Remembering Mike Tyson's Bold Claim That He Was Going to Eat Lennox Lewis' Children

By Michael Luciano | Apr 12, 2020, 1:33 PM EDT

Mike Tyson was among the best in boxing history at intimidating his opponents before fights. Normally, his unrivaled punching power and aggressiveness did that for him. When that started to leave him late in his career, he had to resort to trash talk, and that didn't go so well when he was scheduled to take on Lennox Lewis.

In a 2000 interview, two years before the two would actually get in the ring, Tyson claimed that he had been eyeing a fight against Lewis for some time, claiming that he "wants his heart" and that he would "eat his children."

Lewis did not have any children at the time.

After nearly two years of struggling to make this fight happen, as several states would refuse to give Tyson a license to fight, the bout finally went down in 2002 at The Pyramid in Memphis, Tenn. Tyson, by this point a shell of his former self, was dominated by Lewis before being dropped in the eighth round with a deadly right hand.

Tyson fought three more times after this fight, losing twice, while Lewis defeated Vitali Klitschko before retiring off into the sunset.

The way Tyson used to get in people's heads was spooking them with his punching power. Trash talk, as he proved during the Lewis fight, was not his forte.