On November 15, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, there will be a boxing match between a 58-year-old, 19-year retired former champion and an 11-fight novice/social media influencer whose biggest boxing wins have come against non-boxers. The 8-round fight will be contested, basically, under women’s boxing rules with oversized gloves. It’ll be the biggest boxing event in the US, by far.
That should be absolutely humiliating for American boxing businessmen, who have done nothing this year but feed bogus rumors of upcoming fights to media and grab at Saudi Arabian payouts.
Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul is a joke. And that’s fine. Boxing has always had fluff fights and celebrity nonsense swirling around its perimeters. But Tyson-Paul is not on the perimeter. It’s bigger than anything “real” boxing has produced this year and, in the vacuum of US boxing doldrums, it’s way more significant than it should be.
And, again, that should be embarrassing as fuck.
Tyson, whose last meaningful win came around the time then-President Clinton was telling the world, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” shouldn’t be fighting in an actual sanctioned boxing match.
Jake Paul’s 10-1 record consists of bouts with a YouTuber, a retired NBA star, six former MMA stars, a part-time boxer/reality TV star, two undersized boxing sub-club fighters, and a bare-knuckle brawler.
To make matters even more surreal, the Netflix-aired show will probably be the most viewed combat sports event in the history of the world.
There’s been some buzz about how Tyson-Paul may be a struggle to sell out the 80,000 seat Cowboys Stadium, but every seat will likely be sold by fight night and organizers seems to be fine with selling the hell out of the big-shot seats while cutting deals to have the rabble populate the cheap seats. There’s even a ridiculously decadent $2 million “MVP Owner's Experience” seat package for the shamelessly rich who don’t believe in the kind of Hell reserved for the type of rich folk who’d rather spend $2 million to see this kind of silliness than donate the money to something like St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
More off-putting than the exaggerated importance of something like Tyson-Paul is the absolute impotence of American boxing.
2024 has been a lost year for American boxing and the once-powerful, boxing-dominant trio of Top Rank, Golden Boy, and PBC have taken a knee in the face of adversity quicker than Ryan Garcia after he took that Tank Davis gut shot.
And, really, all it took to put boxing in hospice care was some Saudi guy waving cash around.
Oscar Da La Hoya’s Golden Boy has embraced selling itself out to the Saudis and is, per my sources, looking to ditch their failed Ring Magazine property to their new overlords as well (if they haven’t done so already).
Top Rank, figureheaded by the crotchety Bob Arum, is not as whorish as Oscar and company, but is still begrudgingly taking a knee to Saudi interests, even allowing Saudi point man Turki Alalshikh to make fights for contract players without their consent.
PBC’s downfall may not be Saudi-related, but it IS a sign of these times where there seems to be no fire lit under any of these boxing company asses anymore.
The obvious solution to this flat-lining of the US scene would be for these people to start working together and working towards fights that actually matter. But, of course, this is boxing and logic always takes a back seat to grabs at quick, empty payouts that are more long-term harmful than long-term helpful.
Currently leading the US-based scene are Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gervonta “Tank” Davis-- two legitimately compelling performers who have leveraged their star power (against boxing promoters’ desperation to find draws) into forcing weak mismatches at premium prices. Good for them...absolutely horrible for everyone else.
“Boxing is dying” has been a reverse rallying cry for ‘The sky is falling’ alarmists since Braddock beat Baer. But nobody can look into this current boxing void and make the argument that the sport is more alive than dead at the moment.
US boxing has, for all intents and purposes, resigned. It’s even let top fighters like Terence Crawford, Shakur Stevenson, and Jaron Ennis essentially float away to foreign interests.
But, getting back to Mike Tyson-Jake Paul…
Their nonsense is a big deal because both guys are stars and boxing is a star-driven sport. The US boxing scene, meanwhile, can’t create a big deal these days because it can’t/won’t make stars and can’t/won’t make meaningful fights for the few stars it does have. It’s really that simple.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com