Mike Tyson once offered a zookeeper $10,000 to open a cage so he could 'smash' a silverback gorilla in the face

• Mike Tyson said he once tried to bribe a zookeeper with a large sum of money so he could go inside a gorilla den and punch a silverback in the face.
• Tyson was being given a private tour of a New York zoo along with his ex-wife Robin Givens around 30 years ago.
• But Tyson said he saw one gorilla being a bully and wanted to walk into the den and teach it a lesson.
• "I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let [me] smash that silverback's snot box! He declined."
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Mike Tyson once offered a zookeeper $10,000 to open a cage so he could "smash" a silverback gorilla in the face.

Tyson said he was being given a private tour of a zoo more than 30 years ago, saw a gorilla being a bully, and offered the tour guide a considerable sum of money so he could go inside the cage and punch him.

"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and [ex-wife] Robin [Givens]," Tyson said, according to Boxing Scene.

"When we got to the gorilla cage there was one big silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant.

"I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let [me] smash that silverback's snot box! He declined."

It is not the only wild Tyson story involving an exotic animal.

He recently said one of his pet tigers in the 1990s attacked a woman who had trepassed on his property.

The tiger "f----- up" the trespasser so badly he paid her approximately $250,000.

"I didn't know what they could do to a person's flesh," he said recently in an Instagram Live chat. "I had no idea."

Tyson's attitudes towards animals have changed drastically since then. Where there was once gorillas and tigers, there is now a pet poodle which he allows to lick him on the mouth.

He even films himself playfully sparring the little dog, which he said is called Mars.

Mars is a good boy.

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