Pre-fight

First of all, I’m not sure if this is a significant cultural event or just a demonstration of the power of social media. The problem as a sporting event is that this particular influencer is known for his pranks. Literally, it would seem that we are about to be pranked. It’s like a giant Andy Kaufman skit. Where do we cross the line?

But then I had a genuine vision of this. It had to do with the fact that Tyson is friends with Paul because he had a social obligation to do interviews because he was selling his brand of necessary marijuana. I do not believe Mike Tyson was in any way a lesser person for the use of marijuana and it certainly did a lot for his violent tendencies. Or at least this is how he pitches his product line. Fair enough. But then Paul gave him an absurd amount of psychedelic mushrooms and Tyson being Tyson, he ate the entire fistful at one time. Apparently he has a big appetite and has worked up a pretty good resistance to it all.

All this is well and good but now they wanted to make a fight. Again, is this a goof? It could very well be. And if it is I’m even more sorry than anything. Indeed, in a criminal world we’re being president means you are top mobster, to get away with the money would seem to be a goal in and of itself. Like me or hate me, if we get away with it, there you go. And we made you watch.

There is a flaw though. I know Mike Tyson. I know who he is. I understand how he thinks and I understand how he lives. Something tells me that Tyson is enjoying this because he really does want to do some boxing. Unfortunately, doing some boxing doesn’t mean friendly sparring. We’re talking about Mike Tyson doing some boxing. It’s a big dog over in that corner. And he hasn’t had a bite to eat in a long time.

And then there is the unfortunate race angle. It doesn’t really get brought up here and probably that’s for good taste. Both men say that they are friends and they respect each other. But what is true is true and the upbringing of the eventual greatest boxer in history was not as a spoiled entitled white boy with all the money in the world to play around with. This business of being a rockstar simply for being bold enough to go online is alien. To Mike Tyson, to rise above the shit required the monumental effort of the dedication of one’s life to one goal. I will destroy anyone who stands in my way to get what I want.

If we go back to the mushroom episode, which of course garnered many many many many social media views, the truth is they were playing with Tyson like he was an animal and he was obliging them. The truth is that Tyson probably is a little punch drunk. He puts up a good front and he plays his game but brain damage his brain damage and this may be true. But this young white boy laughing at an old black man. If you are Mike Tyson, he is the bear in the zoo and Paul is throwing peanuts at him. In my vision of this, Tyson figured this out. He stopped smoking so much pot and stopped being a vegan and agreed that there was no point to being a simple salesman in a world of such incredible shittiness. These aren’t crazy kids and fans doing these interviews, they are white supremacists. The two brothers are Nazis and they were making fool of Mike Tyson.

Could we describe this fight/media speckle as bravado to Paul? In a sense, even offering himself up as a clown, which he certainly is, does this not also make him world class as a huckster? As an influencer and an internet star, he has proved his earning potential. Is it a feather in his cap that he pulled Mike Tyson out of the sky to do a bit with him? Is that just another thing glorifying a career made out of glorifying oneself?

I watched the Paul Fury contest. I really don’t think that Fury was such an amazing fighter. I think he is a fighter and he genuinely understands boxing. I think he has a good body and he has a body to support his style which is a little off balance and a little defensive. He plays like a cat. And he’s got a bit of a punch. As I said, he’s a genuine boxer so if he catches you in a moment of bad footwork he can punish you because there’s nothing you can do to generate power to get out of it. And he has that footwork and he did punish Paul several times.

Then there is Jake Paul’s elephant style of boxing . I don’t know what poster he stared at to come up with this boxing stance. Was it like Rocky used to look at a picture of Rocky Marciano with his hands held low and his chin stuck out? He copied that style famously. I can’t imagine though any boxer who’s style looks like a dick hanging out of his pants. He has that incredibly frightened left hand to give distance And he leaves it out at almost full extension but dropped all the time. The idea is that he fluffs with the left and waits for an opportunity for his big banger right hand. He waves his left at you for whatever moderate disturbance a little face dance might get and then he waits to go kapow with his big dynamic right.

Well, that’s the point. That’s all he does. It’s his only particular style. He comes forward. He kind of goes side to side. Fury had him walking into combinations all night. He has no genuine footwork that I can see and though I truly believe he’s a strong fellow with a pretty good right, He has no prayer against a master boxer. If all he has is the right, any boxer much less a master boxer like Tyson knows how to take the power away from that right. And of course if you are an actual raging bull coming straight ahead low and looking for bone snapping bodies and decapitating uppercuts, I can’t see how Paul can stop Tyson if he’s got his thing on. And I could see that he could hurt him and doesn’t mind that one bit.

That was how it ended for Andy Kaufman. He was goofing on the sport of wrestling and then a real wrestler did a real pile driver on him and snapped his neck. The goof went on for a long time but this was absolute genuine pain and the man was seriously almost killed by the wrestling move. Don’t ever say to a pro not to hold back especially when the pro might like nothing about you at all except the paycheck. Whatever you say boss. Kapow!

I say it could get racial and I say it should. If we are even looking at Paul as the bad guy, the joker or the arch villain if you will, Mike Tyson might not like him at all. He’s too white. He’s gotten everything just from talking. He hasn’t lived the life. He hasn’t genuinely lived a boxer’s life and one would have to question whether or not he has the heart to live a boxer’s life.

So if there is money, we go to decadence of course. Or there are many possibilities of how fighters handle themselves these days. There has always been a lot of information and everybody is media savvy on their telephone. But the genuine way of seeing this is much the same as the original baseball players. You have to have nothing else to do and be willing to give every muscle and bone if your body to what you’re doing. To give yourself to a purely physical life with all of the physical labor that this calls for, all of the life dedication, if someone has something better to do, even anything, why would they choose this blood sweat and tears business? And really, he didn’t even pick a style that would come from a legitimate connoisseur of boxing. Like Mike Tyson for example. He was incredibly articulate talking about the films of the old boxers he watched again and again and again.

What’s the prediction?

If it’s on the square and level, if there is even a boxing exhibition in this with the knowledge that it is 100% full contact, Mike Tyson’s late career MO is to go straight in there with absolute dedication of hostility and cruel intent. He is going to hit you as hard as he can and that is all he is going to do. He’s going to put his body in the proximity of the most powerful form of one of his many ridiculously effective punches, and then he will hurt you. He didn’t want that artistic moment where he catches you off guard. He wants to tell you that you cannot be in the ring with him. This is a different thing. This is not cat boxing. This is killing with your fists.

Tyson’s going to tie Paul up and then bring around a fist strong enough to go through a wall. Paul says he’s going to meet him in the middle of the ring and Mike said that works for him because that’s where he wants to be. So the plan is for a round one throw everything to the wind fireworks show? Paul is dead. Paul gets hurt. Paul gets hit and stops being Paul and just falls. See Paul fall. Paul not tall. Paul fall. Tyson tall. That’s all Paul.

One can imagine a scenario where Tyson hits him so hard he alters Paul’s speech for a while. Suddenly he can’t stop lisping or having a mild stammer when he has to talk about going somewhere or doing something. Like something seriously broken that you wish you had not made available for Mike Tyson to take a shot at.

I say it’ll be a dive. It’ll be a dive in the end of Paul’s career because we will all see that he didn’t want to fight Mike Tyson. Like he takes a punch that doesn’t knock him out but falls to the ground artistically to nonetheless. And of course it looks like this but still they call this Urban legend or conspiracy theory. You could see what happened but all the public opinion is that you just can’t know. That’s the Andy Kaufman in it. What really happened? How can we know?

Indeed. The only thing that is real in all of this is Mike Tyson got to warm up and get ready for a fight. A genuine fight in front of a lot of people for a lot of money. And no matter what kind of script they held to, the one thing they have not done is say that Mike is not allowed to be Mike. If he comes out dancing and sparring, the fix is in. If it’s really Mike Tyson, he has been working out with malicious intent. Okay, okay okay, he’s a YouTube personality now so he’s made a show for us to see. But I still like to believe. I was around in the ’90s. I was there for Mike Tyson. I wanted to be Mike Tyson. And about 40 something times or so, maybe 50 something, I was. So I got that.

I hope I’m not being offensive by this but I hope Tyson hurts him. I don’t mean like hitting him when he’s down. I think I would like to see him land a significant punch and I would like to genuinely see what this does to the mind and body of Jake Paul. He may be old but he’s old Mike Tyson and he’s in shape. I am older than Mike Tyson and I took a door off the hinges in a moment of anger. And I am not Mike Tyson in real life. Kapow!

Post fight: A pull no punches update 

The commentator’s card pretty much saw what all of us saw. Mike was a very aggressive fighter in the first two rounds and then stood in the center of the ring waiting for Paul to do something. And Paul did do something. He did some pretty good boxing. He had a height and reach advantage and had the same weight. And what was more, he was young. I remember this blunder from Tyson’s late career. His true success was that he’s not tall and could come in low like a badger but a badger with cannons for arms. Late Tyson mint fighting more upright. It’s easier on the heart. You take less stress on the legs. It wasn’t pretty.

Jack London wrote several interesting pieces about the boxing game. One was about an aging fighter who needed desperately a winner’s paycheck to bring food to his family. He had to face all manner of adversity just to get to the fight, the worst of which was not having enough food to eat. For him, it was a chunk of steak that he just didn’t have the money for. In the fight itself, he was the better fighter and got the better of the younger man. He knew some hard-boiled tricks and caused great damage in the younger man. But in the end, even though the fight was absolutely won, he just did not have the juice to put the man away. And when this became clear, the energy left the old fighter and went into the younger fighter and then it was all over. 

Basically what I’m saying is that he probably found his PTSD Utopia but refused to take it. Why? If we were Vegas people, we would tell you the answer true and clear right to your face. He’s a loser. He hates himself.

It is possible that Mike Tyson was prepared to go to war. It is possible that he was taking this fight very, very seriously. It is possible that he was having doubts as to what was going to be the reality. I mean, just like everyone in the media was saying: anyone can make a 5-second video where you look absolutely ferocious. The highlights are the essence of social media culture. But how ferocious are you in real life? 

I could also add to this the truth that late career Mike Tyson was one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever witnessed. He was done and washed up but refused to believe it. I can’t say that I blame him. He was never a genius financially so was pretty good at losing copious amounts of money or just blowing it on frivolity. And there was a lot of juice as a younger man, before the rape case, when he was the King of New York. What were those stories like? How many women? And after how many times does it just stay hard? Talk about the horror of looking at fading youth. Talk about an athlete dying two deaths. What’s it like being Mike Tyson when the endless fountain of energy suddenly runs dry? 

It’s hard to have that on your record. 50 and 6 is not anything terrible. Those 50 were everything. And then there were some iffy moments weather Tyson was done or not. Buster Douglas was one of those. There was a long count. I think the referee wanted him to do it again. I know people like that. It has to do with belief. That’s the thing about the game of boxing. It’s about having something to gamble on and if you’re going to be a gambler you have to believe. 

But this was not it. It was quite possible coming out of the dressing room that Mike Tyson had already come to the conclusion that this game could not be won. He didn’t look ferocious and ready to fight. He looked tired. He looked like he needed a nap. 

Las Vegas gamblers would tell you straight up the truth however. He’s a loser. You can’t allow himself to win and walk away. He only knows how to play until the well runs dry. Once you get a taste for losing, it’s hard to get rid of it.

What happened? 

It was a poignant moment at the weigh in. People talk about the slap. Will Smith gave us the slap. But it wasn’t that Mike Tyson slapped him. It was that the slap really didn’t bother Paul in the slightest. And that Tyson had just been scared to death. 

The slap came as Tyson was meditatively making his way up to do the stare down photos. He came to the place where he should stand and was wearing a proper scowl on his face. And then suddenly, Paul sprung from some distance and landed right in front of Tyson and came up right to him like a giant bearded Bugs Bunny. The move was too fast. It was a reflex of youth and having Paul show up in his face shocked Tyson. And what was more, the boy got big. Oh boy. He bulked up to 227 lb and he was an absolute animal. 

Paul’s little stunt took Tyson by surprise. But perhaps in a fatherly gesture, the former champ’s response was to throw a slap. Why didn’t he throw a punch? Was that part of the fix? This would basically be a slap fight?

This is bad. Maybe this is also classic Tyson. This is the Tyson of the notorious ear biting. This is the Tyson of the six losses. But the point was that it was a slap and not a punch. That was just too weird. If you’re going to throw, why open the hand? I don’t know whether or not Paul thought the move was a big deal when he thought of it but it went in. Tyson was right back in the psycho ward again and what was more, there was no way to be physically intimidating to his opponent. And worse, he couldn’t hurt him if he tried. It was checkmate.

So basically the effort was that he would follow the script and put out energy for two rounds and then the two would settle into some boxing. The problem was that Tyson was not really boxing anymore. The punch count illustrated that he basically stopped throwing punches in the third or fourth round. There was only one person in the ring thinking about boxing and there was Tyson, posing beautifully for a picture with his fists up. The boxing exhibition of the year and every moment was a picture of an old man pretending to fight the big fight. Did he quit exactly at that moment in the weigh in? Sometimes when the fire goes out, you can see it go.

Maybe vegan Mike Tyson deserves a rematch

My final comment on the situation though is probably pretty straightforward. The world has a tendency towards war. War and violence and potential suffering is really the backbone of Western entertainment. Superman with amazing weaponry etc etc. But for Mike Tyson going into this fight, he made a point of saying that he had been eating raw meat. Joe Rogan is his friend. Joe Rogan lets him be whoever he wants to be on the show and he doesn’t make him feel bad about any mental lapses. He’s a great fan and he understands him. All of these guys love saying that eating meat and being rich is the way to go and, they do entertainment numbers and so no one is arguing the political stance or the inevitable toxic failure of having groups of non-wealthy people following these influential ways of life. That is global warming in a nutshell.

A few years ago, word was that Mike had gone vegan. He liked that this tempered his personal feelings of violence. He really felt better. This is not mystical. It’s kind of common sense that people feel aggravation because they are internally uncomfortable. If your diet is very mouth-friendly but bad in your belly and in your guts, you have a problem. If you never learn the difference and you never even try to think about what you’re eating, here you go and this is going to be the problem in all of the hospitals going forward. Tyson also coupled this with going into the marijuana business. He had money, he invested in a field in California and put up grow houses and now he had more marijuana than he could ever smoke. He was free. I think he really was happy. But then his job became talking about how happy he was smoking marijuana because it was Mike Tyson’s brand. Pure bravado and salesmanship, just like a good fighter should, to stir up the gate. And honestly, being vegan, making money without violence and being able to chill was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to him. 

But of course in a meat eaters world, once you start going on the circuit and you say you’re a vegan, that makes you an automatic target for discussion. There’s something called popular culture that is more like Nazi culture. You either go with the popular side or you are the object of hilarity. Such a target. So now he’s getting trolled and questioned and he really doesn’t have the knockout punch to get them off of him. And then there was Logan Paul handing him mushrooms because marijuana was not its own thing, it was obvious that Mike Tyson liked drugs. Kapow. Literally the death of the brand in 5 seconds. Tyson was lying. And for this fight he famously tells us that he trained by eating raw meat. I absolutely agree that his performance looked exactly like a person who only ate raw meat.

I think the problem of acclimation to a slower life is giving boredom a chance. And really it’s not about boredom. He could have become a grower himself and taken pride in the task. I understand he loves pigeons. Exactly the same deal.

One more link to the game changers.

Have you seen this film? What about what happens to physical performance when you take the meat out of your diet and replace it with a high protein plant-based alternative? The results? I personally became Superman with twice the capacity or more mentally and physically and it just kept growing the longer I did it. Heart health. Mental health. A general sense of cleanliness and calm. And of course ethics if you’ve ever thought of them. If you’re not vegan, you’re missing the entire point.

Okay, there are flexitarians and mostly plant-based yada yada yada. But I say what we were looking at was Meathead Mike Tyson. I say that we had a bloody Meathead zombie showing up in the game and realizing that all his life had been delusional. Why? Why couldn’t he have trained vegan and came in with unlimited heart? Why didn’t he at least try to give his body the chance to do natural recovery after workouts? Why was he adding high inflammation food to his diet at his age? For everything he knows about fighting from 100 years ago, has he genuinely learned nothing about nutrition much less a person’s genuine place on the planet? 

What if Mike went back for the rematch and straight up said that the mistake was meat? And remember, this would be a genuine Goodwill gesture towards the future of humanity were he to say this openly. He can say that he wants to fight the younger man one more time. Same gig. Same gloves. Same rounds. They could even do it only 6 weeks out. But this time Mike was not going to eat the raw meat to try and become aggressive. This time, he was going Tom Brady. This time it was about vegan nutrition and letting the blood flow. 

I mean, you could see the problem. He was feeling the punches in his heart. That’s when you know you’re screwed. That’s probably what happened to Mike and why he spent the entire fight in the middle of the Ring waiting for Paul to come to him. Paul understood that Mike was done. Maybe it was his heart. Whatever, right after his initial charge, he understood clearly that he was nothing against the younger man at 227 lb of muscle. Maybe we go vegan though maybe we get back a little bit of heart and next time, maybe he can carry the fight on for five rounds instead of two. You just win the round on cards by throwing the punche. Next time, try staying vegan and doing what you need to do without going back to torturing him. If you want to build heart, I think that means using it.

Post Mike Tyson letter update

Current reading says Mike Tyson generated 100 million by agreeing to participate in a one-off match with a young YouTuber. His cut was 20 million. Paul got 40 million. And according to the champ, that was the best he could do.

Tyson released a letter in effect saying that yes, he had some kind of episode similar to a stroke while preparing for the original date. Apparently he has never really been able to regain his form except as a showman and an insider and of course, the former heavyweight champion of the world. Iron Mike Tyson moves water in the boxing world even if he can’t hit anymore.

If I really don’t understand this though it was why Paul was never informed. For all of the angles that had me thinking that the six was in or that at least this thing was scripted, according to something said as a taunt, Tyson took that they were going to stand in the middle of the ring and duke it out as gospel and part of the contract. And even though he wasn’t throwing any more punches, very possibly the honest truth being that every time he threw a punch he felt it in his heart. Or in whatever fragile part of his brain might not be ready to handle the jolt. It’s just going to box it out but Paul never really came in. In fact, you could see the look on his face when he realized it Mike wasn’t even going to try to hit him.

I have not seen anybody of the opinion that we should get rakes and tiki torches and go after Tyson for stealing the money. I haven’t heard anybody say anything other than the champ is always the champ and if he got away with this, he earned it by being himself. And of course it is nice to get paid for your work. All he wanted to do was sell his marijuana brand. I guess he made money in a different location this year.

So basically we are in a world without Mike Tyson anymore. I don’t know if he’s going to be making appearances in public in the future. My thinking is he’s going to be out of the public eye for a while. He’s got enough money to make it last and this time he knows his own physical frailty. He’s not going to live forever and therefore there is no reason to gobble resources like there’s no tomorrow. It really is going to be a no tomorrow and that tends to make people quite conservative in their actions. It’s also true for a hole in a vain in your head.

I like Mike Tyson. We are about the same age. I remember when Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson. It was something. It was kind of like when Barry Bonds was Barry Bonds or when Obama was really on top of his game. World class stuff elevates everybody. And truly, Tyson was the force of nature. The biggest thing to hit New York since Babe Ruth.

And you know it’s a boxing story about a boxer so you kind of know what’s going to happen. Great sport. You really have to respect people who go at it at the highest possible level. It’s about investing heart. His body is his life. Interesting last chapter to an interesting book.