Concerns are rife over Mike Tyson accepting a fight against an opponent 31 years his junior after similar happened to rival Evander Holyfield.
Tyson agreed to face Jake Paul on November 15 in a Netflix event that will be available to over a quarter of a billion subscribers. However, after the official announcement that the fight is a professional contest, there’s been an uproar over Tyson potentially suffering a fifth career loss despite retiring two decades ago.
Stipulations like the boxers can try to win by scoring a knockout have only heightened the alarm as Tyson heads into the fight six months after his 58th birthday.
‘Iron’ Mike will be the same age as Holyfield when his former foe unexpectedly returned to the ring against Vitor Belfort in 2021. In that case, though Belfort was 44 and past his best, the former UFC star still wiped the floor with “The Real Deal” on the night.
Holyfield couldn’t move around the ring anything like he used to. His motor skills were clearly diminished as the worst was yet to come. Once Belfort landed solid shots, it was evident Holyfield’s punch resistance was non-existent. This was solely due to age and nothing else, as Holyfield looked in tremendous shape.
The same can be said about Tyson. At 58, he’s the picture of health and looks like he’s been sculpted by Greek artists. His ten-second training videos are on point, too, despite questions over the validity of using them to promote a fight that is only two minutes per round. This scenario points to Tyson not having much in the tank, which could be detrimental in the later rounds.
As Holyfield knew, Tyson could find even two minutes more like five minutes at his age, especially after being out of the ring for another four years. His last fight with Roy Jones Jr., an exhibition in 2020, saw both former legends clinching far longer than exchanging throughout the sessions.
The event, which ended in a draw, wasn’t a great advert for overaged boxing in any sense of the word. Hence, there haven’t been any other high-profile bouts of that nature since.
Paul, who will oppose Tyson on the night, has been criticized for even offering Tyson the chance to face him. At 27, Paul is at the peak of his physical shape, and even that should be enough for him to cause significant damage if he’s allowed to throw full-blooded shots at the nearly 60-year-old former heavyweight champion.
The Holyfield beatdown by Belfort, which lasted a mere 109 seconds and saw the two-weight world ruler wobbled by the first jab thrown, is a stark warning to Mike Tyson. At his age, you cannot gamble with your future.
Having some agreement in the contract that Paul cannot go one hundred percent or that the pair should play around and see out the fight to the finish is really the only hope either has of coming out of this with any dignity.
The problem is that viewers will only be tuning in to see if either can score the knockout. If it happened to Holyfield, the man who defeated Tyson twice, it could happen to Iron Mike, who faces an opponent seventeen years younger than Belfort.
Tyson gains nothing but money from the AT&T Stadium event, as the consensus is he cannot win if Paul makes it past a certain amount of time. Those kinds of encounters never end well.
Furthermore, if “The Baddest Man on the Planet” avoided a Hoylyfield-style execution and left the ring with his pre-fight nickname, maybe the paycheck would have been worth it.
The fact he was in a wheelchair a couple of years ago and suffered a stomach ulcer flare-up in May doesn’t begin to describe the fear from the fans.
Read all articles and exclusive interviews by Phil Jay. Learn more about the author, experienced boxing writer, and World Boxing News Editor since 2010. Follow on Twitter @PhilJWBN.
