Mike Tyson is planning to tattoo his whole face, starting after tonight’s fight with Jake Paul, as well as breaking his abstention from sex and drugs.
The former heavyweight champion, 58, debuted a distinctive tribal design stretching around his left eye and cheek in 2003, and plans to add to it after his landmark fight at the AT&T Center in Arlington, Texas.
“I’m thinking about some tattoos,” he told The Post Thursday night, hours before the showdown with Paul, 27, adding: “I think I just want to do my face, my whole face.”
When asked what design he would get, Tyson replied: “I’m not going to tell you, but it’s going to be interesting.”
Tyson shocked when he became the first high profile celebrity to sport a facial tattoo, but in the 20 years since they have since become more mainstream, sported by the likes of Post Malone, Jelly Roll, Cardi B and even Justin Bieber – and has no regrets about the ink.
“I think it’s liberation,” Tyson said. “I don’t care if somebody’s not going to put me on their plane or let me on their yacht or anything. [The face tattoo] allows me to be me.”
Even so, seeing them on other people can be a shock: “Sometimes I forget that I have one and I look at someone else and think, ‘Wow that guy looks really crazy.’”
As the hours tick down to fight time tonight, Tyson laid out his plans to get in the right frame of mind.
“I’ll be in bed before I go to the fight, take a warm bath, watch some karate movies,” he said. “Then cold showers before the fight.”
Plus, for Tyson, a devout Muslim, there will be prayer.
“I never pray and wish that I kick somebody’s ass in a fight,” Tyson revealed. “I believe God loves the other guy as much as he loves me. I pray I don’t get killed. But not that I win.”
While some critics have derided the fight as a money grab, Tyson, who’ll be receiving an estimated $20 million for his participation in the match, insisted it is anything but that.
“Money doesn’t mean nothing,” he said. “Money from this is not going to change my life. I’m living a great life. My cannabis company is the biggest in the world. Money has nothing to do with this. If anything, it’s about ego.”
In preparation for the big match, Tyson, who married third wife Lakiha Spicer in 2009, has abstained from sex for six months, weed for one year and his beloved psychedelic drugs for just as long.
“I’m the kind of guy who’s willing to sacrifice for success,” said Iron Mike. “Whatever I can sacrifice to accomplish goals, I do it. I’m focused on the fight … I don’t worry about anything but winning.”
However, once the fight is over, Tyson plans to party.
Asked what he will indulge in first, Tyson replied, “Whatever I want to do – cannabis, psychedelics whatever. It’ll be the first thing I can get. Now, though, it’s all secondary to the work.”
But he does retain memories of trippy indulgences: “The last psychedelic I did was frog venom. It’s like death with your heart still beating.”
Clearly, there were no mellowing agents in Tyson’s system Thursday night at his weigh-in, which blew up when he slapped Paul in the face.
Explaining how that happened, Tyson said: “I was in my socks and he had on shoes. He stepped on my toe because he is a f—ing a—hole. I wanted to think it happened by accident. But now I think it may have happened on purpose. I had to defend myself.”
As for Paul’s claim he is wagering his entire $40m purse on the fight, Tyson scoffed: “I think he’s lying.”
Tyson claims his rough and tumble youth on the mean streets of un-gentrified Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s give him a much different perspective to YouTube star Paul.
“We were always hungry, always starving; my mother was a sex worker and she lost her welfare,” Tyson recalled.
“[Paul] is a lot of talk. I think television made him. YouTube made him. But there is no substance to him. I came up fighting real fighters, world champions, world beaters. They don’t go on the Disney Channel and box kangaroos or anything like that. Jake’s more of a clown.”
Entertainment is something that Tyson knows a thing or two about, especially with his memorable cameo in blockbuster 2009 buddy movie “The Hangover,” where he appears with a tiger in a hotel room.
He says the scene isn’t far from reality.
“I had four tigers,” he said of the jungle creatures he obtained as cubs and raised until they passed away around 2010. “They slept in my bed with me. I was a ridiculous man. I never should have lived with them like that. I’m lucky they didn’t kill me.”
Nevertheless, he has ambitions to own another, adding: “Now they have a black species of tigers. I want one.”
If he emerges victorious in the boxing ring tonight, Tyson may step onto Paul’s turf, saying “I might become a YouTuber,” but no matter the outcome, and despite his age, he sees more matches in his future.
“I’ll fight people. It’s what I do,” he said.
