Mike Tyson Will be in the Next WWE Wrestling Game

Former heavyweight champion, Hangover co-star Mike Tyson will be in the WWE ’13 video game, his first official wrestling video game appearance, if not his first gaming appearance. (He’s been in a batch of boxing games).

He’ll be playable as a wrestler in WWE ’13, but only if you pre-order the game or presumably purchase virtual-Tyson some time later.

Tyson has seemed radically mellower and kinder in the years since his 2005 retirement from boxing. He’s come a long way from being convicted for rape in 1992, harassing reporters, bullying fighters and generally seeming like anything but a nice guy. In recent years he’s become a more sympathetic and even loveable figure, re-integrating into society, showing a softer side to his personality, recovering from the accidental death of one of his children and taking on small acting roles and making good-humored public appearances. He’s been anything but incorrigible.

In 1998, however, shortly before changing his image and just after biting off part of then-heavyweight-champion Evander Holyfield’s ear in the middle of a prizefight, Tyson showed up on the WWE’s red-hot Monday Night Raw show. He was there as “the baddest man on the planet”, as he was known and locked horns with WWE’s own ascendant badass, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5VprWqVcgc

Tyson and Austin’s confrontation was a pop culture phenomenon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPuRgjwSwM4

And to those of us who like watching pro wrestling (me!), it gave us the memorable hilarity of Tyson trying to talk tough like a pro wrestler while goofily doing the “DX crotch chop”…

… all of which led to Tyson switching sides and helping Stone Cold after the main event of Wrestlemania XIV

WWE has brought back Tyson a couple of time since then, letting an older, literally-less-edgy Tyson wrestle and enter their Hall of Fame (he’s in the celebrity wing).

Tyson as a regular in-ring wrestler in WWE ’13 is actually a bit weird, since the guy hasn’t really done many wrestling moves and, well, boxing isn’t legal in wrestling, to the extent there are rules.

But it’s goofy, silly and a blast from the past for those of us who enjoyed WWE when it was in its late-90’s Attitude Era prime.

WWE ’13 will be released this fall on major platforms.