Mike Tyson Endorses Donald Trump: 'He Should Be President Of The United States'

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson says Donald Trump will have his vote in 2016. In an interview with HuffPost Live on Monday, Tyson defended the Republican front-runner against his critics and said Trump should be president because of his business acumen and the need to shake things up after eight years of President Barack Obama.

“Yeah, hell yeah! Big time. Why wouldn’t anybody like that? A guy that came from where he came from, doing what he’s doing in that field, and now this is where he’s at now. You know what that means?” he told host Alex Miranda during an interview about his TV show, "Mike Tyson Mysteries." “We tried Obama, right? Time for a change. So we got to change. So now let’s try something new.”

Tyson said Trump’s provocative remarks on immigrants and Latinos may have been “crude,” but the candidate simply needs time to grow. Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists.

“He’s an average guy like everybody else,” Tyson said. “Anytime people are going to say bad things about Latinos, they’re going to say bad things about blacks, bad things about any ethnic people. Whatever it is, that’s just what this country was built on. But it doesn’t stop us from striving. It doesn’t stop us from becoming president.”

But when asked if he would prefer Democrats Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, Tyson shut Miranda down.

“Excuse me? I don’t want to talk about that,” he said.

Tyson was a rising boxing star in the 1980s, until drug and spending habits sent him into a downward spiral. He also served three years in prison after being convicted of rape, and was released in 1995. His infamous 1997 fight with Evander Holyfield was referred to as “The Bite Fight,” after Tyson bit off the top of Holyfield’s right ear.