In what was undoubtedly the most-watched combat sports event of all time, the streaming numbers of which are estimated to be roughly half of the Super Bowl’s, Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson failed to deliver much of a fight.
Paul won in boring but decisive fashion, tepidly outstriking his retirement-age opponent to a unanimous-decision win. The influencer, still a relative novice to the sport, appeared unwilling to meaningfully engage the all-time great, presumably for fear of risking a knockout to a man twice his age. The final seconds of the fight ended with Paul and Tyson meeting in the center of the ring to mercifully embrace one another in a show of respect. While it was about what you’d expect pairing a twenty-seven-year-old influencer-turned-fighter with a fifty-eight-year-old boxing legend — knee brace and all — it was a fine enough ending to an event where everyone left more or less healthy, and $20 to $40 million richer.
The influencer era is clearly here with us to stay and has already come to shape our national politics and our pastimes. Old heads will certainly pearl-clutch over the sanctity of the sport. They have a point — fights that feature influencers, retired MMA fighters, and boxing legends that qualify for Social Security are closer to circus events than representations of combat sports at their best. As for the fights themselves, they tend generally to lack excitement, and the level of skill displayed is usually unimpressive. However, what consistently impresses is the sheer spectacle and, more importantly, the number of viewers drawn to this spectacle.
Friday night’s event is, so far, the culmination of crossover boxing — a version of the sport whose modern iteration took hold back in 2017 when an online beef between influencers KSI and Joe Weller was settled in the ring. Since then, this subset of the sport has blown up, with its biggest events being on par with and even exceeding some of the most successful…
Auteur: Jack Bedrosian
