On June 27, 1988, Tyson danced again in the boxing ring in Atlantic City.
Continuous false shaking temptation, straight fist with forehand and swinging fist, hook swinging abdomen blow head...
91 seconds later, Tyson created a classic in boxing history, brutally KO former IBF heavyweight champion Spinks, breaking the doubts that he did not fight a good fight.
At the peak of his career, Tyson kicked out the elder agent and made Trump a special adviser and deputy promoter.
To secure Tyson's friendship, Trump spent $11 million
Trump may not be a qualified politician, but as a businessman, Trump has always been as shrewd as a monkey.
In the 1980s, Trump once again created a business miracle in New Jersey, which is why he met Tyson.
Violence and money are synonymous with Atlantic City, New Jersey, and with the opening of the first legal casino in the United States, the city, one of the world's four largest casinos, has hosted more than 1,300 professional boxing matches.
In 1984, Trump, who had become a real estate predator in the United States, set his sights on the land and built his first casino hotel here, Trump Plaza.
The 39-story, 612-room Trump Plaza hotel with thousands of service personnel is just the first step in his layout.
A year later, in Tyson's career fifth match against John Anderson, Trump came up with a high-priced bid of $100,000 to successfully make the game take place in his own hotel.
Taking this opportunity, Trump, who had planned early, met Tyson and won the favor of the other party.
In the following two years, under Trump's intentional bidding, Tyson's boxing matches were played in Atlantic City many times, and even after he won the WBC heavyweight championship title in defeat of Jamaican boxing champion Birbik, becoming the real boxing king, Tyson's first match was also held in Atlantic City.
In that era, Tyson represented boxing, and boxing represented money, and gambling could make the American businessman behind the boxing game profitable.
Although Tyson was almost rounded by New York in the following years of boxing competition at the Hilton Hotel, Trump was never a loser.
He threw millions of dollars in a row during this period, competing for the right to host several Tyson games.
In 1988, Trump spent $11 million to win the right to hold a world-renowned boxing match - Tyson vs Spinks.
The list price far exceeded the offers offered at Caesars Palace and hilton hotels at the time, and many thought Trump was crazy, but only he knew that it was only part of the plan.
At this time, Tyson has defeated strong enemies in succession, winning many gold belts including WBC, WBA, and IBF.
But some of the boxers he defeated were lucky enough to get the belt, and some were no longer at the peak, and they were not the most competitive opponents in the boxing ring.
The experience caused Tyson to arouse admiration and criticism, and he desperately needed to defeat a strong competitor to prove his strength to the world.
Spencers, who has won olympic gold medals and has never lost his professional boxing career, is the best choice.
The battle for names has attracted a lot of attention in the United States, and Trump is bound to use it to achieve his business goals.
Trump thought of a strange trick when planning the boxing match, and set the boxing tournament to Monday.
Generally speaking, boxing matches are mostly held on Saturdays and Sundays, so that the audience can have an unprecedented opportunity to watch the game.
But in such a world-renowned battle, attendance is not something trump needs to consider at all, because the game takes place on Monday, and many spectators rush to Atlantic City on the weekend to have fun, greatly increasing the spending time.
Trump also set up preferential conditions such as free viewing of high-end guests in the hotel, attracting countless spectators to the hotel to spend, and on the night of the game alone, the consumption revenue of the Trump Plaza Hotel increased by 6 times compared with usual.
On June 27, 1988, with a precise and ferocious hook punch, Tyson completely defeated Spinks in just 91 seconds, allowing the opponent to swallow the first defeat of his career.
Tyson, who won 34 battles, won 22 million prize money, and Trump also made a lot of money, with ticket revenue alone exceeding $12 million.
In the two days before and after the game, the profits of his casinos soared directly from $215 million to $344 million.
Soon after, Tyson announced to the outside world that he would fire his agent, Bill Keayton, who had been working with him for four years, and make Trump his special adviser and deputy promoter.
This news has attracted many media reports, and the New York Times has also published Trump's views:
"Tyson asked me if I would like to work with him, manage finances for him, plan his career for him, assist with legal proceedings with agent Caydon, etc., and I agreed." "Because of working with Tyson, I'm going to get a decent income, and I'm going to donate that money to charity."
Tyson's relationship with Trump is no accident, and the American writer Joyce Ottes has analyzed what the two have in common.
Although one of them was a poor boy who grew up on the street, and the other was a nobleman born with a golden key, they were both extremely confident and full of conquest in their respective fields, and it was this similarity that made the two become friends.
In this regard, Tyson and Trump formed a friendship in public and embarked on the road of cooperation, and Tyson did not expect that in a few months, he would have the backstab of this friend.
Because of a woman, Tyson stormed into Trump's office
A year before the match against Spinks, Tyson beat James Smith to win the WBA Heavyweight Championship, and 5 months later, he once again beat Tony Tucker for the IBF Heavyweight Champion Gold Belt.
In this regard, he owned three of the four major boxing organizations in the boxing world, setting a record for the youngest gold belt boxer.
He was 21 years old.
At this peak, Tyson married American actor Robin Gibbons.
Tyson had pursued her for ten months, and even built her a golden bathtub worth up to $2 million.
After defeating Spinks, Tyson's life can be said to have reached its peak, making tens of millions of dollars, accompanied by a wife, and supposedly a winner in life.
But what Tyson did not expect was that Trump actually had a relationship with his wife.
New York Times reporter Tim O'Brien documented the conflict between the two in his 2005 book, "TRUMP NATION."
In 1988, vogue, a famous American fashion magazine, published a photo that made Tyson extremely angry.
In the photo, Tyson's wife, Givens, appears on Trump's luxury yacht, wearing a hat emblazoned with the words "Princess Trump."
This made Tyson suspect that Trump was having an affair with his wife, so he directly broke into Trump's office.
Trump immediately denied: "I have never thought of it this way, and I will not do it." ”
Although Tyson chose to believe him, the relationship between the two also cracked.
Tyson's suspicions were not unfounded, and Robin Givons was never known for his loyalty.
She was the first official girlfriend of the famous actor Brad Pitt, and Tyson once said in his memoir "The Undisputed Truth" published in 2013 that he had met Givens and Pete on his way home, and then spared Pete after the two begged for forgiveness.
As for The character of Givens, the people around Tyson are also quite critical.
Tyson's assistant coach and assistant agent Lott once said in an interview:
Givens said he was pregnant, forcing Tyson to marry her, and shortly after the marriage, Tyson traveled to Japan to publicize the battle against Tony Tubbs. At the time, Tyson received a call from Givins, who told Tyson that she had bought a $4.3 million mansion in New Jersey, which Tyson didn't know about, and I could tell that Tyson was very upset when he heard the news. ”
A year later, Tyson's marriage to Givens also came to an end.
After Tyson beat Spinks to make $22 million, Givons took him to court for abusing him.
In an interview, Givens said:
"I'm glad my family is alive. In our 8 months of marriage, he beat me up every day. I vividly remember the time he hit me on the phone, and I was thinking—one of us was going to die right away. But God bless, I'm alive today. ”
In Givens' statement that Tyson was a domestic abusive man with manic depression, a claim that was strongly condemned by Tyson's friends.
On February 14, 1989, Tyson and Givens officially divorced, and Tyson began to decline, but Trump reached out to him in his difficult times.
From giving ten million to breaking down the relationship again
After hitting a big name in boxing history in 1990, Tyson, who was knocked down by Douglas, began his own death journey.
In 1991, Tyson, who was on a trip to Indianapolis, was charged — Miss Black Cyru Washington called the police to say she had been raped by Tyson.
The following year, Tyson was sentenced to six years in prison and four years of probation for rape and two counts of sexual impropriety, until he was released on parole on March 25, 1995.
Tyson was only 25 years old when he was in prison, which was the golden age of a boxer.
Shortly after his release, Tyson was charged again for a traffic accident in Maryland, where two men said Tyson had beaten them.
The year before, Tyson had just been stripped of his boxing license for biting Hollyfield's ear.
After being re-imprisoned, the Maryland Parole Board granted Tyson's release by a 5-1 vote on May 21, 1998.
But after his release from prison, Tyson was dumbfounded, because he had earned more than 400 million yuan, and he found that he not only had no money, but also owed a large loan.
After checking the accounts, Tyson started a lawsuit with his former agent, Don King, over contract issues, and he sued the other party for defrauding him of a huge amount of bonuses and appearance fees, and claimed $100 million from him, but the final amount of compensation was not satisfactory.
In 2002, Tyson, who had entered the trough of his life and could not repay his debts, was forced to declare bankruptcy, and a generation of boxing superstars actually became a "lao Lai" spurned by everyone for a while.
In the dark moments of Tyson's life, Trump unexpectedly stood up and actually gave Tyson a check for 10 million yuan to help him get through the difficulties.
It is worth mentioning that when Tyson was imprisoned for rape, in the face of gushing public opinion, Trump stood in front of the media to express support for Tyson.
In an interview with reporter Howard Stern, Trump said that there is no point in blaming, and Tyson should continue training, using the money earned to compensate victims or donate to public welfare organizations that protect those raped.
"Because I've known Tyson to a greater or lesser extent from the beginning, I'm saddened to hear about him, I don't believe it happens to him, and it's also possible that women have taken the initiative to show him kindness and his sentence is a farce."
Although he explicitly supported Tyson, Trump did not give up his interests because of Tyson, and he later said that Tyson had actually changed.
Trump said, "He played really well in my Trump Square, he was so incredible, but in the last few years, he has completely changed, no longer the fighter he was before, no longer the same person he was before, which makes me sad." ”
Trump's help in Tyson's dim moments is actually more of a speculative option than a friend's friendship, and Trump is willing to pay some costs to plan for the future, just as he bet early on Tyson's fifth game.
Later, when Tyson went on stage to perform a talk show in order to make money, Trump also went to the scene to watch.
This speculation paid off, and in 2015, when Trump ran for president, Tyson, who had already crossed the trough, voted for him, and Tyson's influence was at stake for Trump.
In 2020, Tyson, who had been retired for 15 years, decided to make a comeback against Roy Jones in an eight-legged exhibition match.
In the interview, Tyson said he's not fighting for money: "I always tell people — they think having money makes them happy, they've never had money before — you can't expect no one to love you when you have a lot of money." ”
Trump also sent blessings to the old friend's comeback, but no one expected that the relationship between the two would soon break down again.
On May 26, 2020, the video of police kneeling to kill a black man caused a huge shock in the United States.
Faced with the condemnation of black people around the world, Trump was forced to respond to the matter.
But his arrogant attitude sparked an even stronger backlash: He claimed to have contacted Freud's family, but the other side said That Trump did not give them a chance to speak.
As things unfolded, Tyson, as a black man, had to come forward to express his attitude toward the matter.
He posted a photo of him on one knee on social media.
At that time, kneeling down on one knee to show tribute to Floyd had become an iconic cultural symbol of anti-discrimination in the United States, and Tyson's attitude was self-evident.
And it was this action that announced the end of Tyson's nearly 40-year relationship with Trump.
From initially winning the right to hold a boxing tournament, to squeezing out the elderly at Tyson's peak, to hooking up with Tyson's wife and then relying on speculation at his lows to get votes.
Trump's relationship with Tyson seems to be deeply emotional, but in fact, every step is full of calculations.
In the end, the relationship breaks down, and perhaps it is the way to go.
Sources of information:
Guangzhou Daily," Trump had an affair with Tyson's ex-wife? Once blocked in the office by the boxer"
Boxing and Fighting "Tyson and Trump Bonded by Boxing"
Boxing time and space "Trump or live watching Mayweather vs Connor, was exposed to have an affair with Tyson's wife"