I was hired to work as a sparring partner for Mike Tyson as he prepared for his final professional fight. “Get the fuck out of my gym, motherfuckers,” he screamed when we walked inside the dark, dingy gymnasium in Phoenix, Arizona. I looked at him in amazement. He charged past me without a second glance and I realised he was screaming at a pack of paparazzi who had somehow discovered where he was working out.
Tyson chased the cameras away, pulled down the roller door, and stormed into the changing room. His trainer Jeff Fenech came out and said: “Oh, Mike’s in a bad mood today.” There were a few other sparring partners hanging around, including the veteran Aussie ‘Big’ Bob Mirovic, but Fenech said I was first up.
So I jumped in the ring. There were still no introductions. I couldn’t say, “Hey man, I’m Shane Cameron.” He didn’t give a fuck. I was just there to do a job.
Instead, Tyson was doing what I’d seen him do many times before he had a real fight: walking around the ring like a caged tiger, rolling that big, fat, strong neck around. And he was looking at me like he was going to bash the shit out of me. The bell rang. I turned around to discover Tyson had sprinted across the ring to meet me and was on me already.
I began furiously throwing shots back at Tyson as fast as I possibly could, and we moved back towards the centre of the ring and just traded shots until the bell rang to signal the end of the round. I’d never experienced such a burning feeling in my lungs; it was an intensity I’d not encountered before. I was fit, and I’d had lots of fights, so I think that feeling wasn’t entirely physical: some of it was the emotion of being in that ring with Mike Tyson throwing leather at me. Now, if you don’t confront that feeling, you’re finished. But the bell rings, and you get back out there. We sparred three of four rounds that day and they were full-on.
I’d studied many of Tyson’s fights. It made my job a little easier since I knew some of his patterns: if he goes to the head, then he will always rip the body up the same side; that was how he caught me to cut my lip open.
Tyson was ferociously fast. And he was very accurate — he didn’t throw many wild shots. He kept his body compact, making it hard to find an opening. I’d always looked at him as an aggressor, which he was — he was a supremely aggressive fighter. But in essence, he was a counter-puncher. He liked to put pressure on, and if you put pressure on a fighter, they have to respond by throwing punches. And as soon as they throw, he’s already slipped, rolled and thrown a couple of punches. They try to throw more, and he’s catching them. If you shaped to throw a jab, he’s already slipped it and countered you.
I knew what his mindset would be: who is this white guy, and I’m going to bash him. The only attitude I could take was that I was going to show him what I was made of. The alternative was getting a hiding every day for 14 days straight. If you covered up, you’d get knocked out; otherwise you take the fight to him.
We were sparring one day, and he threw a hook, but I caught the counter, and he dug me low in the groin. “Hey Mike, watch the low shots,” I said gently.
And in that high-pitched voice of his, he said, “Sowwy, Shane.”
When we did get to talking, Tyson gave me one piece of advice that I remember, and I don’t know why he didn’t take his own guidance when he decided to make a comeback in 2024 at the age of 58 to fight YouTube legend Jake Paul, despite having done nothing for nearly two decades. He told me to stay in the gym, to stay active, because inactivity will kill anyone’s career. I got what he meant, because I used to have a fight, then I’d get on the piss and put on a bit of weight. So I began to cut that out. I’d have a few days to enjoy myself, go out for a drink, and then get back into training, even if I didn’t have another fight lined up.
It was telling that we only sparred three of our scheduled four rounds on that first day. Tyson was ferocious, but he was fading. He was scheduled to fight Kevin McBride at the MCI Center in Washington DC. As the camp went on, I began to think that if Tyson didn’t knock McBride out early, he’d probably lose based on his lack of fitness. And that’s what happened. As Fenech said, he’s as good as anyone in the world over two or three rounds but after that, it was anyone’s game.
By the time it came to fight night, we had done our work and gone home, where I watched the fight on TV. Tyson had called McBride a “tomato can” and promised to gut him “like a fish”, but McBride tired him out and frustrated him so much that Tyson tried an arm-bar in the sixth. Then Tyson didn’t come off his stool for the seventh round, and afterwards, he announced his retirement, saying: “My heart is not into this any more.”
I took so much from the experience of sparring Tyson. And the biggest thing I went back to New Zealand with was confidence. I lasted two weeks sparring Iron Mike and I didn’t get dropped. After that, I thought, I could go with anyone. I never went into a single fight thinking I was going to lose.
A mildly abbreviated chapter taken with kind permission from the newly published boxing memoir Mountain Warrior by Shane Cameron with Steve Kilgallon (Bateman Books, $39.99) available in bookstores nationwide.
