Iron Mike and the Masses
keep punching
I can be a curmudgeon about pop culture. I wish it was an act — occasionally folks get annoyed with me over it — but it’s earnest. Therefore, I’m not 100% committed to my gut instinct to dismiss the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson exhibition fight on Netflix. I have no interest in watching it but have no good reason to avoid it aside from distaste for its existence.
Truthfully, I’m as curious as anyone else about whether old man Tyson has enough left to put the YouTube Boxer on his ass. It’s entirely feasible. Mike Tyson was never a marathon fighter who took opponents to decision with technical prowess. He was and is a power puncher, and power punchers only need to catch their opponent off guard with one good strike to win the fight. That’s the variable that makes all Tyson fights in history hard to look away from. In fact, it’s also a key reason why boxing historians — they exist! — often point out that Tyson was more popular with the fans than boxing critics. Even aside from the criticism that was thinly veiled racism or classism, his brawler style was poo poo’d among the technical set (especially as the 90s progressed and his skills deteriorated).
But the guy can punch. All the old men and N64 nostalgists rooting for Mike Tyson to win as a proxy for the dignity of their past lives? One power punch on the chin of the YouTube guy can redeem decades of impotent rage.
I loved boxing when I was growing up. I think I still do in theory but I haven’t watched or followed the sport for years. The spectacle itself still draws me in but as sports media shifted to personality-based storytelling, boxing may have suffered the most. None of these guys are especially likable. For more than a decade the sport relied on the marketing power of Floyd Mayweather as its best boxer, whose skill as a fighter is only exceeded by his odiousness in his personal life. Boxers are incorrigible as media personalities because their success is reliant on an intrinsic need to be the toughest person in the room. Petty antagonistic antics are never far behind.
The Jake Paul v Mike Tyson fight feels uniquely suited to this era of American entertainment. There are no stakes aside from cash and the potential for humiliation by one party or the other. Nobody can win a championship belt and if Paul were to defeat Tyson, the consensus will likely be “well yeah, he’s 58 years old.” Meanwhile, if Tyson defeats Jake Paul, it will merely prove true all the chatter about Paul being a poser. My instinct is to root for Mike Tyson but I can’t tell exactly why I feel that way. Is nostalgia what makes me lean away from indifference?
The stakes of this fight exist only in the imagination of its viewers. For Tyson acolytes, a victory may redeem their view that Tyson was always underrated, or a tragic story about once-in-a-lifetime talent gone haywire. Based on social media marketing, many Tyson fans appear to be rooting for the aging boxer to fulfill a reactionary fantasy, as if a Tyson victory vindicates their opinion that the YouTube generation sucks. The Warrior archetype for the Persian Gulf era versus the Influencer. I have yet to meet anyone who is rooting for Jake Paul, but I’m sure they exist somewhere, motivated by iconoclasm or admiration for the word “grindset.”
Tonight on Netflix, Jake Paul and Mike Tyson will battle it out over narratives we project onto two people with neurological disorders. The imaginary future versus the imaginary past for a lucrative present. I can’t wait to have the boxing event of the 21st century on in the background as I text my friends little jokes. This is what my ancestors have died for and I will enjoy it.