A young man who was on the Gold Coast during this year’s Schoolies celebrations has come across a man who bears an incredible resemblance to boxing legend Mike Tyson.
In a video posted to TikTok, the man announces to the camera, ‘Hello, I’m here with Mike Tyson,’ as he fist-bumps the man who, like ‘Iron Mike’, has a shaved head and very distinctive tattoo on the left side of his face.
The two are sitting on a bench in a mall on the Gold Coast as they fist bump into each other before he asks the lookalike, ‘You’re at Schoolies, are you enjoying it?’
Tyson’s doppelganger replies, ‘Yeah man, I love it. It’s alright.’
The real Iron Mike was barred from coming to Australia in 2001 due to his criminal record, which meant he failed the character test required to enter the country.
Cabinet papers that were released in January this year revealed that then-immigration minister Phillip Ruddock wrote to prime minister John Howard to state that the former world heavyweight champion failed the test under the 1958 Migration Act.
The federal cabinet backed Ruddock’s decision to bar Tyson from entering on the grounds that he was not of good character.
However, he was able to visit the country for six days in 2012, when former prime minister Julia Gillard’s government decided to grant him a visa.
Tyson was unable to visit New Zealand on that trip, however, with the Kiwis barring him over his 1992 rape conviction, for which he was sentenced to six years in jail.
In May 2020 the ring legend rejected a $3million offer to fight Sonny Bill Williams or Paul Gallen in an exhibition bout, with promoter Max Markson explaining that Tyson viewed the proposal as an ‘insult to boxing’. in 1989.
