Mike Tyson Was Almost Hanged To Death From A Fire Escape Over A Pigeon Dispute

Mike Tyson is one of the most legendary boxers of all time, and if you’re familiar with his life, you probably know his prowess in the ring can be traced back to a rough upbringing that required him to literally fight to survive—as evidenced by a wild story where he was almost hanged from a fire escape for trying to steal pigeons.

While Mike Tyson has chilled out a bit as he’s gotten older, he was once a dominant heavyweight who struck fear into the heart of virtually every single person who faced off against him in a boxing match. As a result, it’s kind of hard to believe he had a soft side back in the day.

With that said, the man known as “Iron Mike” developed an affinity for pigeons from a young age, as the animals offered him an escape from the bullying he was subjected to while growing up; he threw the first punch of his life at the age of 10 when he saw one of this tormentors kills a bird and claims he once knocked out a garbageman who declined to give one a proper burial.

However, based on a story he once told, he almost needed to be buried at a young age due to the animals he’s had a lifelong love for.

Mike Tyson was almost hanged from a fire escape for attempting to steal pigeons

Tyson was born in Brooklyn (specifically in the neighborhood of Fort Greene), and while he spent his early years in Bed-Stuy, his family was eventually forced to relocate to Brownsville (an area that’s still pretty rough today and was fairly lawless when NYC was in the throes of the crime wave that gripped it in the 1970s).

While many people view pigeons as a nuisance, Tyson was far from the only person in the city he called home who took a liking to the birds, and it’s safe to assume the animals that resulted in him having a brush with death belonged to someone who was a member of the pigeon racing community.

While a Sports Illustrated article that was published in 1988 doesn’t really detail what led up to the incident in question, it offers a harrowing glimpse into the existence that helped make Tyson the cold-blooded machine he was in the boxing ring:

The first to be hanged was Mike Tyson’s friend. The little boy screamed and kicked, but he was nothing against the anger of the men. They knotted the rope around his neck and heaved him over the edge of the tenement fire escape; the rope played out, then jerked. Urine flooded the little boy’s pants.

In a moment they would reel the body in, slip the noose over the other boy’s head—Mike Tyson’s head—and throw him over, too. His body froze, his mouth hung slack and mute. A neighbor noticed, shouted a threat. The boys’ captors panicked and fled.

Barely, he avoided death; death for trying to steal a man’s pigeons.

Wow.