Search icon

News

22nd Apr 2022

Mike Tyson breaks silence after punching passenger on flight

Wayne Farry

Tyson was caught on video attacking a passenger on a plane.

Mike Tyson has broken his silence for the first time after he was filmed while appearing to attack a passenger on a flight on Wednesday night.

Footage recorded showed the 55-year-old repeatedly punching a passenger on a flight which was set to take off from San Francisco.

Witnesses on the flight said that Tyson appeared to be friendly and posed for photos at first. However, the former boxer lost his cool after a passenger behind him continued to speak to him.

Tyson and his team have responded to the footage and claimed that the man was “extremely intoxicated” and provoked Tyson, leading to the attack.

Speaking to TMZ, Tyson’s representatives also claimed that the former world champion had a water bottle thrown at him in the build-up to the altercation.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Tyson had an incident on a flight with an aggressive passenger who began harassing him and threw a water bottle at him while he was in his sea,” they said.

Police from San Francisco confirmed that they were called to the scene and detained two people that were involved in the incident.

Officials also confirmed that one of the people involved, who was also treated for minor injuries, had “provided minimal details of the incident and refused to cooperate further with the police investigation”.

Tyson was defended by YouTube and boxing star Jake Paul, who claimed that the passenger who had provoked the 55-year-old deserved to be attacked.

“If you’re being heckled in public like Mike Tyson was you should legally get a hall pass to beat someone’s ass. This generation thinks they can get away with anything,” he tweeted.

Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 but made a return to the ring in 2018 for an exhibition fight against Roy Jones Jr, which ended in draw.