MAN-EATER MIKE’S TERRIFYING TANGLE WITH KILLER SHARK!
BOXER Mike Tyson confesses facing killer sharks as part of Discovery’s Shark Week turned him into a quivering weenie!
“I was scared all the way through and was just trying to get through it alive,” says the not-so-tough guy, who notoriously bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear during a 1997 heavyweight bout.
“One shark kept bumping me and I’m like, ‘What the hell do you want?’”
But the former world champ, 54, had good reason to be terrified!
As GLOBE has reported, ravenous sharks are prowling America’s beaches in record numbers this summer — and the maneaters have exploded in a feeding frenzy that’s left swimmers slashed to pieces and fatally mauled!
The massive predators have killed two Americans, including New York City executive Julie Dimperio Holowach, who was eaten alive off the coast of Maine.
And Iron Mike admits he got the heebie-jeebies while training to go one-on-one with the razor-toothed monsters by “ringman” Paul de Gelder, an Australian Navy diver who was horribly maimed in a 2009 shark attack.
“I said, ‘Listen, this is not a good time to make me feel confident in there, seeing this guy who’s got an arm and a leg missing,’” he said.
Mike started out training in the Bahamas with an animatronic shark and then descended underwater in a cage. At one point in the Discovery program, Tyson vs. Jaws: Rumble on the Reef, he rubbed a shark’s nose.
“[The shark] felt like one big muscle. It was so powerful,” he says.
The tatted-up pugilist is training for a comeback fight in September — and says he might jump back in the water for a chance to TKO a great white.
“But it would have to be for a good cause,” Mike insists.
“I’m not a beach bum. I’m a concrete type of guy.”