Famed boxer and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson unveiled his latest business venture on Wednesday — a line of cannabis-infused ear-shaped gummies called Mike Bites. The THC snacks feature a missing chunk of an ear, playing a joke on the encounter between Evander Holyfield and Tyson, who bit off a part of the boxer’s ear during the 1997 heavyweight fight.
The snacks are available for purchase in Massachusetts, California and Nevada, Complex reports.
Tyson promoted his weed company’s new venture, tweeting some ear-related jokes on his timeline.
“These ears actually taste good!” he teased.
“This is genius. Great work Tyson 2.0 team,” entrepreneur John Shahidi said in a tweet, adding, “You guys are crushing it.”
The Hotboxin‘ podcast host responded to the compliment, jokingly saying, “We ear you brother.”
It’s easy to crack jokes about the incident almost 25 years after their matchup, especially since there’s no bad blood between the two fighters. According to NBC News, Tyson pitched the idea of the gummies to Holyfield in 2019 on an episode of his podcast.
“People keep asking, ‘How are you gonna forgive something like that?’ I say, everything that ever happened, at some point in time, I did it. Mike bit me, I say I bit somebody too — it just wasn’t on TV,” Holyfield said, referring to an earlier fight he’d done with Jakey Winters at a Georgia Golden Gloves tournament.
“I bit a guy in his shoulder, he dropped me, and I didn’t know when you had a concussion, you’ll bite too,” he said.
During the conversation, Tyson pitched the business idea to him, explaining they would be “some edibles [of the ear] that got a bite taken out of ’em.”
At 55, Tyson’s life took a turn for the better. He said he made renovations in his personal and business life, getting back into shape, dropping his recreational substance abuse and launching new brands.
Tyson 2.0 marks the fighter’s second attempt to cultivate a lane in the cannabis industry. The company holds a wide variety of offerings, from flowers, Tyson’s usual choice of consumption, to concentrates, edibles, beverages and prerolls.
Tyson told Forbes a large reason behind his lifestyle change is due to his use of psychedelic drugs.
“I tried 5-MeO-DMT, the God molecule, and my whole life changed,” Tyson recalled. “I lost 100 pounds. I started fighting people again, at 55. Everything started to change from a business perspective, from a health perspective, and from an ideology perspective as far as the clearness of my thinking. I didn’t know I could feel this good at 55.”
