Before Mike Tyson became a heavyweight legend he honed his skills in illegal fights watched by gangsters in unlicensed ‘smokers’

Mike Tyson’s first in-ring experiences were in illegal New York gym fights, watched by gangsters and dealers – the first of which ended with a teenage ‘Iron Mike’ standing on his knocked-out opponent’s chest in celebration.

The young Tyson had got into hundreds of street brawls and been arrested multiple times as a tearaway kid. However when he was first discovered by Bobby Stewart, who recommended him to legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, he had precious little genuine boxing experience.

By the summer of 1981, Tyson was competing in licensed amateur contests at the Junior Olympics. But before then, D’Amato knew that sparring and tutoring in the gym alone wasn’t going to help Tyson catch up – he had to know what it felt like to compete in a real, competitive boxing bout.

So when Tyson was around 13 or 14, Cus began sending him and coach Teddy Atlas to take part in unlicensed ‘smokers’ – so called because the air was so thick with cigarette smoke that it made it hard to even see the opponent across the ring for you. Unsurprisingly, none of these fights were approved by any pro or amateur board, nor did they appear on any official records.

“Smokers were unsanctioned bouts, which basically meant they were lawless,” Tyson explains in his autobiography, Undisputed Truth. “There weren’t any paramedics or ambulances waiting outside. If the crowd didn’t like your performance, they didn’t boo, they just fought one another to show how it was done.”

The first of these fights for Tyson came in a ‘hellhole’ gym in the Bronx, owned by an ex-fighter D’Amato knew. Surreally, considering Tyson would soon become one of the most intimidating heavyweights of all time, he was so frightened before his first fight that he almost pulled out.

“I was so scared that I almost left,” Tyson later reflected. “Even after all the sparring, I was still totally intimidated with fighting somebody in the ring.”

The problem Tyson faced is that all his street fights had come with provocation and beef involved. Now he was going into the ring ice-cold against someone he’d never met. In fact, it turned out to be a hefty Puerto Rican who at around 18 years old was significantly older than Tyson in his early teens.

Cus knew that the raw novice required much more in-ring seasoning however – not least on how to celebrate a victory without standing on an opponent’s chest – and the smokers kept coming, alongside Tyson’s official amateur bouts.

The famously hot-headed Atlas and the budding teenage demolitions expert drove all across the northeastern US, competing in unsanctioned bouts in front of local crowds betting on the action in front of them.

Tyson was always short but he was remarkably muscular and powerful even at a young age, so the pair would lie about how old he was in order to make a competitive fight against an older opponent. “There weren’t many 200lb 14-year-olds around,” Tyson reasoned.

The Brooklinite’s official amateur career was more of a mixed bag. His seek-and-destroy style – honed by D’Amato in the gym and under Atlas’s eye in the unlicensed bouts – was always better suited to the professional ranks.

Tyson did win two Junior Olympic gold medals, a New York Golden Gloves title and once scored a barely believable eight-second KO along the way. However he was outpointed twice by Henry Tillman (who he’d crush in one round when they met as professionals) and was immensely frustrated at failing to qualify for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Yet Tyson made his pro debut a year later aged 18, then became the youngest ever heavyweight world champion by 20. At age 21, he became the division’s lineal and undisputed ruler when he annihilated Michael Spinks in 91 seconds in 1988.

As Tyson recalls, however, his devastating transition to professional boxing would not have gone anywhere near as smoothly if he hadn’t been dropped into the shark tank of those unauthorised gym wars, where he honed his style and built his confidence against taller, older foes.

“Those smokers meant so much to me, a lot more to me than the rest of the kids,” he said after his career had ended. “The way I looked at it, I was born in hell and every time I won a fight, that was one step out of it.”

“If I hadn’t had those smokers, I probably would have died in the sewers.”