Mike Tyson, one of the greatest and most controversial boxers in the sport’s history, is no stranger to the fine arka of promotion. At 58, and long past his athletic prime, he was still able to add a layer of curiosity to his upcoming, made-for-TV boxing match against the YouTuber Jake Paul by telling Interview magazine that God had told him to come out of retirement while he was experiencing the hallucinogenic effects of smoking toad venom.
“You rub it down until it become fine sand, and then you smoke it,” Mr. Tyson said of a substance produced by the Sonoran Desert toad during an interview with Rosie Perez, the actress and avid boxing fan. “Then you meet God. And this is what God told me to do.”
Mr. Tyson, a former heavyweight champion who has not had a professional bout since 2005, is scheduled to fight Mr. Paul, 27, on Friday in a live spectacle on Netflix, which has been pushed with a behind-the-scenes documentary series. It helps, of course, that Mr. Paul’s YouTube channel has more than 20 million subscribers.
But leave it to Mr. Tyson to generate his own publicity.
Mr. Tyson told Ms. Perez that he first smoked toad venom — which, according to herpetologists, is a poison, not a venom — about seven years ago with the assistance of a shaman. And while Mr. Tyson did not see God, he said, he felt God’s presence. And what was that feeling?
“That I’m nothing,” Mr. Tyson said, “but I’m everything.”
He went on to describe a “spiritual death” of sorts.
