Mike Tyson is preparing to make a regular return to the sport of boxing, but it’s not what you would expect.
ESPN is reporting that Tyson will begin his career as a boxing promoter, with the start of Iron Mike Productions.
“I thought about it, I talked to my wife [Kiki] about it and we thought we wanted to do it,” Tyson said in an interview with ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” about his upstart Iron Mike Productions. “I feel so awesome to be involved with the game again. That just feels so awesome.”
The first official fight card under the Iron Mike Productions will take place on Aug. 23 at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, N.Y.
The card, featured on Friday Night Fights, will feature junior lightweight world titleholder Argenis Mendez (21-2, 11 KOs) in his first title defense against Arash Usmanee (20-1, 10 KOs) in the main event with Claudio Marrero (14-0, 11 KOs) taking on Jesus Andres Cuellar (22-1, 18 KOs) for a vacant interim featherweight title in the co-feature.
Tyson’s involvement in boxing as a promoter was supposed to be a partnership with Acquinity Sports, a Florida based promotional company that has been around for about two years and has a growing stable of talent, including Mendez and Marrero.
Tyson worked on a deal with Acquinity Sports chief executive Garry Jonas for the past five months before they decided to go with name recognition, and change the company to Iron Mike Productions.
“They gave me a call and believed we could help each other,” Tyson said of Jonas and Henry Rivalta, who heads boxing operations for the company. “We struck up a deal where we would form Iron Mike Productions. We have a few fighters, we have a world champion and a few up-and-coming contenders, and we’re still recruiting fighters. I just thought that would be something remarkable because I always wanted to be in boxing but I was unable to because of all the stuff that I’ve done that wasn’t too cool, back in the past.”
