In the coming months, boxing will have a luxury calendar.
Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk
will bid to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion in four-belt times and
Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol
will do the same among the middle heavyweights;
Saúl Álvarez
will present his four super middleweight crowns against Jaime Munguía and
Naoya Inoue
, the four super bantamweight crowns against Luis Nery;
and box office hit
Ryan Garcia
will challenge undefeated
Devin Haney
.
Among so many elite combats there will be a fight whose framing is complicated: the one between
Mike Tyson and Jake Paul
on Saturday, July 20 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, on the outskirts of Dallas.
According to the Royal Spanish Academy, spectacular is something that has the characteristics of a public spectacle, but also
something spectacular, ostentatious or that causes scandal or great strangeness
.
In light of this, it seems evident that the fight between
the YouTuber turned boxer and the retired former world champion
, who in his golden years was the terror of the heavyweights and today is a successful businessman dedicated to the cannabis industry, will be spectacular.
of which he is an active promoter and consumer.
Since this event was announced two weeks ago, several questions have been flying around the boxing universe.
One of them is the nature of the fight:
will it be an official fight or just an exhibition?
The response will be the responsibility of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the body that sanctions and regulates combat sports in that state.
Sports logic indicates that no one would validate a fight in which
a 58-year-old man will participate
(he will turn 20 days before the event) and whose last professional performance dates back to June 2005 (he was knocked out by the Irishman Kevin McBride).
But sporting logic does not seem to be the guiding principle of this initiative.
Just in case,
Iron
Mike has embarked on an active campaign to show the world his physical condition.
On his Twitter and Instagram accounts he shared videos of his wrestling sessions with his trainer, Brazilian Rafael Cordeiro (specialized in mixed martial arts),
and sent provocative messages to Paul
.
Video editing can work wonders in 10- or 15-second pieces, but Tyson will need more than that to convince anyone that he's fit to box again, and to do so against a man 30 years his junior.
You still wanna f*** with me? #PaulTyson pic.twitter.com/CqdKF4zFBJ
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) March 16, 2024
The former undisputed heavyweight champion had already taken a short break in his comfortable retirement just over three years ago, at a time when the coronavirus pandemic seemed to boost several legends (Julio César Chávez, Evander Holyfield, Erik Morales, Jorge Arce) to follow in
Floyd Mayweather
's footsteps
and return to the ring for a while.
Although that return took place in quite different conditions than those anticipated by the duel against Paul.
On November 28, 2020, Tyson, then 54 years old,
faced Roy Jones Jr
, former middleweight, super middleweight, middleweight and heavyweight champion, who was then 51 years old.
The fight, an eight-round exhibition at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, ended in a Solomonic draw, despite the fact that the Brooklyn knockout had dominated his rival.
Mike Tyson starred in an exhibition against Roy Jones Jr. in November 2020. Photo: Joe Scarnici / EFE / EPA.
That show, of which the star protagonist was also co-organizer through the company Legends Only League, included musical shows and five official professional fights, and generated the sale of 1.6 million pay-per-view subscriptions and more than 80 million dollars of income.
This made it the seventh boxing event with the most transactions through the PPV system in history in the United States.
This 50-year-old Tyson surpassed almost all the PPV marks of his years as an active fighter: only more packages had been marketed for his second fight with Evander Holyfield, in 1997 (1.99 million), and for his fight against Lennox Lewis, in 2002 (1.95 million).
This time, the live broadcast of the evening will be provided by
Netflix
.
It will be the first time that the Red Ene
platform
(which has 260 million subscribers) will broadcast a boxing card live and the third time it will do so with a sporting event of any discipline.
The first was a golf competition
that was held at the Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas on November 14, 2023 and in which PGA Tour professionals and Formula 1 drivers participated. The second, a tennis exhibition, promoted as the
Netflix Slam
, which
Carlos Alcaraz won against Rafael Nadal on March 3 at the Michelob Ultra Arena
, also in
Sin City
.
For that match, the Mallorcan earned 1.5 million euros and the Murcian, 1 million.
It's JAKE PAUL vs.
MIKE TYSON — yes, really!
— in a LIVE BOXING event at AT&T Stadium you won't want to miss.
Airing live on Netflix Saturday, July 20 #PaulTyson pic.twitter.com/ULXVeCYeH6
— Netflix (@netflix) March 7, 2024
On that card headlined by Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. in Los Angeles, one of the complementary fights
was starred by an inexperienced Jake Paul
, who that night knocked out former basketball player Nate Robinson in the second episode.
That was the second professional fight for the social media star (he has 20.6 million subscribers on YouTube, 26.3 million followers on Instagram and 17.4 million on TikTok), who 10 months earlier had dispatched the fellow YouTuber
AnEsonGib
in an unpresentable contest due to the underground level of his adversary, more like a scarecrow than a boxer.
After his victory against Nate Robinson, the
Problem Child
shared a pleasant conversation with Tyson that he dusted off a few days ago.
“You are an amazing person.
I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me to fight on this card
,” says an enthralled Paul.
“Even though I like you, that doesn't mean I gave you the chance just because of that.
And you took advantage of it
,” the former champion rewards him.
Forty-four months after that dialogue, those two men will share a ring.
November 28, 2020
Jake Paul KO'D former NBA PLAYER Nate Robinson in the second round R2, 1:35
Clean shot by Jake pic.twitter.com/wMntsne9JM
— • 𝒮𝓀𝓎𝓁𝑜!
(@YT_SKYLO1) December 11, 2023
To get to this, Paul has traveled, nobility obliges,
an upward path in boxing
, first against upstarts like him, then against mixed martial arts fighters and
in the last stretch against fully fledged boxers
.
On this path of learning, which he did within the cruiser division (up to 90.8 kilos),
he lost his undefeated record in February 2023 to Tommy Fury
, one of the brothers of heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
But he also accounted for two of his nine victories against men with experience in ensogado,
Andre August and Ryan Bourland
.
And, most importantly, he showed a notable improvement in his skills through consistency in training.
Although he is very far from the first level, he is no longer the rudimentary fighter who threw
branches without rhyme or reason
in his first presentations.
“He has grown significantly as a boxer over the years, so it will be a lot of fun to see what the will and ambition of a child can do with the experience and aptitude of the greatest of all time
,” he praised (and was praised) Tyson, who, in any case, predicted a sure victory: “It is a moment that will come full circle, since
I started him on his boxing journey
on the undercard of my fight with Roy Jones
and now I plan to finish him off
.”
Jake Paul has a professional record of nine wins and one loss.
Photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images / AFP.
If the structuring of the exhibition against Jones Jr. was in charge of Tyson's company,
this time the frying pan changed hands:
the July 20 event in Arlington will be organized by Most Valuable Promotions (MVP),
the firm that Paul founded in September 2021
and that has already managed very powerful evenings such as the first at Madison Square Garden with a fight between women as the main fight: the one starring
the Puerto Rican Amanda Serrano
(a star of women's boxing, who was MVP's first signing) and the Irish Katie Taylor on April 30, 2022 for the undisputed reign in the lightweight division.
Paul and his team are confident that on July 20 they will fill AT&T Stadium in Arlington,
which has 80,000 seats
and can expand its capacity by another 20,000 seats.
“This fight is a dream and we hope it will be the most watched event in the history of modern boxing
,” said Nakisa Bidarian, co-founder of MVP.
“Six generations of fans will have a special interest in the result and will be able to see the antihero, Jake Paul, put everything on the line against the baddest man on the planet, Mike Tyson,” said the businessman, who is already rubbing his hands next to his partner thinking about the profits that this show will give them.