Listen to the full interview via the podcast
Here's a midweek trivia question!
Who was Mike Tyson's first opponent after being released from prison in 1995?
The answer is a certain Peter McNeeley and he did not last very long in the ring during that fight.
That August 1995 bout lasted only 89 seconds as McNeeley's corner called a halt to proceedings.
Yet there are allegations that the fight's outcome was fixed by McNeeley's manager.
On the line tonight was Ron Borges of the Boston Herald who spoke to us about the highest grossing fight in history up to that point.
"[McNeeley's] manager Vinnie Vecchione had low level connections with the mafia and had once been shot in a drive-by in which he later told the police that it must have been a case of mistaken identity. It didn't come out for many years later, but the word was that the big mobsters had bet McNeeley would not last two minutes which was 120 seconds. But Vinnie was taking no chances because he didn't have a stopwatch and he knew it was getting close to that last minute. So when Peter went down again, he went in and stopped the fight."
Borges also explained that McNeeley was not the best opponent that Tyson could have faced, with the fight organized through Vecchione's contacts with promoter Don King.
And in a slightly surreal twist, Borges told us that Tyson still calls McNeeley and that they have remained friends since that fight.
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