Why the result between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul matters

With all the craziness surrounding it Friday’s big fight in Texas – in which 58-year-old Mike Tyson will face YouTuber fighter Jake Paul, 27 – it’s easy to see why many people sigh, shrug and say, “Not for me.”

This is an unapologetic freak show. Even Netflix’s own build-up series – The countdown – has compared Paul’s promotional approach to the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which brought giants, bearded ladies and Siamese twins from town to town.

But behind all this absurdity lies something interesting. Like it or not, Paul is opening up ‘boxing’ – I use quotes because this is almost a sport in its own right – to a very different audience than the hardcore pay-per-view audience.

Whatever the quality of Friday’s fight — and it could be an absolute turkey — Netflix’s involvement is guaranteed to deliver the largest live boxing audience since the 1970s, when the likes of Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton fought on ABC.

As boxing commentator Corey Erdman recently put it in a podcast, “When I’m traveling around, I usually get in an Uber and the driver says, ‘Oh, there’s a fight in town?’ This is the one fight where people in my family who barely know what I do for a living ask me questions. (It will) probably be the most watched boxing match of this generation.”

And if Paul wins on Friday, which is a very plausible outcome considering he is far from “a bum” in boxing terms, it will boost his profile even further. As he put it himself. “If I knock out Mike Tyson, I’ll be the new face of boxing.”

If you’re a traditional boxing fan, or especially a professional boxer, the whole thing feels nauseatingly dystopian. But even those who love to pooh-pooh the event will be sure to check their phones for the outcome.

We should not pretend that boxing – the old version – is completely doomed. Two years ago, Tyson Fury sold out the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium due to a predictable defeat to the aging Derek Chisora, so there is a willing crowd. And the arrival of Saudi money convinces more and more reluctant heavyweights to compete against each other.

Paul leads chants of ‘F—Jake Paul’

But now that every live event is hidden behind a paywall, the sport is feeling increasingly niche. Channels like DAZN only preach to the converted. Meanwhile, mixed martial arts is emerging as a serious rival, especially among young people.

Paul’s great strength is that, as the world’s most successful YouTuber, he manages to gain access to Generation Z: the people who grew up on social media. He is not afraid to emphasize the absurdity of his fights, nor to play the heel. Faced with a room full of skeptics, he’ll get the ball rolling himself by singing “F— Jake Paul” until everyone joins in.

In The countdownPaul continues to say that “the story is everything.” On the same show, he claims that he came up with the idea to fight Tyson two years ago while hallucinating during an Ayahuasca ceremony in Costa Rica. More likely it was a marketing genius, dreamed up during a business meeting.

For all the tawdry of punching a 58-year-old — a medical no-no, given the way punch resistance diminishes over time — it’s hard not to be intrigued by the unpredictability of this match.

Both sides sincerely believe that they cannot lose. Paul because he’s fighting an old man. Tyson because he is a boxer, an all-time great whose 56 professional fights produced a whopping 44 knockouts. And now he’s facing a manufactured fighter: a bloated 27-year-old with only four years of training under his belt, and what every other social media commentator calls “a punchable face.”

While Paul built his reputation with a series of crazy fights against YouTube celebrities, former basketball players and washed-up MMA fighters, Tyson encouraged his career. Hotboxin’ podcast, which praises this self-described “disruptor” for bringing millions of eyeballs to a “dying” sport.

But during Wednesday night’s media conference, where Paul’s ‘Problem Bot’ mascot roamed the room, and former British cruiserweight Tony Bellew chats from the press seatsTyson had the grace to look embarrassed. This isn’t the kind of stripped-down, sweat-and-sawdust combat he studied in great detail during his five formative years of training with Cus D’Amato.

Unfortunately for the purists, content is everything in the modern world. Paul understands that, just like the Formula 1 strategists who created the soap opera Drive to survive. That show transformed the entire sport, and Friday’s fight could prove seismic as well.

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