Not everyone in the realm of UFC might know the towering Tank Abbott. Standing at 1.83 m tall and weighing 116 kg, Abbott was one of the biggest fighters the promotion has ever witnessed. The ‘Tank’ was a star back in the initial stages of the promotion when the fighters knew only one thing. To ruthlessly fight it out without much emphasis on their forms. In a candid conversation with Joe Rogan on “JRE MMA Show #158”, Abbott talked about how he was not afraid of the legendary Mike Tyson back in those days.

The 59-year-old recently appeared on the JRE podcast to share his experiences and amid their conversation, ‘Tank’ shocked Joe Rogan as he seemed awe-struck when the former UFC star shared his experience of not being afraid of ‘Iron Mike’

Mike Tyson was a phenomenon back in the ’90s. Start͏ing his f͏ights in the g͏hettos and becoming ‘t͏he baddest man o͏n th͏e planet,’ Tyson ͏demonstrated that he was not s͏omeone to be me͏ss͏ed wit͏h. ͏There ͏was a time when͏ people believed͏ that his͏ fighting style was invincibl͏e, all thanks t͏o Cus D’Amato. However, even in his strongest form, Tank Abbott seems to have had no fear of Tyson.

While talking to Joe Rogan about how he started his journey in the promotion back in the 90s, Abbott confessed that he was always fascinated with boxing but his mother stopped him from going deep into the sport as she was afraid the ‘Tank’ would injure himself. Nonetheless, Abbott’s fascination for boxing grew with time, and witnessing prime Mike Tyson increased his interest in the art.

However, despite knowing that Tyson would mess him up, Abbott wanted to get in the ring with him. In a rather surprising confession to Joe Rogan, Abbott claimed that he was not scared of Tyson. “I was 18 years old, and I said, “You know what, I want to box.” And the same guy, it was back when Mike Tyson was on fire, and he was the baddest man on the planet. And I, as a young man, I go, “Not my planet.” And, uh, so, you know, he would obviously kill me in boxing, but there’s not a boxing ring on every corner, and so I was all fired up,” said Abbott.

If we delve into his statistics with the UFC, Tank Abbott had 10 victories to his name, alongside 15 losses in his professional career. Nonetheless, while we do not know how Abbott would have fared against Tyson, it would be disastrous to underestimate him because he fought it out in the UFC when there were little to no rules. Later in the conversation, ‘Tank’ described how the early days of UFC were.

UFC fights were nothing but a bloodfest in the past

The UFC has a ton of rules and regulations these days. If you don’t comply with any of these, then the promotion will cancel the fight or give your opponent the win. But things were different when they started out. One interesting fact that Tank Abott himself revealed was that he drank beer before and after his fights to cheer himself up.

When the duo watched a fight that Abott was a part of, he also recounted how famed referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy’s interference cost him the fight. “Yeah, there’s no rounds. I would have won that fight if Big John McCarthy wouldn’t have stuck his melon in between us and break us up. You know that’s how you were talking about how they fix the fights and everything. He broke this fight up, there were no rules, look, he’s breaking us up, why’d he do that?“

Later, when Rogan asked Abbott about the crowd’s reaction, the latter confirmed that the crowd booed, as there were no rules then.

Regardless, Abbott became a legendary name in the promotion due to his unorthodox fighting style. However, he retired from the game long back. Do you think Tank Abbott had a chance against prime Mike Tyson? State your thoughts in the comments below.