Mike Tyson didn’t have to pay for his past sins.
The former heavyweight champion encountered a fan whom he robbed decades ago while returning to Brownsville in advance of his fight Friday Jake Paul.
It certainly seemed that time — in this instance, decades — healed all wounds.
“You robbed me when I was 8 years old on Amboy and Pitkin,” the fan told Tyson, as seen in in Netflix’s “Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson” documentary series.
“I robbed you?” Tyson said. “Now he’s blaming me for robbing him. … (Racial slur) got robbed.”
The fan laughed it off as Tyson hugged him.
“He robbed me when I was a kid, bro,” the fan said. “On Pitkin, by the Woolworth’s store. You remember Woolworth’s?”
Tyson replied: “We took pictures in there.”
The former champion then showed remorse.
“I’m sorry, bro,” Tyson said.
The fan isn’t holding grudges, though.
“No, don’t worry about it, baby” he said.
Tyson, 58, moved to Brownsville — located in Brooklyn — when he was 10 years old and said in his autobiography that he was arrested 38 times by the age of 13, as noted by Rolling Stone.
The documentary introduced Brownsville by saying it may be best known for its high crime rate, and Tyson described his time living there as “hell.”
He noted in the show an area where he used to pickpocket people.
“My whole life was about crime,” Tyson said. “There was nothing special about being a criminal here.”
The tough times left a mark on Tyson, even after he’s gone on to become an international star and the heavyweight champion of the world.
“It lets me know I’m nobody,” Tyson said while being inside his childhood home in the episode. “Sometimes I think I’m somebody but when I come back here, I realize I’m nobody.”
He added: “Some things I did when I was young in Brownsville, you just never forget what you’re capable of doing. … That pretty much shaped my personality in life.”
Tyson is attempting to prove the doubters wrong when he steps into the ring against Paul in his first professional fight since 2005 and his first bout since 2020.
The fight had originally been scheduled for July but Tyson suffered a medical emergency in May that postponed the fight four months.
Tyson recently revealed how he threw up blood during the scary situation.
“Coming here from Miami on the plane, I went to the bathroom, and I threw up blood. Next thing I know I’m on the floor and I was defecating tar,” Tyson said in an episode. “So I came (to the hospital), they said I had a big ulcer, two and a half inches, it was bleeding. All my friends were calling me like I’m dying.”
