Dana White says Mike Tyson proved him wrong against Jake Paul.
NEW YORK – [autotag]Dana White[/autotag] says [autotag]Mike Tyson[/autotag] proved him wrong against [autotag]Jake Paul[/autotag].
Although 58-year-old Tyson lost a unanimous decision to Paul in their boxing match Friday at AT&T Stadium, he looked competitive for the first couple of rounds before slowing down.
“Mike Tyson was right and I was wrong,” White told MMA Junkie and other reporters post-fight at UFC 309.
“I told him, ‘Mike, you’re basically 60 years old.’ He’s like, ‘You honestly think this f*cking kid is going to do anything to me? He’s not good, he’s not going to f*cking knock me out, he’s not going to do this.’ You saw him. He tripped when he was walking down the thing, he had a hard time walking up the stairs. He had a knee brace on, and Jake Paul couldn’t do anything to him.
“He made a ton of money, and I know people are mad if you stayed home on a Saturday night, but you didn’t pay for it. You know what I mean? When Mike Tyson shows up, everybody makes money. Jake Paul is f*cking – I don’t have to tell you guys. You guys know. Mike Tyson is the A+++ side of that thing, and he was right. Jake Paul couldn’t do sh*t to him.”
It’s probably not wise for Mike Tyson to step foot in the ring beyond the Jake Paul fight, but it’s also not out of the question.
ARLINGTON, Texas – [autotag]Mike Tyson[/autotag], who struggled to complete eight rounds of boxing Friday night, hinted he might fight again.
The moment came during a post-fight interview, when Netflix reporter Ariel Helwani asked the 58-year-old Tyson if his loss to Jake Paul by unanimous decision at AT&T Stadium could be his last fight.
“I don’t think so,’’ replied the former world heavyweight champion.
Maybe Tyson just needed a good night’s sleep. Or time to reflect. Or to confer with trusted advisers.
But there are reasons to think his answer was more than a stray thought.
James Spraggins, a personal trainer who worked with Tyson for about three years, pointed to a “Baddest Man Over 50’’ Tournament. Championship Rounds, a news and media website, in February posted on Instagram about the prospective event.
On Feb. 6, From The Stands, a media group that covers MMA, posted on Instagram:
“Per sources, the four combat sports legends that have been targeted for the ‘baddest man over 50’ tournament are Mark Hunt, Mike Tyson, David Tua and Lennox Lewis. Three out of the four targeted participants have verbally agreed on the idea.”
Tyson has not commented publicly about the tournament, but the concept is not new to him.
A similar idea was kicked around in 2020 when Tyson was involved with the formation of Mike Tyson’s Legends Only League, LLC.
The company launched with Tyson’s exhibition fight with Roy Jones Jr. in November 2020, when he was 54 and Jones was 51.
At the time, representatives of the company said the Tyson-Jones fight generated 1.6 million pay per views at $49.99 apiece. But all of this was long before Friday night, when Tyson looked more like the Oldest Man on the Planet rather than than the Baddest Man on the Planet.
When Helwani asked Tyson what he had in mind, Tyson suggested he might fight Paul’s older brother, Logan, who was in the ring and looked shocked.
“I’ll kill you, Mike,’’ Logan said.
Tyson grinned.
“Then it’s on,’’ Tyson replied, looking too exhausted to go another round or make any long-term decisions.
Boxing legend Mike Tyson says the health issue he encountered before the Jake Paul fight nearly killed him.
Boxing legend [autotag]Mike Tyson[/autotag] is proud despite defeat, but partially because he overcame a medical issue, the extent of which had not been publicly revealed pre-fight.
“This is one of those situations when you lost but still won,” Tyson wrote. “I’m grateful for last night. No regrets to get in ring one last time.”
“I almost died in June. Had 8 blood transfusions. Lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you.”
It’s presumed the incident Tyson is referring to is the one that delayed the fight with Paul. Initially, the bout was expected to take place in July but was delayed after Tyson suffered a medical emergency on a flight due to an ulcer.
Tyson spoke about the incident in various interviews, and laid out graphic details (like him defecating a tar-like substance), but did not mention the seriousness using this vernacular.
Tyson, 58, lost a unanimous decision to Paul at AT&T Stadium in Dallas. The fight was largely lopsided as the age and cardio difference was glaringly evident.
This is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night. No regrets to get in ring one last time.
I almost died in June. Had 8 blood transfusions. Lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.
Netflix apparently drew 60 million for Tyson-Paul, which likely impacted the buggy broadcast.
Netflix on Saturday revealed 60 million households worldwide spent (wasted?) Friday evening watching two annoying windbags pummel each other for money.
Netflix said the broadcast pull had “our buffering systems on the ropes.”
Fans who are worried about watching the NFL this Christmas or WWE Raw in January might be heartened to know the Tyson-Paul clown show drew much more of an audience share than your average football game or wrestling match.
In comparison, Amazon is reportedly averaging 13 million viewers a week for its Thursday night NFL broadcasts, per Front Office Sports. Last Monday’s broadcast of WWE Raw drew a little more than 1.5 million viewers, per Wrestlenomics.
Last Christmas, the NFL brought in an average viewership of 29.2 million for the Kansas City Chiefs-Las Vegas Raiders game, likely heightened by intrigue in Taylor Swift’s attendance.
With the Chiefs playing the Pittsburgh Steelers on one of the Netflix broadcasts and Swift’s attendance a definite possibility, the streamer could be attracting around 30 million viewers for that Christmas broadcast.
While Friday’s Tyson-Paul broadcast had its glaring issues (both in the ring and with the live-streaming), Netflix has time to amend its infrastructure before the holidays and its WWE broadcasts next year.
For bigger events than regular-season NFL games and WWE matches, Netflix might have its hands full with mounting a problem-free broadcast.
The were no winners at Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson. Just a lot of losers.
In a turn of events shocking only to the most optimistic among us, a 27-year-old entered a boxing ring against a 58-year-old on Friday night and proceeded to commit what would otherwise be considered borderline elder abuse if not for the million-dollar paydays involved.
The Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight was a debacle from start to finish, and though generations of fight fans tuned in to watch (and bet on) the made-for-streaming event, it didn’t take long to realize what a massive waste of time this was.
Inside the ropes, the fight itself — a somehow sanctioned bout and not an exhibition — was the total farce we expected.
Technically, Paul was declared the victor, but there were no winners on Friday. Certainly not any worth celebrating. There were, however, plenty of losers including, but not limited to…
If this was a test run for the millions of concurrent users Netflix can expect for its upcoming Christmas Day NFL games and WWE Raw broadcasts, it was an epic fail.
Constant buffering and blurry images marred Friday’s undercard, leaving many upset viewers wondering what sort of stress testing Netflix did before millions of people were expected to tune in at the same time. Midway through the Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano lightweight title bout, nearly every trending topic on X was related to the fight, with thousands of people complaining about their experience.
There were complaints from people streaming on TV, on tablets and on their phones. It was bad. Especially considering this is not the first time Netflix has streamed live events. We’ve seen similar issues when Netflix broadcast a Chris Rock concert, The Roast of Tom Brady and more.
Can Netflix solve these issues before the behemoths of the NFL and WWE entrust their audiences to the service? That’s quite literally a billion-dollar question.
2. Mike Tyson
Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images
Props to Tyson for stepping into the ring at 58 years old after dealing with an ulcer earlier this year, but that’s where the congratulations begin and end. More than anything else, this was a sad display from a notoriously bad human who inexplicably rebounded in the public consciousness following a cameo in The Hangover trilogy.
If you tuned in hoping to Tyson turn back the clock, you were disappointed. If you just hoped Tyson could avoid embarrassing himself, you were disappointed. If you thought two-minute rounds and 14-ounce gloves would level the playing field, you were only playing yourself.
At the end of the day, Tyson earned a reported $20 million for letting a self-described heel toy with him in the ring. It’s hard to see this as anything but a nadir for a sport already dripping in cynicism. A fitting performance for anyone who expected anything else.
3. Jake Paul
(Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
Does Jake Paul actually want to be a champion boxer? Or is boxing just a means to extract the biggest paydays for his content as possible? After watching the 27-year-old waste a portion of his athletic prime and star power on such a sham, it’s hard to conclude anything but the latter.
Tyson spent the first 45 seconds of the fight unleashing everything he had, only for Paul to spend the remaining seven rounds carrying his opponent across the finish line. At multiple times, Paul had his hands down seemingly begging Tyson to land a blow and get the extremely pro-Iron Mike crowd back into the action.
Paul spent the final 10 seconds of the bout literally bowing down to Tyson, then admitted afterwards he was pulling his punches all fight because he didn’t want to “hurt” him. It’s hard to fathom anything more insulting to Tyson’s boxing legacy — and even harder to fathom Tyson ever affording any opponent the same courtesy if the roles were reversed.
As Hector Diaz perfectly stated on Bluesky: “If you’re interested in the Tyson-Paul match, you might enjoy pro wrestling. It’s also a predetermined fight between personalities. The only difference is that wrestling has good payoffs and you’re in on the joke.”
A picture taken on August 19, 2015 shows Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shaking hands with US boxer Roy Jones Jr during a meeting in Sevastopol, Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 19 said he would be glad to grant a request for Russian citizenship from US boxer Roy Jones Jr as the multiple world champion visited Russian-annexed Crimea. ALEXEI NIKOLSKYALEXEI NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Former champion boxer Roy Jones Jr. sat ringside on the official call of the bout and kept insisting something was wrong with Tyson’s mouth.
Every round it looked like Tyson was fidgeting with his mouthguard or biting his gloves. This, actually, was a very normal tick for Tyson and something he has done in past fights.
Jones Jr. — who previously fought Tyson in a November 2020 exhibition — refused to believe this.
Repeatedly and erroneously, Jones Jr. kept talking about Tyson’s mouth even as play-by-play announcer Mauro Ranallo kept trying to tell his colleague this was a common occurrence for Tyson.
You could sense Ranallo’s frustration building each round as he attempted to actually inform viewers while Jones Jr. continued to baselessly speculate.
It was far from the most upsetting part of the night, but it certainly made for an annoyingly repetitive conversation throughout the main event. The narrative was finally put to bed when ringside reporter Ariel Helwani asked Tyson about tick immediately after the fight.
Tyson confirmed he just has “a biting fixation” after which, mercifully, we were all able to go to bed, too.
The best thing you can say about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson is that it happened, and nobody got hurt.
ARLINGTON, Texas — You didn’t really think he was going to do it, did you?
Most of you out there who were rooting for [autotag]Mike Tyson[/autotag] to knock out [autotag]Jake Paul[/autotag] on Friday night in the boxing match of this weird, substance-free decade we’re living in were probably doing so for one of two reasons.
The first is that you find Paul obnoxious and wanted to see Tyson inflict pain on the YouTube star, which is a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
The second is that a part of you, like me, always yearns to feel whatever you felt back in the late 1980s, when Tyson was the baddest man on the planet. This is not reasonable. If you are old enough to remember where you were when Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds, then you most likely woke up this morning with a stiff back or a sore knee and a reminder to schedule your colonoscopy.
And none of us watching him have been through 56 professional fights, three years in prison and the kind of hard living that turned Tyson into a washed-up circus act before he walked away — back in 2005.
If you thought a 58-year-old Tyson had a chance to get in the ring and go blow-for-blow with a 27-year-old in his physical prime, albeit one whose only fights have been novelty acts, then you are denying the reality you experience every day.
Getting old is real. It stinks. It physically hurts. And if we’re lucky, it happens to all of us.
Tyson has indeed been incredibly lucky to make it to this point in life, to have stumbled into a lucrative second (or third) act as an entertainer and cannabis salesman.
But a boxer?
He’s not that anymore. Get real. It was never in doubt.
The stadium, the millions watching on Netflix — we’ll get to that in a moment — and really most of America wanted it to happen. Nostalgia has all of us in its grip in one way or another. And that’s why this bout, as ridiculous as the very concept of it was, became the most compelling show boxing has put on in ages. It was irresistible. And in some ways, it really delivered.
AT&T Stadium was packed, even though the vast majority of people in the stands were so far away from the ring they might as well have been in Oklahoma. Mainstream celebrities and content creators were all over the place. It looked and felt like a big-time sporting event, and a couple of the undercard matches were among the most compelling and violent fights you’ll ever see anywhere. (Katie Taylor’s controversial decision over Amanda Serrano was perhaps, pound for pound, the best sporting event of the year, even though the judges got the result completely wrong.)
It was a reminder of why boxing, on occasion, can still reach the highest of highs – even though those moments have become more and more rare as the years go by.
But then came the main event and it was … well, the best thing that you can say is that it happened and nobody got seriously hurt.
Tyson got a couple of good shots in early, and Paul looked scared out of his mind for a round. In the second, Paul kept his distance and stabilized. In the third, Tyson came out aggressive, looking for the knockout punch, and then it came down to the simplest concept in sports.
Young beats old.
Paul did the bare minimum, but he won. He didn’t win because he’s an elite boxer or because he landed a bunch of powerful shots. For all the sideshow inherent in this matchup, Paul won a fairly boring and straightforward decision for one reason — because he was fighting a 58-year-old.
“There was (a) point where I was like, ‘He’s not really engaging back,’ ” Paul said. “I don’t know if he was tired or whatever, and I could just tell his age was showing a little bit.”
Mike Tyson (black gloves) fights Jake Paul (silver gloves) at AT&T Stadium. (Kevin Jairaj, Imagn Images)
Paul hinted that he even backed off a little bit because he didn’t want to embarrass the legend, because he wanted to give the crowd a show. He also said he sprained his ankle three weeks ago and lost training time, which contributed to his lack of aggressiveness. Don’t buy it. Until Paul gets in the ring with a real boxer and proves that he’s something more than a guy who’s pretty decent by celebrity standards, this is what his career is going to be like: One scam after another, trolling us all the way to the bank.
Take solace in the fact that, if you missed it due to Netflix’s embarrassing technical issues, you didn’t miss much.
If there’s any lasting legacy from this circus, it’s the missed opportunity for Netflix to assert itself as a real player in the live sports space. Though the exact scope of the problems is hard to gauge, anecdotal reports on social media from people trying to watch the fight suggest that buffering and freezing and technical errors were rampant.
Folks were angry, and with good reason. When you hype an event this much and can’t deliver a smooth viewing experience, it’s hard to earn that credibility back.
We’ll see where Netflix goes from here. We’ll see if Paul wants to risk his reputation fighting a real professional or slink away with the tens of millions he’s pocketing here and find another trick to help him create content.
But people in the stadium voted with their feet – and they were leaving AT&T Stadium by the thousands before they even announced the winner. It was that obvious and anticlimactic. If you didn’t see it coming, however, that’s your own fault. A 58-year-old former athlete, even an icon, doesn’t belong in the boxing ring.
Let’s hope we never get suckered into something like this again.
And folks who remember the Mike Tyson of 20 to 30 years ago would have assumed that bout would’ve ended in a knockout in Tyson’s favor, against almost anyone, much less a YouTube star turned fighter. Drake was among those who thought Tyson would surely win.
But Tyson is now 58-years-old and seemed to be hobbled Friday night by a bum knee. And anyone who watched the fight would say that Paul was in control almost the whole time. And if someone was going to suffer a knockout, it would have been Tyson at Paul’s hands.
After the match, Paul even admitted to pulling some punches and carrying Tyson, ensuring the fight would go the distance.
“I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt. … There was a point where I was like, ‘OK, he’s not really engaging back.’ And so, I don’t know if he’s tired or whatever, I could just tell that his age was showing a little bit. I just have so much respect for him.”
Jake Paul explains why he didn’t look to knock out Mike Tyson:
Jake Paul carried Mike Tyson in their boxing match, which certainly didn’t go unnoticed by viewers – not that Paul cares.
ARLINGTON, Texas – In the buildup to [autotag]Jake Paul[/autotag] vs. [autotag]Mike Tyson[/autotag], there were questions about the Netflix boxing headliner being a real fight, particularly because it featured a 27-year-old squaring off against a 58-year-old.
For anyone who doubted the legitimacy of Paul vs. Tyson, despite the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation sanctioning it as a fully professional bout, Paul’s words following his unanimous decision win Friday night at AT&T Stadium will surely not sit well.
“Yeah, definitely a bit,” Paul told reporters at the post-fight press conference, when asked if he went easy on Tyson. “I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt.”
Tyson got through the first two of eight, 2-minute rounds relatively OK. And during those combined first four minutes, the fight looked technical. But by the third round, Tyson began to look his age. He was slow and sloppy and hesitant, which allowed Paul to comfortably pick apart Tyson from distance.
As the seventh round got underway, most of the 70,000-plus fans in attendance were booing heavily. The fight ended with boos raining down on Paul and Tyson.
While Paul vs. Tyson is sure to have been one of, if not the most watched event in combat sports history, the immediate reaction on social media was negative.
Paul’s response?
“Thank you for everyone tuning in and coming. I tried to give the best fight I possibly could but when someone’s just surviving in the ring basically, it’s hard to make it exciting,” Paul said. “I couldn’t really get him to engage me or slip shots and do something super cool or whatever. But I don’t care what people have to say. They’re always gonna have something to say, and it is what it is.”
[lawrence-related id=2787142,2787098]
Paul’s manager, Nakisa Bidarian, also didn’t sweat the crticism, saying the fight was always going to be received negatively unless Tyson pulled out the victory.
“The only way that people would’ve been happy is if Jake lost somehow,” Bidarian said. “That would’ve been like, ‘Oh, what a great fight, Mike’s a legend.’ If he knocked out Mike Tyson, it would’ve been rigged. The fight went to eight rounds, so ‘Oh, Mike wasn’t trying. Oh, it wasn’t good enough.’ It was an unbelievable display between a 58-year-old legend and a 27-year-old relatively young boxer. And he actually outboxed the boxer. Jake Paul outboxed Mike Tyson like he said he was gonna do.”
Added Paul: “What can people say? I told everyone what I was gonna do is give him a boxing lesson.”
For more on the fight, visit MMA Junkie’s hub for Paul vs. Tyson.
The co-main event between Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor proved to be the most epic fight of the night as the two rivals went the full 10 rounds for the WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO, IBO, and The Ring female light-welterweight titles.
Despite Serrano landing 107 more punches than her opponent — and Taylor losing a point due to a headbutt deduction — Taylor was controversially named the winner in a unanimous decision by the three judges. That only added insult to an already brutal injury sported by Serrano by the end of the bout.
The 36-year-old from Puerto Rico sported an absolutely brutal cut above her right eye and posted a quite graphic close-up photo of the gash after the fight.
