Somebody tell Mike Tyson that either Tupac Shakur’s blood is not on his hands or that Shakur is still alive.
Because 24 years later, Tyson is still beating himself up – and that hurts when you’re a world heavyweight champion – about feeling like he was responsible for Shakur’s death.
Tyson told fellow boxer Zab Judah on Vlad TV that he asked Shakur to come to Las Vegas and bring a custom song for his ring entrance to a Sept. 7, 1996, bout with Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand. After Tyson won the fight on a first-round knockout, Shakur was wounded in a drive-by shooting by a mystery murderer and died at the hospital six days later.
“It was a really bad day when that happened,” Tyson told Judah. “I just knew it was really bad.
“I felt a little guilty about him coming to the fight, me pressuring him with ‘Hey, you wanna bring the tape? Don’t forget the tape.’”
Tyson was supposed to meet Shakur at a nightclub after the fight, but he elected to stay with his newborn baby at the mother’s prodding.
“I know who I am, I know what my element’s about,” Tyson said on Vlad TV. “This is what happens in my world. That was part of my world. Just because it was Tupac and I was attached to it, it was different. Normally, I would expect somebody to die after a fight or somebody to get hurt. But what happened to him was different.”
You might be able to guess where that night might have headed, given the other story Tyson shared about Shakur. He said he joined Shakur on stage in Cleveland and asked about a dancer during the performance. After the show, Tyson said, Shakur told him to go to a bathroom and the dancer was there.
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