TThe madness rolled through an unmarked breakfast bar in Arlington, just outside Dallas, shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday morning. Sleepy diners stared at a row of television screens lit with images of two contrasting men on the early morning NBC news. Before them, a friendly announcer promised that Friday night’s scrap in North Texas between “58-year-old boxing icon Iron Mike Tyson and problem child Jake Paul” will take us “back to the glory days of boxing.” ”
As if we needed any more convincing, the screen then filled with the sloppily bearded face of Paul, “the 27-year-old YouTube sensation,” praising the owners of the Dallas Cowboys for sharing his vision for organizing “ the greatest fight in the world’. the history of boxing” at their AT&T Stadium, just 10 miles away, where we sat drinking our lukewarm coffee.
We didn’t hear the ghosts of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali crying in pain. If they had had to hear the nonsense of the world in 2024, they might have laughed.
Twelve hours later, at the Toyota Music Factory in Irving, a 20-minute drive from Arlington, Tyson and Paul hosted a public workout to kickstart this surreal fight week that will culminate in brawls on Netflix. Tyson was said to be “furious” as he backed his cornerman against the ropes. The trainer wore a body protector that absorbed the blows, while Tyson showed considerable head movement as he threw some relatively quick combinations. But it’s easy for a former world champion when no one hits back.
Tyson looked tired after that burst of activity and it’s hard to know how he’ll last ten two-minute rounds against a man 31 years his junior. Paul is an aspiring professional, but Tyson looked somber as he waited for an in-ring interview.
A black towel was draped around his bare shoulders as a young woman turned to the crowd. “Texas, you better get louder than that,” she shouted. Sweat poured down Tyson’s sad old face as he waited patiently.
“Mr. Mike Tyson, it’s so different from being on your phone or watching online to witness this,” the woman enthused as she praised his short workout. “It’s something spectacular that I don’t think any of us have ever seen before.”
I remembered the last time I was alone with Tyson and his trainers in a Las Vegas gym in 1991. It was a private sparring session and before I interviewed him he was working with Jesse Ferguson. When they fought five years earlier, Tyson said he tried to shove Ferguson’s nose into his brain before knocking him unconscious.
That same unhinged viciousness in Tyson persisted in 1991 and it was disturbing to see him rip left hooks into Ferguson’s sagging midriff and rip long right crosses to the jaw with serious intent. The force of those punches sprayed the air with sweat and water, as if Tyson had hit a small geyser hidden in his sparring partner’s skull. I felt some of that sticky wetness on my face and retreated to a safe distance.
Tyson seemed scary, but his best years as a fighter were already behind him. The fighter I saw that afternoon was no Band-Aid on the world champion who in 1988 obliterated the previously excellent Michael Spinks with a display of fury and skill that, for the 91 seconds it lasted, captured the magnetism of boxing.
Thirty-six years after that career highlight, Tyson was asked what he had learned about himself since he started training for Paul. The former Baddest Man on the Planet paused for a moment and then said, “That I’m stronger than I thought, because when I agreed to this fight and started training, I was like, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ But I completed the process. The battle is the party. All the hard work is done.”
Tyson was reminded that Netflix has 282 million subscribers and he is expected to fight in front of the largest crowd of his career on Friday night. He was asked if he ever thought he would have to fight Jake Paul on such a night.
He shook his head desperately and spread his hands wide. “Never in a million years,” Tyson said in his soft, lisping voice.
Tyson was asked about his family and, perhaps a little hard of hearing these days, muttered, “Say that again, please.”
after newsletter promotion
Finally, he made a joke that all aging fathers could understand: “To my children, I am nobody… they take me for granted. They talk a lot of shit to me, which no one else would.”
But he smiled when he suggested that on Friday evening they would “find out that their father is very special.”
Tyson, who understands the historical magnitude of Johnson, Louis and Ali, and his own lesser place in the heavyweight pantheon, was asked what it would mean if he could beat Paul. It is admirable that he did not deign to answer the question.
“All I can say is, ‘Thank you God,’” Tyson said.
He was long gone when the same woman introduced ‘the disrupter, the man who revolutionized boxing in four years… the most influential figure in boxing today… it’s the problem child, Jake ‘El Gallo’ Paul!’
Wearing a red rooster wig, in tribute to his nickname in Puerto Rico, where he now lives, Paul cut an absurd and fat figure. After his grueling training, he said: “I feel very good, sharp, powerful and explosive. It’s going to be a short night for Mike.”
But he admitted his mother, who is clearly old enough to remember the terror Tyson once spread through boxing, was concerned. ‘She’s nervous. She doesn’t like watching Mike Tyson throw punches because she’s a little scared.
The YouTuber dressed as a rooster turned to his mother and said, “But mom, I promise you, I was built for this, I was meant for this. I, Jake Joseph Paul, will knock out Mike Tyson on November 15th. It’s written in the history books.’