Mike Tyson, an all-time great boxer, officially announced his retirement from boxing in 2005. He came out of retirement in 2020 to fight in an exhibition match against former world division champion Roy Jones, Jr. When it ended in a split decision, the fight was thought to be the end of Mike Tyson’s professional career.
But after four years of silence, Tyson returned to the ring, this time to face a boxer over 30 years younger.
Jake Paul, Disney Channel and YouTube star turned boxer, entered the ring in 2018, when he fought another YouTuber. Two years later, he announced the start to his professional boxing career.
Coming into the fight that was livestreamed on Netflix last Friday, the two records stood at Paul (11-1, 7KOs) and Tyson (50-7, 44KOs). Age was the worry, as Paul is 27 and Tyson is 58. Even with the huge age difference, the betting odds favored Tyson to win by knockout or disqualification.
A regular boxing match normally is set to be ten to twelve rounds, with each round at three minutes. For this fight, however, the rules were changed. The fighters agreed that there would only be eight rounds at two minutes each. The fighters also used 14-ounce gloves instead of the usual 10-ounce gloves.
The match was Netflix’s largest streaming event, but just before it started, the streaming service crashed. When the stream was restored, Netflix recorded up to 65 million subscribers and over 100 million live views. They also had over 70,000 fans in attendance to watch.
In the first round, the win was given to Tyson. Even though Paul landed more punches than Tyson did, Tyson still landed a better percentage of punches.
Round two was close again, but this time the win was given to Paul. Tyson landed one less punch than he did in the first round, and Paul landed the same amount. The punches landed percentage and the total punches were in Paul’s favor, so he got the easy win.
Round three was where it started to get hard to watch. The round was won by Paul, and it wasn’t even close. Paul landed over 10 more punches than Tyson, and he threw over 20 more. The age difference started to show in this round, with Tyson kind of just standing there while Paul jumped and around to get Tyson tired.
Round four was no different, Paul took the unanimous win once again. Tyson landed zero punches, while Paul landed nine. Rounds five, six, seven and eight all went the same way. All of them went unanimously to Paul. In these final four rounds Tyson only landed six punches out of the 34 that he threw. On the other side of the ring, Paul landed 41 punches while throwing a total of 150. The final score was 79 Paul to 73 Tyson.
At the end of the fight, Paul stepped back and bowed to Tyson to show his appreciation for doing the fight and for all he has done for the sport.
After the fight, Tyson was asked if he thinks this is the last time he will be in the ring, to which he commented, “I don’t know. It depends on the situation.”
When Paul was questioned if he gave it his all in the fight, he responded, “Yeah, definitely, definitely a little bit. I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt him.”
He ended by saying how much of an honor it was to fight Tyson and how he is the biggest icon in boxing history.
