Mike Tyson Says Floyd Mayweather is a "small, scared man," And He Would Know

Some months ago, Floyd Mayweather told an ESPN audience he considered himself a greater fighter than Muhammad Ali. This is the sort of thing you might as well say if you’re honing a public persona like the one Floyd Mayweather has been honing all these years.

Any idiot with a keyboard (hello) can come up with a series of really sports-talk-radio reasons why Mayweather is wrong about this. But not many can speak on this topic with the credibility of Mike Tyson, who skipped right past all that to call Mayweather a, “small, scared man.”

Here’s a transcript in case you can’t watch.

"He’s very delusional. Listen, if he was anywhere near that realm of great as Muhammad Ali, he’d be able to take his kids to school by himself. OK, he can’t take his kids to school by himself, and he’s talking about he’s great? Greatness is not guarding yourself from the people. It’s being accepted by the people. He can’t take his kids alone to school by himself. He’s a little scared man. He’s a very small, scared man."

There are reams of bad things that can and have been said about Mike Tyson, but Tyson is an expert when it comes to, (1) greatness and, (2) fear. Especially fear. He knows it from both sides. He understands “skullduggery.”

Listen to Tyson describe what it felt like to enter the ring:

"Five minutes before I come out, my gloves are laced up. I’m breaking my gloves down. I’m pushing the leather in the back of my glove … my knuckle could piece through the glove. I could feel my knuckle piercing against the tight leather gloves. I come out, I have supreme confidence, but I’m scared to death. I’m totally afraid of everything."

I’m in no position call Floyd Mayweather a scared little man. But if Mike Tyson does, I’ll go ahead and take his word for it.