Who’s going to fight Mike Tyson over five bucks?
via Twitter
If you were working at an ice cream stand and former heavyweight champion of the world, “Iron” Mike Tyson snagged a five-dollar ice cream bar from your freezer you’d let him have it, right? That’s exactly what happened at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York during the U.S. Open yesterday. According to a story in The New York Post, Tyson snatched a $5.50 “Half Baked” ice cream bar from the Ben and Jerry’s kiosk and nonchalantly walked away without paying.
The employee who witnessed the crime couldn’t believe her eyes. “I was like, ‘Are you serious? Am I imagining this?’ [Tyson] was like, ‘I feel like having an ice cream’ and he just took it.” The employee asked for Tyson to pay, yelling, “Excuse me, are you going to pay for that?” but the boxer didn’t respond. “What are you going to do, fight him? He’s Mike Tyson,” another employee told her. The worker then asked her supervisor how to handle the theft and her boss didn’t mind. “Oh, it’s Mike Tyson, let it go,” her boss said.
Tyson’s publicist, Joann Mignano, got word of the incident and rushed to set the record straight. “There was a misunderstanding,” she said. “Mike got the ice cream and was going to have the host pay for it as he was running around with his family. He was being pulled in a lot of directions as his daughter, Milan, is a rising tennis star and huge fan of the sport. … His host, [USTA national manager] David Slade, got the money from Mike and has made sure the bill has been taken care of.”