Mike Tyson, Jake Paul, and the impending car crash

No one wants to admit they look across the carriageway at a car crash, or that they must fight an urge to peer at the carnage that has caused the tailback.

In the case of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul event in Texas on Friday night, there seems to be those watching with their eyes wide open and those pretending not to see; the latter are generally those being asked questions by the former about what the damage might look like.

Tyson-Paul is a weird event, and I can’t think of anything even remotely like it in terms of the level of fighters, celebrity and their ages. 

It is a cynical cash grab, yes. I can’t see it being particularly entertaining as a high-level sporting event but I’m sure once it starts you won’t be able to take your eyes off it.

But it’s not an influencer versus a clout chaser. It’s not a boxer versus MMA crossover fight. It’s not boxer versus boxer. Not as we know it. It’s “entertainment,” and that’s heavy on the inverted commas.

Would it be like Rocky Marciano – had he lived into his dotage – fighting Sylvester Stallone, or Joe Louis coming back to fight Elvis?

The event is unique, and morally and ethically it is questionable and it is certainly dangerous, particularly for Tyson.

Ironically, some 35 years ago it was the men in the other corner who everyone else was frightened for. Now it is, or should be, Tyson.

I definitely fear for Mike Tyson. 

I saw him fight live both times in the UK, when he demolished Julius Francis in Manchester – when Francis sold advertising space on the soles of his boots to a newspaper – and in Scotland, when in the pouring rain he dropped Lou Savarese and referee John Coyle, before delivering the post-fight line about the ghosts of the heavyweight greats that haunted his latest comeback and the one about children Lennox Lewis had not yet had.

I went to Detroit, well, Auburn Hills, and got what I paid for with the typically controversial ending when Andrew Golota opted not to box on, despite Al Certo trying to persuade him otherwise by attempting to stuff his mouthpiece back into the “Foul Pole’s” mouth.

And I was in Denmark, at the Parken, when Brian Nielsen, supposedly facing down every heavyweight’s fear, cheerily walked to the ring to the tune of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Of course, by that point the Tyson I was watching was not the one I grew up on or the one that inspired me to go and train in his old Catskill club, listening to Cus D’Amato on old cassette tapes calling out numbered combinations that we practised day after day. 

That Tyson was consigned to the past. 

Several rebirths and reinventions have come and gone since then. It is thoroughly amazing how uncancelled he has been in the aftermath of his 1992 prison sentence and, really, his subsequent behavior. 

He remains an anomaly to the extent that, when he was ill and this event was postponed several months ago, you could not imagine who could possibly take his place. There is no one like him. Lennox would not fit the bill, nor would Evander. Ngannou wouldn’t have the same recognition and it would have needed someone to have allowed the deck to be stacked to take into consideration Paul’s pugilistic limitations.

Maybe someone at Netflix has the next part of this in mind, but it is hard to see what could match this in terms of crashing through barriers of society, generations and cultures.

But for Tyson, who turned 58 in June, it could be rough. He was a spent bullet more than two decades ago and he’s hardly lived the life since.

His padwork has been powered by muscle memory and nostalgia.

If it’s a staged show, like an old sitcom, I could see a draw. But if it is actually sport then the average Paul can cover up for two minutes, ride out the early storm and batter an exhausted Tyson into defeat. Really, I have almost no doubt Paul chins him or holds him up.

But what has not been addressed satisfactorily is whether Tyson should be allowed to take more damage to his brain.

The truth is, the cold, hard truth, that is, is that no one can know or will know how badly damaged Tyson is unless or until an autopsy is completed on him and his brain is examined.

Fourteen-ounce gloves won’t protect his brain from further damage and he’s nearly 60 years old, when a brain is already more vulnerable.

For it is in autopsy, and only then, when slides of a brain can go under high powered microscopes and that the damage, in the form of the spread of tau protein that effectively kills brain cells, can be seen.

Whatever brain scans are completed, it doesn’t matter because they won’t reveal what is most crucial to see. There is not a single piece of equipment that their supposed combined $60m purses could buy that can determine what is going on inside Tyson’s brain.

It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t fought in 20 years – well, it does when you consider inactivity and what was once ‘Iron’ rusting and decaying and the life he’s subsequently lived – but what matters is the quarter of a century’s worth of hits he took prior, in the gym battles with the likes of Greg Page and Oliver McCall and some of the beatings he soaked up, having his brain rattled by the likes of Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Danny Williams. 

On Wednesday, he was either done talking (highly possible) or a confused, increasingly elderly man who is being taken advantage of – yes, to the tune of $20m, who is selling his surname to appear on someone’s record. You may say that is boxing, and how it has always been, but this is not Louis passing the baton to Marciano, or Ali to Holmes, or Holmes to Tyson. 

Watching Wednesday’s press conference, I wondered if Tyson wasn’t thinking, “What the fuck am I doing in this circus?” Was he disinterested? Had he tuned out? Was it cause for people like me to be even more concerned?

Frankly, there is no test to determine whether he should be in the line of fire, but if there was one, the eye test based on two or three second training clips threaded artfully together in a glossy montage certainly isn’t it.

The main event, albeit with a sturdy boxing undercard, is a little too close to the edge of the cliff for my liking. Let’s hope it stays on the right side of it and that search and rescue aren’t scouring for debris of what went horribly wrong on Saturday morning.