Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson stunned onlookers when he made a shock appearance in north Belfast on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Tyson was in town to visit close friend Kevin McKinney and family when he was spotted by fans on the Cliftonville Road. <\/p>\n
McKinney has a world title from racing Birmingham roller pigeons and was happy to welcome the former boxing world champion to the city.<\/p>\n
News of the 59-year-old’s presence quickly spread, with a large crowd gathering outside the property to catch a glimpse of the New Yorker.<\/p>\n
Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion, becoming the youngest boxer to win the sport’s biggest prize when knocking out Trevor Berbick in November 1986, aged 20.<\/p>\n
By 1987 he held the WBA, WBC and IBF titles simultaneously.<\/p>\n
He retired from the sport in 2005, having won 50 of his 56 professional fights, but returned last year to take on YouTuber Jake Paul in Texas.<\/p>\n
His interest in pigeons began as a child – and in a 2016 interview with Graham Bensinger, he said: “My first love is flying pigeons.<\/p>\n
“I’m an animal freak. Maybe I don’t know the best routine and how to fix them when they are sick. I like breeding them more than flying them. It’s more than a hobby, it’s more cultural for people as it’s what we do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson stunned onlookers when he made a shock appearance in north Belfast on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-298448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}