The great stories of Mike Tyson’s fight against Jake Paul last night were the ones left untold. This might have been the story of Tyson, a convicted rapist, getting his just deserts. I am not fond of nursing grudges against people who have served their time in prison, but Tyson remains unrepentant, and even as he prepared for last night’s fight, his lawyers have been preparing for another rape lawsuit. Look past the admittedly impressive PR rehabilitation of Tyson’s brand and what you’ll eventually see is a violent criminal who deserved to get put on his back one last time.
We didn’t get that story. Neither did we get the story most viewers probably wanted: the story of Jake Paul losing his teeth to a living legend. Few of them probably knew much about Paul’s pathetic boxing career or even his ridiculous support for Donald Trump; but it is a testament to his sheer unlikability that judging on sight alone most people preferred Tyson.
To say that Paul embodies the archetypal juvenile undomesticated white American frat bro is an injustice to frat bros everywhere. Paul is the guy who shows up uninvited at a frat party, insists on talking ten decibels louder than the music, and eventually gets kicked out after hitting on someone’s girlfriend.
We didn’t get that story, either. And neither did we get the story that the fight’s marketing clearly wanted to tell: that of an aging Tyson raging against the dying of the light, losing decisively but going down swinging.
Instead, what we got was a dramatic tragedy — but without the drama. Tyson somehow looked ten years older than he usually does as he lumbered to the ring. You could say that his first two rounds were competitive, but Paul was fighting conservatively at that point, trying to avoid any opening surprises and waiting for the inevitable. In round three, the inevitable arrived. Tyson’s legs were wobbly, and his blocks were weak; in between rounds, he gasped for air…
Auteur: Carl Beijer
