The real reason Mike Tyson is fighting Jake Paul

On Friday night, two boxers will take to the ring at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. One is among the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, the “baddest man on the planet,” “Iron” Mike Tyson. The other is Jake Paul, a zillennial influencer who built his career on prank videos, making bad music, and terrorizing his neighbors.

One might reasonably wonder what chance the internet’s most obnoxious star, a cruiserweight, stands against Tyson; one might also reasonably wonder how a 58-year-old, no matter how practiced, could beat a man 31 years younger. But to overfocus on the mechanics of boxing or of athleticism in general is to miss the point. If all audiences wanted to see was the world’s best boxers fighting each other, well, those matches would probably enjoy much more hype. Instead, the lion’s share of the attention goes to the rash of influencers-turned-boxers who concoct feuds with each other and solve them with their fists. 

Paul and Tyson now occupy this much newer realm of the world’s oldest sport: celebrities whose controversial pasts provide ammo for a public who has strong feelings about both. While Friday’s match is a professional one (meaning it is regulated by a sanctioning body, will count on their records, and can be betted on, at least in certain states), it will be more spectacle than sport. Organized by Paul’s promotion company, Most Valuable Promotions, and Netflix, which will stream the match live, it’s also part of the streaming service’s attempt to reach young male viewers and the advertisers who want to woo them. 

The match is expected to be a ratings hit, in part thanks to Netflix’s estimated 282 million subscribers, the largest of any platform. Originally scheduled for July, the match was postponed to November after Tyson had an ulcer flare-up on a flight. Paul, due to his age and recent record (10 wins, one loss, and seven knockouts) was already a favorite to win, but now the betting odds are even more in his favor, currently standing at minus-210, per BetMGM Sportsbook. 

Tyson’s participation has led to controversy: Eddie Hearn, one of the industry’s biggest promoters, told ESPN he won’t support the fight due to the danger it could further cause to Tyson’s health. “That was the moment they [MVP] should have realized that this was actually a bad idea,” he said of the ulcer. “You only need to speak to him and look at him to know this guy should not be in a ring again. … If I was Jake Paul, I’d just feel a little bit embarrassed to be honest with you. … This is dangerous, irresponsible and, in my opinion, disrespectful to the sport of boxing.”

Nakisa Bidarian, co-founder of Most Valuable Promotions, however, maintains it will be a fair fight. “Paul’s never been hit by someone like Mike Tyson,” he told ESPN. “So people can say about the danger for Mike Tyson, he’s older. What about the danger for Jake Paul, who’s never fought at this weight? He’s never been in there with a true heavyweight in his career. You could say it to both sides.” 

It’s worth asking: What’s in it for everyone involved here? Paul has made his incentives explicit: “I’m here to make $40 million and knock out a legend,” he said at an August news conference (Paul’s net worth is reportedly around $80 million). Tyson, according to reports, will stand to earn around half of that, doubling his reported net worth of $10 million. In addition to the payout, Paul made a video announcing he’d pay Tyson $5 million if Tyson can last more than four rounds. Should he fail, Tyson must get a tattoo that reads, “I love Jake Paul.” (Tyson responded in an interview that he’d only agree to another $20 million.)

As for Tyson, it’s yet another attempt at a return to the spotlight in a career full of them. “This fight is not going to change my life financially,” he told LadBible. “I’m seeking my glory.” After his release from prison in 1995, he fought in a series of comeback matches, including one with Evander Holyfield, whom he would later bite on both ears in one of the most controversial moments in sports history. In the mid-2000s, his $300 million earnings squandered and bankrupt, Tyson announced a series of exhibition fights to “get out of this financial quagmire,” he said at the time, though it was canceled after just one fight. Tyson last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against 2003 World Heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr., and now runs a successful cannabis company. 

Netflix, meanwhile, has been pushing heavily into live events over the last year. In January, it acquired the rights to WWE’s Raw, and earlier this year, it livestreamed the SAG Awards for the first time, as well as other live events like the Roast of Tom Brady, Joey Chestnut’s Labor Day hot dog eating contest, and John Mulaney’s talk show. On Christmas Day it will stream two NFL games.

Rich Greenfield, a partner at LightShed Ventures who analyzes the streaming space, says it could be a “powerful tool” in the company’s bid for advertisers. “If you’re going to be in the ad business, the power of something that has to be watched at that moment and brings together millions of people is really important for advertising,” Greenfield said. Rather than buying up the streaming rights to, say, all of the big sports organizations, or major awards like the Oscars or Grammys, Netflix’s strategy appears to be creating smaller, less costly moments of their own. “Netflix already has the subscribers. It’s now about creating unique events to drive advertising sales,” Greenfield says.

Those advertisers are after a core demographic: men, particularly young men who pay attention to influencers like Paul. These young men don’t necessarily follow boxing, but they do find recognizable faces compelling. As Brady Brickner-Wood explained in the New York Times Magazine last year, “Influencer boxers know something boxing purists don’t: that a fight without a narrative, no matter how poetic its execution, is just a hollow technical exercise.” No doubt there’s also another draw for viewers who know of Paul and his ilk but don’t necessarily like them: “When you buy a Jake Paul fight, part of what you are buying is the chance to see him get punched in the face,” Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New Yorker last year. 

In anticipation for the fight, Netflix released a three-episode docuseries following Tyson and Paul as they prepare for battle. It is, of course, mere marketing: The nastier elements of Paul and Tyson’s pasts are glossed over. It does not mention the fact that Tyson was convicted of raping an 18-year-old in 1992 for which he served three years in jail, or that he was recently sued for raping another woman in 1990. It doesn’t include the fact that he is alleged to have physically abused his former wife, actress Robin Givens; one biography reports that Tyson admitted to having hit her and calling it “the best punch I’ve ever thrown in my life.” Rather, the series shows a few clips of Tyson in handcuffs while the voiceover refers to “his life continu[ing] to spiral downward.” (Paul was also fined for promoting a crypto scam and has been accused of sexual assault by fellow influencer Justine Paradise as well as model and actress Railey Lollie.)

Instead, viewers will discover that the idea for the match was born from an ayahuasca ceremony Paul attended in Costa Rica, where he had a vision of himself fighting Tyson. It then shows Paul meditating and repeating to himself, “I, Jake Joseph Paul, will knock out and defeat Iron Mike Tyson.” He then reached out to Tyson, who enthusiastically agreed, according to Paul. 

In one of its opening scenes, the docuseries asks, “Why fight when you have all the fame and money in the world?” The answer, naturally, is that no amount of fame and money are ever enough for people who stake their lives on such things. To be a celebrity in 2024 is to understand that the world moves on the moment people scroll away from your face, that your singular role is to produce an ever-increasing mountain of content so that your face might find them again. Though Paul and Tyson occupy vastly different places in modern pop culture, they both understand that fame and money are perhaps the only things worth getting punched in the face for.