Former boxing champion Mike Tyson has asked for privacy to allow his family to grieve after his four-year-old daughter died after a tragic accident in her home. Exodus Tyson died in hospital after she was found with her neck caught in the power cable of a treadmill machine at her home in Phoenix, Arizona. She was rushed to hospital in an 'extremely critical condition' and put on life support, but was pronounced dead at noon on Tuesday.
Mike Tyson has always been a man of dangerous, excessive passions. He used to keep a white Bengal Tiger named Kenya in his backyard. It cost him around £2,000 a month just to care for him, and the story goes that one day Kenya got loose and caused quite a commotion in Southington, Ohio.
But in those days  -  when Tyson was reviled as the 'baddest man on the planet'  -  it was just what you would expect. He was the monster who brought boxing into disrepute, biting a chunk out of Evander Holyfield's ear.
He was also in the grip of numerous addictions; to sex, often with strippers and prostitutes, even though he was married with children; and to spending on an improbable scale  -  he ran through around £200million, much of it on gifts to people he barely knew, on cars he never drove, and on bad business deals which he barely troubled to understand.
He was also addicted to booze and drugs, having a long dependence on marijuana and a fondness for cocaine and Hennessy brandy. Two years ago, he was jailed for driving under the influence of cocaine. He had three bags of the drug in his car.
At times, he has used prescription drugs like Zoloft for depression, too. 'I'm on the Zoloft to keep me from killing y'all,' he once announced at a press conference.
Those close to Tyson say those days of excess were apparently over. He was living quietly in the suburbs of Las Vegas, and seems to have been pursuing some kind of public redemption.
But the sudden death of his daughter this week now threatens to engulf him with the emotional turmoil that has blighted his life for so long.
Tyson is said to be 'inconsolable' after his four-year-old daughter Exodus died at a hospital on Tuesday, a day after her neck was apparently caught in a cord dangling from a stationary treadmill at the family home in Phoenix, Arizona.
In what police described as a 'horrible accident', the child either slipped, or put her head in the loop of a cord and suffocated. She was found by her older brother Miguel, seven, who alerted their mother, dancer Sol Xochitl, who had been cleaning in another part of the modest suburban house.
Xochitl, 34, tried to revive her daughter with CPR, but the youngster never regained consciousness.
Tyson, who does not live with the family, rushed from his home in Las Vegas to be by his daughter's bedside.
He spent the night at the hospital  -  where his daughter was on a life-support machine  -  and had been warned by doctors at St Joseph Hospital in Phoenix his daughter had a less than a 50-50 chance of recovering.
He and Xochitl were at the bedside when the youngster lost her fight for life, and did not return to the family home following their daughter's death.
A family spokesman said: 'We are grateful for the tremendous outpouring of love and prayers from all over the world.
'There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Exodus.
'We ask you now to please respect our need at this very difficult time for privacy to grieve and try to help each other heal.' Police
Late last year he filmed a cameo appearance in a comedy film, The Hangover, which comes out in America next week, in which he is seen singing the Phil Collins hit In The Air Tonight.
Aside from this, he was leading a life which was bordering on the unexceptional. His entourage had slimmed down from 30 bodyguards to three, and his powerful frame looked more like soft bulk than hard muscle.
Visitors to his new home say that there is nothing to tell you who it belongs to  -  not a trophy, a belt, a photo or a piece of boxing memorabilia.
Curiously, Tyson may have been the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, but boxing does not seem to interest him at all. 'I am completely disillusioned with boxing,' he told an interviewer. 'There is just not the draw for me any more, in any shape or form. I used to love it.'
Instead, he had replaced his addictions to alcohol, drugs and women with a passion for pigeons. He keeps hundreds of them  -  visitors to his spread in Paradise Valley, in the Nevada suburbs, say that he has up to 1,000, although their number is generally estimated at around 400.
He knows the age and health status of every one. If he has to travel away from home for any period, he takes with him films of the pigeons in flight, which he likes to watch to relax.
A complex, damaged individual, he would muse: 'I don't know who I am. That might sound stupid. I really have no idea. All my life I've been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop.'
His great daily concern was to try to reconnect with his six children by four different mothers. In a television interview a few weeks ago, he said: 'I'm really trying to work into recreating my relationship, rebuilding my relationship with my children.
'I neglected my children and the people I was in love with at one time, and I'm bearing the brunt of it right now. At this stage in my life, I'm starting to feel the pain and the effects from it, and I would like to rekindle that relationship.'
The death of his child, in these circumstances, seems unbearably cruel. Exodus's mother seems to have been his regular female companion for some years. Before they broke up, they were living in a large £1.5million home in Phoenix, Arizona.
After the split, Xochitl was set up in a modest £160,000 ranch-style house in a suburb of Phoenix with Miguel, seven, and Exodus, four. Tyson would still refer to Miss Xochitl as his 'girlfriend', and they were clearly on good terms.
Neighbour Dinka Radic said she often saw Tyson at the house. 'We used to see Mike quite often, and he would be outside with the children. They loved to play in the yard. He was always very nice and you could see he adored the children.'
Tyson's other offspring are a 20- year-old daughter, Gena, and 18-year-old son, Mikey. Their mothers have never been identified.
He also has two children with his ex-wife Monica Turner, who is a distinguished paediatrician and lives in Washington. Their daughter Rayna is 13 years old and son Amir is 11.
Tyson acknowledges that he was a dreadful husband to her  -  he said to Ms Turner in a press conference: 'I'm sorry I married you. You have to understand, I'm probably the worst husband in the world.'
She filed for divorce on the grounds of his adultery, and was given a substantial settlement and two houses in 2003. 'I was a pig and had extramarital activities on the side and got caught most of the time,' he said last year.
Born in Brooklyn in 1966, Michael Gerard Tyson had the most unpromising start to life. His mother was a promiscuous alcoholic who may or may not have been a prostitute. Tyson is still not sure who his father was.
In the early years after he exploded on to the boxing scene, he was apparently unstoppable, but clearly a damaged individual.
His marriage to actress Robin Givens was a disaster. The pair of them went on television in 1988 and she announced that he was a terrifying manic depressive and that their marriage was 'torture' for her.

It ended after a year amid immense mutual lawsuits, and Tyson  -  so often the architect of his own troubles  -  became seduced by alcohol and drugs. (He claims that he was born addicted and, when Tyson went into rehab in 2007, he said of the cocaine and alcohol addiction: 'I'll never beat that. That's going to be a till-the-day-I-die job.')
In 1992, he was convicted of rape and deviant sexual misconduct, and served three years in jail. He still claims that 18-year-old beauty queen Desiree Washington set him up. 'I might have taken advantage of women before, but not that woman,' he said in the 2008 documentary.
He emerged from prison and immediately ranted at a reporter whom he called a 'punk white boy', and a 'gay' in an extreme five-minute tirade of pure anger and aggression. It didn't help his protestations of innocence.
More recently, he has been to the UK on a speaking tour, at which he would not swear and drank only ginger ale. On another visit, though, he seems to have picked up an escort girl named Charlie Dolvin.
She said of their encounter in 2006: 'He seemed lost, like he didn't know where he was going,' and added: 'The men I go with have expensive stuff in their bathrooms. All he had was a manky toothbrush and a Bic razor.'
Before this week's terrible accident, it was said that the story of Mike Tyson was a contemporary parable about the perils of fame and fortune; a story about a spectacular and repeated falls from grace.
Tyson was more blunt. 'My whole life has been a waste,' he said.
How on earth, you wonder, will he live now?

By Alison Boshoff and Paul Thompson

i cant believe this is Tyson.how time changes people's physical appearance.the once-feared 'baddest' man alive

pele oooooo

SeanT21:

Damn, He got a pot belly. haha

na waoooooooo