Long before he was scheduled to step into the ring with Jake Paul in a fight that Netflix is billing as a “must-see boxing mega-event,” boxing legend Mike Tyson once teamed up with the director who would go on to make the Oscar-winning “Joker” in order to hang out with a tiger and punch Zach Galifianakis in the face. 2009 was a very different time, folks, and “The Hangover” was the comic lightning bolt Hollywood never knew it needed … thanks, in part, to the celebrity boxer.
A heavyweight champion whose athletic accomplishments are only rivaled by his controversial behavior outside of the ring (including a six-year conviction for rape in 1992), Tyson would have to go extremely far to run into someone who didn’t know his name or recognize that distinctive face tattoo (which once posed a legal challenge for “The Hangover: Part II,” incredibly enough). Yet even this world-famous figure couldn’t have imagined that his cameo in one of the most popular American comedies of the century would go on to redefine how younger fans would view his career — not least of all because he was hardly even aware of his movie appearance, at the time. With Tyson returning to the spotlight, a particularly offbeat quote of his from a few years back is making the rounds all over again. While talking to author Tony Robbins in a 2019 podcast interview (via Independent), he revisited his hazy memories of how he first came aboard “The Hangover” and his surprise to find out that he had apparently agreed to appear in a hilarious scene:
“Listen, I didn’t even know I was in the movie. I met the [actors] in a club, they were in the VIP section and I said, ‘This is where I normally sit, nobody’s normally here’ […] It was Zach, the other guy, and he said, ‘We’re going to be in a movie with you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah? When?’ And he said, ‘Tomorrow.'”
Tyson’s eclectic nightlife was once the fodder of countless tabloid headlines in those years, though fueled by the dark side of fame and fortune.
Mike Tyson became recognized for his The Hangover cameo more than his boxing
During his cameo in “The Hangover,” the chaotic scene reaches a tipping point when Tyson knocks out Zach Galifianakis’ character Alan in one of the movie’s most memorable moments. But how exactly does such a recognizable figure manage to join such a buzzy production … without ever actually knowing about it? The answer is as old (and unforgiving) as time. As it turns out, Mike Tyson’s spotty memory had everything to do with the kind of life he was leading at the time. He told podcast host Tony Robbins as much, candidly admitting that his heavy use of drugs and alcohol played a major role: “And I didn’t know, as I was drinking and smoking back then, doing drugs, so I didn’t know I was involved in the movie. So eventually I had to go and we did the movie and it was a success.”
For those of a certain generation, of course, it would inevitably take a marketing-friendly role in a blockbuster like that in order for Tyson to ever land on their radar. That wakeup call came as something of a shock, as Tyson previously talked about in a 2016 interview with Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim. At around the minute and 20 second mark, Tyson acknowledges that it was a “humbling experience” to go through:
“I went to this high school. Six hundred kids in the room, 700 kids, maybe 1,000. They had this big screen, giant, 10-by-10. They were showing the kids some of my fights because they didn’t know who I was. They just thought I was an actor from ‘The Hangover.’ So [the teacher] had to explain, ‘No, this is who he was.’ They didn’t know […] Never in my life am I going to forget that. You talk about a humbling experience.”
Time comes for us all, folks. You can watch Tyson square up against Jake Paul during their special live event tonight on Netflix.
