what’s it all mean?
By: Sean Crose
Sixty million. Households. Not individuals. Households. Sixty million. That’s the number of homes that tuned in for last Friday’s Mike Tyson-Jake Paul novelty bout. At it’s highest point, the fight had sixty-five million homes tuning in. That’s more than two times as much as your weekly NFL game. It’s also more than twice the numbers the 2024 World Series delivered this fall. It even did better numbers than the NBA championship last spring. One can only guess how high the viewership numbers would have been if Netflix, which was broadcasting the bout, was able to smoothly stream the event to everyone who wanted to see it.
What to make of it all, though? Perhaps the first thing to realize is the fact that boxing, despite what people love to say, is far from dead. It’s just that the public will only watch boxing in enormous numbers when it’s a circus. If you give the public a circus in the prize ring, viewers will flock to it. “We’ve got Butterbean at the top,” former world titlist Chris Algieri said on ProBoxTV, referring to the popular 90s era novelty fighter. True enough. The Amanda Serrano-Katie Taylor rematch was one of the best fights of the year, hands down. Serrano-Taylor, however, was merely the co-main of Tyson-Paul, which clearly wasn’t a classic no matter how one looked at it.
Sure enough, Tyson looked like what he was on Friday – a 58 year old man who, although he was in great shape, had no business entering a professional prize ring with anyone, much less a man nearly 30 years his junior. Paul didn’t look great himself, though he smartly kept away from the man called “Iron Mike” and held when he had to. It was an intelligent strategy, as power is said to be the last thing to go on a fighter. Still it was a disappointing match. If anything, it was good to see that Tyson didn’t get seriously hurt, which he may well might have.
People complained afterward that the fight was boring, or even that Paul should have knocked Tyson out – as if it would have been a good thing to see an aging man splattered onto the canvas like a Jackson Pollack painting. It would be foolish to bet against novelty fights in the future, though. They’ve brought in a lot of money and attention since Floyd Mayweather faced Conor McGregor seven years ago, and they may very well continue to do so in the future. Jake Paul – Hulk Hogan, anyone?