Boxing fans watched Jake Paul fight Mike Tyson for a winner, but received nostalgia instead
It's okay. Iron Mike is proof that age doesn’t diminish appeal.
Jake Paul may be an internet-made sensation who can draw a big crowd, but he is not Mike Tyson. The two different trains of entertainment collided in another overhyped snooze-fest of a fight that fried the Netflix servers, and reminded people that the undercard can produce more thrills than the main event. Tyson was the real draw, and he couldn’t come through on a promise that a great director in Hollywood would have made sing on screen. Reality stings harder and floats better.
Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano suffered the worst, and that’s not including the bruised faces and barely hanging on eyelids. They beat the shit out of each other as the final fight before the big one, producing a controversial decision that will surely prompt another fight, which would be their third. Some said Serrano was robbed, but Taylor didn’t back down after an initial beating, winning those crucial middle rounds. The judges see
Their fight dwarfed the Paul-Tyson clash, because these two fighters actually felt like fighting instead of an extended sparring session. You should have just let them have drinks and smack each other for 16 minutes. It was only the first two rounds (of eight) that featured Tyson actually connecting with his punches.
When the second round ended, Iron Mike looked like Barack Obama when he was elected into office. When the third round started, he looked like Obama four years later. He moved slower, couldn’t find Paul for any punches, and ate too many of the wonder kid’s own offerings.
Was Paul holding back to not embarrass Tyson, or was he merely respecting a legendary puncher’s power. Granted, Mike never boxed very well. He was trained to be an assassin, not a soldier in the ring. Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis exposed that secret decades ago. Buster Douglas found the sweet spot of undoing Tyson.
Still, at the age of 58, Tyson stood up and kept coming forward for eight rounds. That’s his win, even if Paul enjoyed another victory over a medium-heated show pony opponent. He should fight the 38-year-old Julio Cesar Chavez Junior next. The chaotic son of a legend, he fits the hype train that this Netflix fight spent the better part of two years on.
Serrano and Taylor reminded people of the nostalgia of actual boxing, a brutal display of courage and skill that befits the view who indulge of this practice as a living.
The main event couldn’t amount to half of the Serrano-Taylor clash, a must rewatch for me this coming week. All I’ve heard is the preamble, the delay, the hype reloaded, the almost-here hype, and then the actual tepid result. At the end of the day, this fight shouldn’t be judged on a merit of winner and loser, but more about what it meant for fans of Tyson. The man I grew up watching destroy other humans in a ring with a ferocity that mirrored Tony Twist without skates--hang around with a much younger opponent.
Paul is a t-shirt of the week, in the words of Brad Pitt’s fictional Detective Mills. He has a flimsy record built on fighting has-beens or never-was boxers. The only loss he owns came against Tommy Fury, the brother of much more well-known Tyson Fury. If he tried to fight a real boxer, like Chavez Jr, he would lose. He cherry picks opponents like Brett Hull used to cherry pick hockey pucks before rocketing them into a net.
This was a nostalgia train, the kind that gives Netflix the kind of action they haven’t felt since the first season of Stranger Things. Tyson is proof that you should get off your ass, even in your late 50s, and stay fit. His chaotic mind and past trauma probably needed this, a result that comes off as cinematic yet doesn’t end that way.
Remember the very good sixth Rocky movie, Rocky Balboa? An old, retired boxer from Philadelphia taking on a much younger boxer. In real life, Sylvester Stallone’s pugilist gets whooped. In the movies, he still loses. Tyson showed what the real life version would look like, even if Balboa was a better boxer in his movie world.
I didn’t dislike what I saw, but can admit to wanting more. Hearing about and waiting for something like this is usually better than what follows, because Father Time is undefeated. Tyson lasting the fight, enduring some punishment, and eternally battling his mouthpiece was worth it in the end… for nostalgia.
The moment after the final bell confirmed the real deal. Paul stopped fighting and simply bowed to Tyson, a soulful moment of appreciation from a young cartoon fighter that overmatched their actual bout. Tyson and Paul holding each other up, whispering into each other’s faces that they may need another yacht and home with the money made from this snooze fest.
I would have watched the first Tyson-Holyfield fight instead, but I’ll take what I can get in a mad world.