Mike Tyson Punches Out

Update (11/18/24): An important detail I failed to mention is that Mike Tyson received about a $20 million payout. I’m done with Tyson. For now.

I feel gross. Also ashamed. Intrigued by the glitzy hype this past week for the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight, I realize now why the fight was free on Netflix.

And why we’re done watching Mike Tyson fight.

Mike Tyson’s career came in like a tiger, and went out like a kitten (I feel like he should knock ME out for writing that), but I’m not meaning it as an insult.

Everyone loves kittens.

Shame in my final round

I feel shame. Shame in my final round of watching THE boxing legend of my generation.

First off, how people keep falling for this stuff is beyond me.

Obviously, because I’m one of them.

I blame it on having experienced the full greatness of Mike Tyson. The golden era boxer Mike Tyson. The one with the lightning uppercut. The menacing one…the one in that time between his first bouts when he’d run over to check if his opponent was OK, and when he got knocked out in Tokyo.

The Nintendo one.

This one.

I also blame my shame on Tyson’s twilight ascendence to respectability, you know, the time after he was in the movie, The Hangover, culminating in, what perhaps was the highlight of my covid era, his exhibition “Lockdown Knockdown” match with Roy Jones, Jr.

I know he’s been doing it for the money, but over the last few years and with that last fight against Jones, it’s just felt different.

Like he’d completed his full redemption arc.

He was four years younger, already beyond the very end of his rope, with just enough juice left in the tank to squeeze out one more pay-worthy match.

It was a fun experience to share with my teenagers, and he had enough flashes of brilliance to back up the lore I had stormed up in their still-impressionable young minds.

I reverently shut the book and proudly placed it back on the bookshelf.

So to watch this latest match was embarrassing.

But not even embarrassing where I can laugh about it. No, this was gross, icky embarrassing.

“Gross” isn’t exactly the correct, or only, word to describe it. “Violated,” maybe? “Repulsed”, “sick”, “guilty”? It’s like that feeling after watching bad porn.

No.

After watching bad porn with your sister.

No.

After watching bad porn OF your sister.

Accidentally, of course. In case that wasn’t clear.

I felt bad/not bad for Tyson.

Come on, man. Don’t get me wrong, I am impressed he stood there for eight rounds. Taking punches. I didn’t think he’d go five rounds, or even three.

He didn’t look tired, or out of shape.

He just looked old.

But there wasn’t even a flash of former glory. Not physically, anyway.

I could tell the thought was there, the intention was there…in flashes. It just never materialized.

The fight itself, well, Jake Paul…

it was better than Glass Joe, but not as good as, say, Von Kaiser.

I could see Jake Paul was honored, and grateful. Because what else is Jake Paul going to do?

But it was just embarrassing.

I’m not sure why I watched this fight. While it was fun bantering about it online, I didn’t feel the need to be included in some cultural event. It’s not the Super Bowl.

I had plenty of other things to do. I still walked the dogs, caught up on my emails, did the dishes. Well, not yet on the dishes, but you get the idea.

It wasn’t exactly a waste of my time either because I was still doing other things while the fight was going.

It just left me feeling worse afterwards.

I got no joy, no pride, nothing, from watching this fight. Not even seeing Shaq, or Gronk, or Lennox Lewis did anything for me. Nothing.

I will say, the best fight of the night went to the women.

But the main event wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even entertaining.

I should have seen it coming.

Maybe I did see it coming, but I just wanted one more.

One more flash of brilliance. That feeling as a kid, watching such novel power manifest itself in RGB CRT.

To feel the redemption arc complete again.

But it was entirely unnecessary. Both the event itself, and my watching it.

I don’t have any need, or desire—at all—for the nostalgia anymore.