For better or worse, Mike Tyson’s cross-generational fight with Jake Paul exposes the former heavyweight champion to a younger audience.
Take this week’s conversation with 14-year-old interviewer Jazzy, who asked 58-year-old Tyson about his legacy.
“Why do I care what my legacy is?” responded Tyson, whose past is complicated by drug abuse, financial ruin and his 1992 rape conviction, among other things. “I never knew what a legacy was and people started throwing that word around so loosely. An inheritance sounds like ego to me. I’ll be dead soon.’
Tyson wasn’t done with his lesson yet.
“Who cares what anyone will think of me when I’m dead?” he asked. ‘We don’t talk about Charles Manson. No one cares about anyone when they’re dead and gone.
Mike Tyson gave 14-year-old interviewer Jazzy a lesson about existentialism this week
“I’m just passing through,” he continued. ‘I’m going to die and it’s over. Who cares about the inheritance after that?
‘We are nothing. We’re just dead. We are just dust. We are nothing at all. Our legacy is nothing.”
To her credit, Jazzy remained optimistic after learning that humanity is “nothing.”
“Thank you so much for sharing this,” she said. “That’s something I haven’t heard in response yet.”
Once again Tyson wasn’t done yet.
“Can you really imagine someone saying, ‘I really want my legacy to be like this when I’m dead’ – you’re dead… Who the fuck cares about me when I’m gone?” Tyson asked.
The interview, posted on Jazzys World TV’s YouTube channel, attracted many comments.
“Mike Tyson talks to everyone the same, no matter their age,” one person commented, echoing a comment from many others.
Tyson grabbed the Dagestani social media star and jokingly nibbled his ear on Hotboxin
Tyson will fight 27-year-old Paul on Friday evening at AT&T Stadium near Dallas
Tyson has struggled in the past to give age-appropriate responses.
During an interview on Hotboxin with 20-year-old fight fan Hasbulla – who is only 4 feet tall – the 6-foot-2 Tyson picked up the smaller man and started kissing him on the cheek and nibbling on his ear as if he were . a young boy.
As one fan noted on YouTube at the time, “If Mike Tyson says you’re a kid, you’re a kid.”
Over a year later, Tyson admitted that he mistook Hasbulla as a child, without realizing that he had a form of dwarfism that stunted his growth.
“I thought it was a baby,” Tyson told Andre Ward on The Art Of Ward podcast.
‘I didn’t know. He was hitting me. I don’t know, man. That’s how I am with children. I hugged this man. He is about 26 years old,” he added. ‘No, no. I didn’t know.’
Tyson will face 27-year-old Paul on Friday evening at AT&T Stadium outside Dallas. The fight is scheduled for eight two-minute rounds, as opposed to the normal three-minute frames. Additionally, gloves for the fight will be 14 ounces instead of the usual 10.