Tyson has opened up on the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, revealing how much impact it has had on his life.

In an interview with ESPN’s E60, the former boxing champion told Jeremy Schapp how the molestation made him tough, and how he still found it difficult to talk about what happened.

Schapp, who has interviewed Tyson regularly during the past 25 years, asked why was the first time he had opened up about the abuse to him.

“Well I don’t like to talk about that, I like to keep that where it was in the past, but I was molested as a child,” Tyson replied.

It’s not the first time the former heavyweight champion of the world has talked about the abuse.

In a 2014 interview with SiriusXM’s Opie Radio, he told co-host Jim Norton how he was snatched off the street at age seven and abused by an older man.

Tyson said it only happened the once and he managed to escape by running away.

In the latest ESPN interview, the now 51-year-old told Schapp how he was grabbed by a stranger and taken into a building but wouldn’t say exactly what happened to him.

He did however reveal the effect it has had on him today saying: “It made me have to be tough for the world I lived in.”

Tyson said he felt some shame at what happened to him and the reason some people didn’t want to talk about it was because they felt it emasculated them.

“I learned that it doesn’t make you any less of a man because it happened,” Tyson said.

Tyson has been open about his troubled childhood.

In his recently released book Iron Ambition: Lessons I’ve Learned From The Man Who Made Me A Champion Tyson details how he grew up on the rough streets of Brownsville in Brooklyn.

Tyson never knew his father, and his mother died when he was 16.

He was a violent street fighter and spent his days in and out of youth detention centres before becoming the youngest boxer to win a heavyweight title at just 20.

The fighter also revealed how legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato shaped him into a champion and an “arrogant sociopath” and encouraged him to have a ruthless attitude.