Speakers were blasting “In the Air Tonight,” Phil Collins, while Jake Paul gently rode in a car across AT&T Stadium to the stage with his brother Logan Paul dousing him with the W brand body spray. The ride lasted so long that the audience stopped booing Paul, who had been the target of a chorus of jeers for the past eight months promoting this fight — and became enthralled.
In a few minutes, 27-year-old Paul would go on to beat 58-year-old freshly unretired boxing phenomenon Mike Tyson, who had been stoic and existential for the last days before the fight. We are dead, Tyson informed a 14-year-old reporter. Our dust is We absolutely nothing. Our legacy is none at all.
“I’m just ready to fight,” he said at press events running forward the event. I have said all I have to say. Sports experts continued endlessly on how improbable it would be for a man his age to be able to keep up with a young fighter like Paul, regardless of his unmatched performance in his prime. They had it right.
Though pageantry is everything in boxing. Personal attacks between fighters are not unusual for increasing the closer they approach fight night. Tyson slapped Paul for treading on his foot on Thursday at weigh-ins, and Paul screamed with the savagery of an enraged warrior Tyson “must die.” Drama between them was necessary to get butts in seats, thus they succeeded by breaking ticket sales records and drawing so much at-home attention that Netflix crashed.
