Was Mike Tyson Adopted? What You Need to Know About The Boxer's Early Years.The wait for Hulu's Mike is finally over. The eight-part series airs every Thursday on Hulu and will be airing from Thursday, September 8 in the U.K. on Disney +.
Already, fans of the sports biographical series want to know more about Mike Tyson, including his early years.
In Episode 2, the audience begins to see Tyson's relationship with Cus D'Amato begin to play out, which remains central in Tyson's personal and private life, as well as his troubled childhood, including his stints in several youth detention centers.
One big question fans have from the early episodes of the series is "Was Mike Tyson adopted?" Newsweek has everything you need to know about the boxer's early years.
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Tyson
Trevante Rhodes, left, who plays Mike Tyson in "Mike" and Mike Tyson himself, right.
Was Mike Tyson Adopted?
Mike Tyson was not officially adopted as a teenager. However, boxing manager and trainer Cus D'Amato did become his legal guardian and Tyson really did live with D'Amato and his partner, Camille Ewald, as shown in Mike.
Nevertheless, Tyson's birth mother and father technically remained his legal parents.
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D'Amato and Ewald opened their home to socially challenged youths who were on track to becoming boxing superstars and Tyson was one of the young pupils who resided with them, growing up under their care.
D'Amato and Tyson had a particularly close bond, with D'Amato becoming his mentor, trainer, and the strongest father figure in his life.
Tyson was born in Brooklyn, New York. His biological father, Purcell Tyson, left the family when Tyson was young, leaving his mother, Lorna Smith Tyson, to raise their three children on her own.
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The Tyson family lived in poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods, all with a particularly high crime rate. By the age of 13, Tyson had been arrested 38 times for committing petty crimes.
Tyson and D'Amato had met a few years prior to his mother's death, when Tyson was a troubled teenager attending a nearby reform school after being in and out of trouble with the law. He had been discovered by Bobby Stewart, a juvenile detention center counselor and former boxer, who trained Tyson and later introduced him to D'Amato.
D'Amato became Tyson's legal guardian after his mother died from cancer in 1982, three years before Tyson became a professional boxer.
He was also the man who taught Tyson the iconic peek-a-boo style of boxing, where a boxer holds his gloves close to his face.
Sadly, D'Amato died in November 1985, a year before Tyson was crowned the youngest-ever world heavyweight champion at the age of 20.
The Cus D'Amato Memorial Award was founded by the Boxing Writers Association of America and was first presented to Tyson on May 16, 1986.
Ewald, Tyson's motherly figure, passed away in 2001, aged 98.
Harvey Keital Gus D'Amato
Harvey Keitel as Cus D'Amato in "Mike." Hulu
Tyson wrote a book in 2017 titled Iron Ambition: My life with Cus D'Amato about his time with D'Amato and Ewald.
In his book, Tyson shared how D'Amato predicted he would be the youngest heavyweight champion within ten minutes of watching him spar.
Tyson wrote: "I don't really understand how it all happened. How did Cus D'Amato, this legendary boxing manager and trainer who was in exile in upstate New York, watch me spar for less than ten minutes when I was thirteen years old and predict that I would be the youngest heavyweight champ ever?"
He continued: "Cus was one of the most unique men ever to walk the planet. He touched the lives of so many people and helped them become a better version of themselves. He took the weak and made them strong."
Tyson has also paid tribute to D'Amato several times on his Twitter account, often honoring D'Amato on the anniversary of his death, November 4, 1985.
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