When you spend years and years doing crazy stunts on a show like Jackass, you’re bound to have plenty of crazy injury stories. In the case of Steve-O, however, one of his most memorable moments of pain doesn’t come from Jackass or any other MTV series. Instead, he has an epic tale of a battle between man and fist that arose when Mike Tyson broke his nose during a Comedy Central Roast. According to Steve-O, however, all was well that ended well.
Then came the Comedy Central Roast with Charlie Sheen, and we talked Mike into doing the thing and holding his fist out, and I dove into Mike Tyson’s fist and landed on it with nothing but my nose. Super broke my nose. Like, really crazy broke it. And then this guy comes out of the crowd, running up towards the stage at the end of the show, and he says, ‘Steve-O, your nose needs to be set right now. I’m a kung fu instructor, and I know what I’m doing.’ So I let this kung fu asshole set my nose on the spot, and it just turned out that he did a fucking magnificent job. He basically fixed my nose perfect. Everything I was hoping to get that [doctor] dude to do, I got done by Mike Tyson and a fucking kung fu weirdo.
Even taking into account all the bumps, bruises, and battered bones that Steve-O endured over the years, his account to GQ about breaking his nose on Mike Tyson is surprisingly upbeat. Of course, considering the state of his nose prior to its connection with Tyson's monster fist, Steve-O made out pretty well from having his face smashed during a Comedy Central Roast.
As it turns out, he'd already broken his nose months earlier during the filming of Jackass 3D. Steve-O unfortunately went so long after the break without any treatment that having it set back to normal would have involved having it broken all over again. The accidental re-breaking courtesy of Mike Tyson and the setting from the kung fu weirdo really worked in Steve-O’s favor.
Even if Steve-O hadn’t had his face fixed in what could have been a disaster, he really would have brought the pain on himself. He’d asked Mike Tyson to hold out his fist so that he could run into it and give himself a black eye in true Jackass style, so he would have had no one to blame but himself if the incident had resulted with him having a flattened pancake of a face. Honestly, Steve-O surviving all of his crazy stunts over his life is nothing compared to coming out better off after a collision with Mike Tyson’s fist. Luckily, Steve-O’s face is fine, so we can laugh at the encounter without feeling bad about it.
