Tyson shut the rapper down hard after he said he felt the need to speak up about Zaya “because I got offended because it’s a child.”
Mike Tyson was not here for rapper Boosie Badazz coming down with transphobic comments about Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union’s daughter Zaya, but Wade was definitely down for the champ’s support.
Wade told Central Ave on Friday that he and Tyson has a conversation about it earlier in the pandemic, and he was incredibly impressed with the boxer.
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“He’s so smart. He is so educated and knowledgeable about life,” he said. “For him to be able to drop that nugget on the world, to me, it was great to hear him say that.”
He further said that he appreciated Tyson speaking out on his own platform “from a standpoint of, you know, Mike is someone who has never tried to be perfect. He is someone who has learned from this journey of life.”
The moment came down when Boosie was a guest on Tyson’s “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson” podcast last month. Tyson called him out for comments he’d made after Wade and Union revealed Zaya as transgender — with Zaya’s permission and support — to the world back in February.
In his initial comments, Boosie called out Wade directly and spoke graphically and inappropriately about choices Zaya may make down the road as a transgender female, effectively telling her father not to let it happen.
“I really commented on the Dwyane Wade situation because I got offended because it’s a child,” Boosie told Tyson. “That’s really why I got offended.”
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“That’s a child. A child at 12 can’t make that decision,” Boosie continued. “That’s just how I feel … I just felt like that was going too far. You calling him a ‘her,’ that’s going too far. At 12 years old.”
But that answer didn’t sit well with Tyson at all, who countered, “What happened to you that you think that you’re somebody that can comment on somebody’s life?” he asked the rapper.
It was a response even more aggressive than how Wade handles moments like that, acknowledging that he has to allow everyone their own “journey towards accepting things.”
He went on to add, “They don’t know us. They don’t know our heart. They definitely don’t know Zaya. So, all I do is what my mama say, ‘Just pray for them.'”
You can check out the vide of Tyson taking it a step further than praying for Boosie Badazz in that original video below (it starts about 10 minutes in), even as both men conflate sexual identity and orientation throughout.
There’s still work to be done.
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