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."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

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.

Read more:

'Sometimes I feel like a b----': Mike Tyson cried on his podcast because he feels 'empty' and misses being 'an annihilator' in the ring

Mike Tyson said there were times in his career when he thought he was a 'Demi-God' after Eminem tearfully told the ex-heavyweight champion he worshipped him as a kid Mike Tyson said he looks forward to death because living is a 'struggle,' and takes more courage than dying

Mike Tyson talked on a podcast about the time one of his famous pet tigers attacked a woman trespassing at his house: 'She was just f----- up'

How Mike Tyson would have beaten Muhammad Ali if they had ever fought, according to current champion Anthony Joshua

Mike Tyson said that to be successful in life you have to sacrifice happiness, because there's so much competition in the world

Read the original article on Insider