When Money Ate Mike Tyson

In the 1970s and early 80s, Saturday afternoons before dinner were for Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay. That is, when we couldn’t get the Oklahoma University games – which was most Saturdays, because we were in Delaware. Dad would be freshly showered from whatever yardwork or workout he’d been doing, slumped on the sofa in the family/TV room, legs up on the footstool. Which left plenty of room for us kids to scooch in next to him, or play with blocks or Legos on the floor, until one or another of us was summoned by Mom to help in the kitchen, just off the TV room.

The show was a smorgasbord of niche events like cliff diving, or Evel Knievel stunt jumps, or climbers shimmying up tall buildings – packed in around figure skating, horse racing, swimming, and racecar driving events. A panoply of mostly sweaty men doing sweaty things. And one of those things was boxing.

Ali was the big name back then, of course, and his weird back and forth with Howard Cosell. But there was also Joe Frazier and George Foreman (well before shilling grills was even a thought in his head), Leon Spinks and Sugar Ray Leonard. Sweaty men doing sweaty things, punctuated with blood, and spit flying out of mouthguards. Mom would remain in the kitchen, out of a combination of disapproval and I-really-don’t-want-to-see-this, and we’d periodically hear a squeak or a gasp when the fighting got particularly egregious or Cosell got particularly worked up.

I didn’t really like boxing – the idea of two men punching each other till one fell down insensate just felt too raw, too primal, too brutal. Like, why are we watching this horror-show? We were watching it because it was the 1970s and early 80s, and that was what was on TV on a Saturday afternoon before dinner.

I went away to college, and then came to New York, and very happily didn’t watch any boxing for about a decade. Wasn’t interested in the art of it. Wasn’t interested in the science of it. Very much felt like it shouldn’t exist, because seeing a guy get his bell rung on national TV was just too much violence for me.

In the late 80s, though, Mike Tyson was everywhere. He cultivated a psychopathic, murderous image, talking about landing a punch on the tip of an opponent’s nose in an attempt to shove the bone right up into his brain. (This is neither how noses nor brains work, but it’s definitely an indelible image.) There was a lot of talk about his upbringing in East New York, his time in juvie, his rescue and eventual adoption by Cus D’Amato, who saw in this homicidal maniac the makings of a great boxer.

And he was. He was also a rapist, and had, by his own accounting, abused his wife, Robin Givens. In 1992, he went to prison for three years, and was even more terrifying when he got out. A series of easily-won fights led to a suspicion that Tyson’s team was deliberately choosing contenders that he could easily dispatch. And then came Holyfield.

Holyfield had done well while Tyson was in prison (and there’s a whole story about a paraglider interrupting his fight with Riddick Bowe), but in 1994 he was forced to retire for medical reasons after beating Michael Moorer. This did not last long, thanks to a spiritual intervention of sorts, and despite some fuzzy claims about morphine and HGH. Never an organization to adhere too closely to accepted fact, the boxing commission okayed Holyfield to come back, and it seemed Don King thought that Holyfield would be another so-called “tomato can” in Tyson’s lineup of easy wins. This did not happen.

All the while, I’d been not watching boxing, but working in publishing and bookselling, getting pregnant, having a miscarriage, getting pregnant again, having my oldest daughter, and generally getting on in my relatively quiet life. However, my now-ex-husband was working as an analyst for a cable TV trade publication, and Holyfield was doing a lot of promotional events for cable TV. My ex wound up meeting him at least once. “The real deal Holyfield” was tossed around in conversation – and he certainly seemed the gentleman-athlete to Tyson’s bloodthirsty maniac.

So when the rematch happened in 1997, I found myself watching boxing again. And disbelieving what I actually saw. More brutal, raw, primal than that which had repelled me as a child. Horrifying. And…also weirdly stupid. An ear? Bitten off?

Obviously not the entire ear, but the fight was stopped and chaos ensued, and I probably had to go pack lunches for the next day or something. The media in the following weeks was insane. And I went back to happily ignoring boxing and, in general, sweaty men doing sweaty things. For years and years. Another daughter. A divorce. Two more relationships and some dating in between. Now I’m living alone, working my tail off in adtech, reading and knitting and cooking like I always do, and this guy shows up again in the public consciousness – reborn into a Teddy bear-like, avuncular figure who smokes too much weed and spent all his money. An old man.

And I know very little about Jake Paul except he is one of those professional assholes that seems to make a lot of money from being a jerk. He doesn’t mind that people dislike him – for some reason, that generates more income for him. He has, in the last four years, apparently decided that he can be a professional asshole and a boxer. I refuse to look up his record or understand his boxing history. I don’t need to go deep to understand that once again, there will be sweaty men doing sweaty things, and I’ll watch this time because I’m not doing anything on a Friday night and I already have Netflix, so it’s essentially free to me. I, along with 60 million other people, have a morbid curiosity as to how an aged, seemingly-tamed, ferocious rapist will hold up against a younger, rowdier, racist sexual harasser who apparently never had a difficult day in his life.

Whom to root for?

Not that it mattered. Because it was never about the fight.

I tuned into Netflix at 8 p.m. Eastern to see an arena decked out in glitz and polish and shine. Inexplicably, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were…doing some kind of routine? Not so inexplicably, it turns out – they have a reality show on Netflix. Celebrities in the audience – all of whom had some kind of project or deal going with Netflix. Commentators mentioning, at least several times an hour, additional Netflix programming – either current or upcoming. Three undercards – only one of which, the women’s, was an actual battle royale with faces cut open and blood everywhere – interspersed with a constant thrum of “Netflix, Netflix”, occasionally interrupted by a massive throw to DraftKings.

Money.

I had a hard time believing this wasn’t in Vegas. The stunting, the outfits, the music, the ring girls (at least they don’t have to wear heels anymore, so there’s that) – this wasn’t just boxing. This was WWE-level buildup – interviews in the locker room (why did we have to see Tyson’s naked ass? Whose decision was that?), thunderous entry themes.

It was not a WWE-level fight. The rules were altered, I suppose to accommodate Tyson’s age. Two-minute rounds, 14-ounce gloves. And so it was…some swatting. Not open-handed, as Tyson had slapped Paul the previous day during the weigh-in. (Real or acting? Who can know?) The air filled with the whiffing of missed connections. The punches that landed were more like pats. It was, in a word, boring. And anticlimactic as hell. Paul won on technicalities. He also won a considerable return on his investment – his Most Valuable Promotions was the company that staged the fight in the first place.

The old man, the Teddy bear who smokes too much weed, that guy, went back home. Perhaps richer – we don’t really know what his payday actually was. Did he get a cut of any of the huge amounts of money that was spent to put this show on? Do we care?

Despite the tech glitches – amusingly, Holyfield’s earpiece wasn’t working, which made me question whether his ears are now cursed; the buffering was terrible and viewers wound up missing key parts of the fights – the clear winner in all of this was Netflix. They are now going to air an NFL game on Christmas Day with Beyoncé as the halftime performer. This fight was a dress rehearsal for other live sports.

And that was the real point. It was never about Mike Tyson at all. This time, he was the one who was chewed up, spat out, and left on the floor by all the money flying back and forth in the service of bigger deals.