WITH THE FIGHT OF THE YEAR, WE ALL LOST

From Southwest Ledger

Coming off a divisive election, the highly anticipated fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul could have been the perfect opportunity to unite us once again.

The event brought in young people who seem to worship anyone who can make videos on TikTok while also drawing in the older crowd who wanted to experience the nostalgia of watching the most dominant boxer of our time go to work. More than any recent fight, it had the chance of revitalizing boxing. But instead, it united the nation in agreement on one point: it was a complete bust on every level.

The business side of the fight was the only success — and those numbers are huge. It is estimated that more than 60 million people watched the fight on Netflix with another 80,000 in attendance. It was Netflix’s largest live event ever, possibly setting them up for future events, and I do mean possibly. Paul is believed to have made $40 million from the fight while Tyson raked in around $20 million. While it’s impossible to call these numbers anything but a success, they certainly came at a cost.

I wrote about boxing earlier this year, how putting football on streaming services might damage the sport the way pay-per-view impacted boxing. While boxing has continued to make big money on pay-per-view, the popularity of the sport has shrunk incredibly from its glory days. For most of the 20th century, boxing was second in popularity only to America’s favorite pastime: baseball. The heavyweight champion was once the most revered position in sports. I’m a huge sports guy, yet I honestly do not know who the heavyweight champ is today. That would be unheard of in the 1920s or 1930s.

For all intents and purposes, Netflix might as well be a network. A recent survey showed that 61% of American households have Netflix which is the largest streaming service in the country. If Netflix was a network, the fight basically would be free.

I’ll admit, I would not have paid for this fight, but once I saw it advertised on Netflix, I was not about to miss it. This was going to showcase the “sweet science” to a whole new level of viewers and maybe even attract more fans.

According to Planet Sport, the previous most viewed fight was between Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao in 2015. These are two of the greatest fighters of all time, yet they only drew  4.6 million viewers. So how can a has-been (Tyson) and a nobody in the boxing world (Paul) draw so many more sets of eyes? Simple, Netflix instead of pay-per-view.

This could have been a revolution in sports watching, but instead Netflix was not up to the task. Instead of praise of the streaming service, it has been universally condemned for the amount of frustrating buffering viewers had to endure. Fans are now worried about upcoming NFL games on Netflix and future fight promoters might look for other ways to showcase the sport.

However, what was even worse about the night was that older fans were reminded why we stopped watching in the first place, and new fans were left wondering why it was ever popular. The undercards had promise. The first fight of super middleweights, Meeraj Goyat and Whindersson Nunes, started strong. But as the fight continued, it seem like neither fighter really cared. The action reminded me of a charity exhibition where winning simply did not matter. The action got better with the welterweight bout between Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos for the WBC title. Both had knockdowns, but the fight went the distance only to end in a tie. In boxing, all a tie does is manufacture a second fight — making the fans feel used. It’s a completely unsatisfied ending, but yet it only got worse.

The best fight of the night was and should have been huge for women’s boxing. Super lightweights Katie Taylor defended her belt against Amanda Serrano. This fight was brutal. Those two ladies beat the tar out of each other. Yet what is most remembered are Taylor’s four headbutts. Whether accidental or not, it’s cheating. And when nothing was done about it, and it made boxing looked cheap. The greatest insult to the 60 million viewers watching was when the judges awarded the victory to Taylor even though everyone watched Serrano clearly beat her.
It reminded old fans why boxing is considered the most corrupt sport with a history of fixes, and told new fighters that boxing was not that much different than the World Wrestling Entertainment where the outcomes are scripted.

What could have been boxing’s greatest showcase was instead a farce. The main event only proved both ideas even more.

Since the fight was first announced, I think I suffered short term memory loss. I know very little about Jake Paul, but what I do know is that he is a social media influencer and kind of a buffoon. My first thought was that “Tyson is going to kill him.”

I think I had forgotten about Tyson’s last few fights; they did not go well for the former “King of the Ring.” What I remembered, or maybe with all going on the world, I wanted to remember a simpler time when Tyson was the baddest man ever seen.

I grew up on his fights; getting together with friends to pay the price to watch “Iron Mike” knock out some fighter in the matter of seconds. I spent the hours during the undercard fights talking to my son about all my memories watching Tyson and showing him clips of his best knockouts. I should have known what to expect when he came out. I kept telling my son, wait for his walk out; its legendary. Other fighters made a spectacle, much like Paul did coming out in a car. Not Tyson. There were no gimmicks — just Tyson with his towel draped over him and that iconic LL Cool J song, “Mama Said Knock You Out.” It was that song and those eyes that struck fear. To my surprise the song was different, and he came out with a knee brace almost limping.

While the first round looked promising, it quickly brought back memories, just not the ones I wanted. Instead of my nostalgia fix of Iron Mike, I got the later Mike. The one biting off ears and crawling around the mat looking for his mouthpiece. After waiting all night, I sat through a goofy TikTok star and an aged 58-year-old ex-champ pretending to fight. It was one of the most pathetic sights boxing has ever seen.

Memes quickly came out of Paul challenging everyone from 100-year-old former President Jimmy Carter to 94-year-old Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood to his next fight. If Paul wants to be taken seriously, he has a long way to go.

As for Tyson, everyone interested saw his training tapes from days before the fight. He looked as strong as ever leading many to assume he took a dive for the money. Podcasters like Joe Rogan reported that Tyson made more money the longer the fight went on, so instead of trying to just knock Paul out, he slowly danced around the ring and took the money over the win.

While the two can laugh all the way to the bank, everyone else lost. Netflix lost with bad buffering. Deceived fans lost out on what should have been a good fight. My generation lost when our champion lost to a guy who got famous for making videos. Finally, boxing lost when they made the sport look like a joke instead of the sweet science it once was.

James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.