Do we like Mike Tyson?
Our score: 0 out of 10. He was convicted of rape in 1992, and the scale puts a conviction for violence against a person at zero whatever else is true.
Mike Tyson was born in Brooklyn in 1966 and became one of the biggest names boxing has ever had, heavyweight champion and later an inductee of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011. For plenty of fans that is where the story stops. For this page it is where the questions start.
In February 1992 an Indiana jury convicted Tyson of rape and two counts of deviant sexual conduct, and he was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in March 1995. In 1997 he was disqualified from a title rematch for biting Evander Holyfield's ear, fined US$3 million and had his Nevada licence revoked for a year. In 2022 he was filmed hitting a passenger on a plane; he said the man was bothering him, and prosecutors announced he would not face charges.
A woman also filed a US$5 million civil suit in January 2023 alleging he raped her in a limousine in the early 1990s. Tyson denied the allegation, and she withdrew the suit in March 2025; her lawyers said they stood by her account and Tyson's lawyer said nothing more. No court ever ruled on it, so it stays an allegation.
On the harm check, nothing turned up from Tyson about LGBTQ+ or trans people. His politics are the live issue. In 2015 he said Trump “should be president of the United States” while calling Trump's remarks about Mexicans crude. In February 2026, as Trump deleted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, Tyson said he was “100 percent” for Trump because of past kindness. He didn't address the video directly, per Atlanta Black Star.
The recent run is busy. He fronted a Super Bowl ad for the MAHA Center, urging people to eat real food. His Floyd Mayweather exhibition has slipped to fall 2026 after a broken hand in training. A London agency sued him in 2024, alleging he wrongly ended a promotional deal; his side says the agency breached first, and the case was ongoing as of the last report.
So: a Hall of Famer in the ring, but outside it the record is a rape conviction, years of violence and a loud alliance with a president many of our readers have reasons to distrust. People change, and he has the right to deny the 2023 allegation. But on our rules he's a no.