By Michael F. Duggan
I have a love/hate relationship with boxing. On the one hand, it is one of the most subtle of sports. On the other hand, it is assault and is bad for its participants (this is to say nothing about the corruption it has frequently attracted). There is also a kind of grace and beauty to traditional boxing that is so conspicuously missing in extreme fighting and mixed martial arts. To me these bouts look more like something along the lines of a bar fight: throw a lot of leather while exhibiting minimal defensive skills, affect a takedown and then choke or beat into submission. Ah, art.
Having not seen a heavyweight match in a while, I went to a local sports bar to watch the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul “Fight of the [yawn] Century.” I got to the place early to get a good seat. I then sat through three preliminary cards (along with a fair amount of hype that rounded out the four hours leading up to the main event). All of the initial fights were decent. The Taylor-Serrano fight was especially furious, but I didn’t like Katie Taylor’s head-butting. Serrano showed real heart and kept coming back.
But the Tyson-Paul bout? Well, now, that was a lackluster fight–quite possibly the most widely-watched waste of time in streaming history. On the one hand, it was impressive to see a 58 year-old man go toe-to-toe with someone 31 years younger. On the other hand, Tyson in his prime would have destroyed this guy in under a minute.
I’ll admit it, I wanted to see the old Tyson. I reasoned that if anybody in the foothills of 60 could make a comeback, it was Tyson (or Foreman): power is the last thing a fighter loses. Speed is the first. Like so many people, I was quietly hoping that he would not get hurt. But back in the late ’80s, the man was a juggernaut
I think that Ali, in his prime would have frustrated Tyson. Liston, Foreman, and Shavers might have thrown individual punches as hard or harder than Iron Mike, but nobody ever threw combinations of hard punches like him. He’d walk up to his opponent, leading with both hands, get inside and throw a flurry of 5 or 6 punches–uppercuts and hooks, any one of which could knock out most fighters, even if landed as a body blows–and in most cases, it was “good night sweet prince.”
The guys who did the best against Tyson, were big, powerful men with a long reach, who could keep him on the outside and frustrate him (Buster Douglas, Lennox Lewis). Of course, during the early years, Tyson defeated most of his opponents before they even stepped in the ring.
So what about this fight? At first Tyson seemed to be punching with some of his old power. But the speed wasn’t there. Soon he was sucking wind and punching air. Without speed, he couldn’t get inside (Tyson was the ultimate inside fighter and was not much good when kept out with his 71-inch reach relative to Paul’s 76). He only landed 18 out of 97 punches, as Paul sniped from the outside. And so one of the greats of yesterday suffered the indignity of losing on points to an Internet “influencer” for an impressive payday.
I offer Mr. Paul my congratulations on his victory over Mike Tyson and the suggestion that, for his next “Fight of the Century” spectacle, he take on the ghost of Jack Johnson.