Watch Mike Tyson Talk Meeting Tupac Shakur for First Time
Mike Tyson detailed the genesis of his friendship with Tupac Shakur in a new interview with DJ Whoo Kid. The last time the boxer saw the rapper, it was September 7th, 1996 prior to his boxing match in Las Vegas; hours later, Shakur was shot. He died of his wounds six days later. While Tyson has talked often about hanging out with the rapper – once, Shakur tried to convince Tyson to smoke weed – he’s now revealed the chance meeting that sparked their friendship, Billboard reports. Tyson and Whoo Kid discuss Shakur at the 13-minute mark in the video above.
As Tyson tells it, he first met Shakur by accident. The boxer was at an upscale club when some guy he knew asked if he could get him in, which Tyson allowed, only to find out the person had an entourage of 50 people. One of them was Shakur, who “was rocking the club. The club was off the hook,” Tyson said. However, he didn’t connect that the rapper at the club was Tupac until Shakur’s mother wrote Tyson in prison, thanking him for getting her son into the club.
“I didn’t know that was him! I didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t famous then,” Tyson said. “Then he’s famous when I get locked up, so he wrote me … He appreciated me getting him in, and he wanted to come visit me. So he came and he visited me. And that’s how we met each other.”
Tyson also said of Shakur, “He’s just a different person. You know when you see some people in our life, ‘they’re like us but they’re not like us, they’re different.'”