yourself to sleep right, to feel right now. What’s the sense of being alive if you’re healthy, but you’re not feeling alive. You’re not healthy spiritually. If you’re not healthy mentally then fight again, but be careful who it’s against because we still have to be practical here.”
Atlas added that the loss would’ve ‘damaged’ Tyson’s image in the eyes of his legendary mentor Cus D’Amato – who sadly passed away in 1985. “Cus would have said, ‘you’re not a fighter no more what are you doing getting in the ring?’ Because Cus did care about legacy,” he continued. “I know it hurt Cus when Ali had to go out the way he went. And I know it hurt Cus because with Joe Louis, I remember Cus saying to me one day, we were talking about the Joe Louis fight with Marciano and he said ‘that wasn’t Joe Louis’. He wasn’t taking nothing away from Marciano, who was a tremendous fighter, but that wasn’t Joe, and I think that he would have felt like ‘That’s not Mike Tyson’.
“He would have said: ‘Why is that Mike Tyson masquerading as my Mike Tyson in the ring with that 28 year old guy that was never a top fighter. Why is he there? He shouldn’t be in there because for Cus it would have damaged the image of what he thought was obviously a great fighter.”