Tyson had a turbulent childhood, growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, deep in a life of petty crime and trouble with the police.

He later found boxing which kept him away from the streets and won his first Heavyweight title in November 1986. He was just 20 years and four months when he knocked out Trevor Berbick in the second round to be the youngest heavyweight champion in history.

Tyson on Monday, July 24 revealed that he was sexually assaulted by an old man who ‘snatched him off the street’ to molest him.

“I would like to keep that where it was in the past; I was molested as a child,” the 51-year-old father of seven told ESPN's .

On why he has not regularly spoken about it, Tyson said; “It was no one's business to know, people just don't talk about it because to some people they believe it's demasculating them.

“I learned that it doesn't make you any less of a man because it happened.”

Tyson said the incident had made him the man he was today. “It made me have to be tough for the world I lived in,” he said.