Big Joe Egan — The Man Iron Mike Couldn't Knock

Imagine arriving home and finding Mike Tyson in your living room.

Think bat in the belfry, barracuda in the bathtub, Genghis Khan on your landing, velociraptor on your couch.

What would you say to Iron Mike as he flicks through your TV channels with your remote control?

"Hey Tyson, I was watching that and you better switch back to that chan………. "

Joe Egan, a long-time friend of Tyson's, invited the former world heavyweight champ round to see his mammy at their home in Ringsend, Dublin last year.

No one knows what Mrs Ann Egan said to the heavyweight who put more men on canvas than Rembrandt. They probably had tea and cake – as you do with the heart of darkness of pro boxing.

But, being an Irish mammy, Mrs Egan was probably lecturing Iron Mike about his hair, clothes, tattoos, girlfriends, and all the rest of his complicated life.

She might also have grilled him about his relationship with Don King his one-time promoter, who had, and some say still has, the world of pro boxing in more or less a permanent state of uproar for the last four decades. An FBI investigation into King's promotional reign concluded that no one was doing anything illegal per se because there were no rules -  a bit like Fianna Fail then.  King, like Tyson, also spent some reluctant time in the custody of the US government on a manslaughter rap. While running a numbers racket on the Eastside of Cleveland he was jailed for killing a fellow hustler. Tyson was jailed for rape.

King was also the subject of a number of investigations by the FBI and the Inland Revenue Service, whose perseverance  proved too much for Al Capone.

Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Lennox Lewis and Tim Witherspoon also sued King, mostly for fraud and most settled out of court.

King was eventually  hauled up in front of the judge on 24 counts of income tax evasion, filing fraudulent tax returns, conspiracy and whatever you're having yourself this weekend.

He was acquitted on all charges and told waiting reporters: They went down the list of every conceivable charge known to man. Racketeering, skimming, kickbacks,ticket scalping, fixing fights, preordaining fights, vitiating officials, corrupting judges (boxing judges), all the way down to laundering money. Everything but the Lindbergh baby.

Incidentally Don, where were you on the night when the Lindbergh baby disappeared?

Mrs Egan might have grilled Mike on all those subjects. We don't know if she nailed him for being a rapist, but we can only hope she made him squirm as he sipped his tea and nibbled his Giner Nut biscuits.

Tyson, in that lisping voice, forever at odds with a campaign of orchestrated violence that saw him, at 20, become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time, would no doubt reply.

Yes Mrs Egan, no Mrs Egan, I'm sorry Mrs Egan.

Dublin-born Egan has been Tyson's friend and sparring partner for over over two decades. He was first hired as Tyson's spar ahead of a world title defence for Iron Mike in the mid 80s.

Sparring partners are basically the hired help of pro boxing. They might earn – if they're lucky – $100 a day having their facial features re-arranged.

Tyson had gone through four warm ups for a short cut ahead of his rendezvous with Egan, subjecting the quartet to the type of physical assault that would usually warrant a 10 year custodial sentence – with no parole, but he didn't drop seven-times Irish champ Egan, as explained by Dubliner.

He said: When I first met Mike I knew he was famous but that's about all. I was a young Irish kid in New York and I didn't know a whole lot about anything to tell the truth.

I remember meeting him and thinking to myself that this is going to be easy because he's a lot shorter than me – and then I saw him in action .

Holy Jesus, it was like an abattoir in there, like throwing a goldfish into a pool with a hammer head shark. He was punching so hard he could have brought down the walls of a castle.

He had gone through four of the spars for a shortcut that day and they were all more or less carted out of the ring. I remember at the time one of his corner men turned  to me, winked and said, "and he's in a good mood today".

This was their idea of humour – I was relatively new to the scene at the time. Maybe I was too naive to be really scared. But either way I made up that mind that he wasn't going to floor me no matter how hard  he hit me .

So what's it like being hit by Mike Tyson?

Think of being in a collision with a runaway train that keeps turning round  to run you over again, something like that. A fight against Mike Tyson was quite simple really. It was a game of cat and mouse – and he was always the cat.

The thing about Mike, Mike in his prime, the thing that a lot of his opponents forgot is that you wouldn't want to be hitting him back -  that only makes him angry!

Anyway, he never put me down. But he did have me in tears a few times. That's the nature of the business we're were in.
It's the pain game.

After that particular session I got out of the ring and Mike shouted at me. "Hey Joe, you're the toughest white man on the planet." I took that as a compliment .

In fact, Egan took that as so much of a compliment that he wrote a book called: Joe Egan the Toughest White Man on the Planet.

The Dubliner also revealed that there's a soft side to Iron Mike, ahhhhha, and that er, Mike has a temper. Fancy that. Meantime, in upcoming exclusives we can reveal that the Pope is a Catholic, some Fianna Fail politicians take backhanders and Jimmy Hendrix could knock out a few chords on a six-string.

Egan continued: I went to my room after that spar and I was was crying my eyes out. Mike came to my room and put his arm around me and told me that there was no need to be homesick because they were my family now and they loved me.

How did you feel with Mike Tyson sitting on your bed telling you that he loved you?

Can I take the Fifth on that? (laughs). It was a bit surreal. Mike thought I was crying because I missed Ireland but what he didn't realise was that I was crying because he'd cracked most of my ribs. But there was no way I wasn't telling him that.

We got on like a house on fire from then  on. I used to phone home to speak to my mother on a regular basis at the time and she was always very concerned about Mike.

So he used get on the call to her and assure her that he was alright, which is more than you could say about his opponents. They struck up quite a friendship from that point on and they have maintained that friendship down through the years .

Tyson also reckons that Irish people have found the key to life according to Egan.

Mike was very eager to visit Ireland. He wanted to meet my mother first and then he wanted to kiss the Blarney Stone.  He thinks Irish people have found the key to happiness because we're always smiling no matter what.

(It's the drink, Joe).

Mike is just a regular guy who gets an awful lot of bad press.  Over the last number of years he has done an enormous amount of work for charity behind the scenes. He never asks for any credit, he's just delighted to help.

But he likes his space and he does have a short temper. When you see the red mist descending it's best to just leave the room until it blows over. He's just another man trying to make his way through this life. Sure he did things he regrets, but then again who hasn't?

Mike in his prime won fights before the bout even started. Some of his opponents were completely psyched out by "that stare" and they'd be considering an exit strategy before the opening bell. They were frozen in survival mode before a punch was thrown. No one would have beat him in his prime, no one .

Michael Gerard Tyson was born in New York in 1966. An orthodox  puncher, he won 50 of his 58 pro fights and had a 75%
KO rate.

He lost his last fight to Irish heavyweight Kevin McBride in Madison Square Garden in 2006.

Tyson, who always wore black trunks and black shoes with no socks in the ring in tribute to legendary Irish/American/Cherokee heavyweight Jack Dempsey, said after that fight: I don't think I have it anymore. I felt I was 120 years old in there.