Mike Tyson’s interview with Boosie Badazz earlier this year got major attention after the boxer confronted the rapper for the transphobic comments he made regarding Dwyane Wade’s daughter, Zaya. It turns out that Boosie was also confronted by Tyson’s daughter that day, and things got a bit physical between them.
During an interview with Vlad TV shared on Saturday (Dec. 20) Tyson looked back on the day his daughter flew to Los Angeles, California to confront the “Wipe Me Down” emcee in person. “My daughter lives that life. She came from New York to this office right here to confront this guy, and she’s violent. I thought she came to see me. I thought she came to see her father and stepmother. She came to confront him physically,” he said. “I had to take care of that. I was watching her, she wanted to physically grab this guy, and started attacking this guy. I had to come in, I was watching her. She explained herself, then he explained himself and it didn’t go as bad as I thought it was going to go.”
The professional boxer said he got a new understanding of his daughter and her life as part of the LGBTQ community thanks to that confrontation. “I learned that day that there’s a set of people, and they’re very serious about stuff like that,” Tyson said, referring to homophobic slurs and compared it to racial slurs used against Black people. “Those words are very offensive. It’s very offensive to them.”
Tyson added: “I didn’t know. I took it for granted. I was a guy and I was a sexist and I didn’t understand other people’s feelings. From that experience, to come from New York to here, to represent who she was, and to get physical, I have nothing but respect for that. I talk totally different to her. She’s serious like that.”
Vlad TV also asked Boosie about the incident and he gave his side of the story. “She was like, ‘Dad, I want to interview him. I want to ask him some questions right now.’ I said, ‘Come on.’ She was on some, ‘Do you know what’s going on in the transgender world right now? Do you know how many people are committing suicide and dying?’” the rapper shared. “So I would tell her, do you know what’s going on with Black people right now? We’re getting shot down, they got so many single mothers out there, and when she would shoot that at me, I would shoot that at her. She was saying the things she was passionate about and I was saying the things I was passionate about.”
Boosie shared that he has no ill will toward the community, but that he still couldn’t understand Tyson’s daughter’s point of view, adding: “We didn’t see eye to eye so she walked out.”
Wade publicly expressed his appreciation for Tyson in November for stepping in and addressing the issue with Boosie. “We had a conversation. I appreciated it from a standpoint of, you know, Mike is someone who has never tried to be perfect. He is someone who has learned from this journey of life,” the basketball player said in an interview at the time. “He’s one of those people … he’s so smart, he’s so educated and knowledgeable about life and for him to drop that nugget on the world … to me, it was great to hear him say that.”