In another time, there was a sport called boxing, and it ruled America. If I had the medium of film, I’d show off with shots of the greats and the moments in which they shone. I’d show you the fights that were billed as the “The Fight of the Century,” the “Dream Fight,” the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the stuff stories are made of.
Unfortunately, I am restricted to print, and boxing just doesn’t have that same magic when you’re talking about fights with paltry words. I can tell you ’till the cows come home what made Sugar Ray Leonard great, but no paragraph I pen could hold a candle to watching the man knock out Davy Boy Green with a right hook that felt like it could shatter steel.
There’s very little to say about boxing anymore. The last great fight was the disappointment that was Mayweather vs Pacquiao, a fight so bad that it went from the moniker “The Fight of the Century” to “Better never than late” after delay upon delay yielded a win on points for a defensive juggernaut that did nothing to reignite the American passion. It was meant to make boxing great again, and instead, was just another marker on the slow death that the sport faced.
Boxing did not die with a bang, with spectacle, or violence, or any of what had made it so beloved. It did not die with dignity.
Boxing died in silence, as it migrated off of cable, and away from the public eye, and as it was exposed for corruption and more. It died alone, forgotten, with half-filled stadiums and half-forgotten broadcasts that were listed between adult films and made-for-TV movies.
And then in 2024, Jake Paul happened.
See, boxing was never much more than a sport of personalities, egos, and the intersection where those two flourished. It takes quite a bit of self-confidence to get into a squared circle once every quarter with the knowledge that you’re going to spend the next who-knows-how-long getting punched in every possible way by another person. Famous boxers are, by and large, very egotistical people, no different from famous baseball players, famous NBA stars, and famous Wide Receivers. (This one’s for you, George Pickens.)
And who better to be the massive, arrogant asshat to take center stage in boxing than Jake Paul, controversial figure extraordinaire. Paul is known for being loud, brash, and annoying. He’s made so many enemies, done so many bad, stupid things, and made people hate him.
He’s also learned something that the professional wrestling circuit learned way back in its heyday when Gorgeous George sold out crowds in the WCW.
People will pay a lot of money to watch someone shut you up.
Heels are a staple in professional wrestling, they’re the sort of people who make you feel hate, white hot hate, and they’re a huge crowd draw — consistently. Wrestling is built on heels, because without bad guys, who are the rest of the wrestlers going to beat up?
So that’s what Jake Paul did. He found a legend, Mike Tyson (between Mikes Jackson, Tyson, Jordan and Game Six, I feel like this was a good call), he billed it as something massive, got summarily mocked for going up against a man who I believe is twice his age, well past his prime, and not entirely all there, put that whole thing on Netflix and made the whole world ready to hate him.
How many people watched that fight not because they like Iron Mike or Paul, but because they wanted to see a smarmy brat get his butt kicked by a pro? How many people watched a miserable exhibition fight because they just wanted to see the drama?
How many people watched that fight because boxing has a heel now?
The fight itself was a mess. Netflix gave up on handling it properly, servers went down, it wasn’t great, the announcing was middling at best, the entire thing reeked of amateurism and felt better suited for a small promotion out in Podunk, Oregon and not the main stage.
Of course, I’m talking only about the title card here. While Jake Paul won by decision over a doddering Mike Tyson in what I can only describe as the most scripted thing I’ve ever seen since the last School of Drama production I watched, the undercard? That was riveting. It’s boxing at its finest, watching people fight each other with the fire and hate that this sport deserves. It’s good television, it’s good boxing, it’s good sports, and it was incredible seeing that on a major broadcaster, available and being watched by the masses in 2024.
Paul vs Tyson has made very few boxing fans out of the people I know, and I think these celebrity exhibitions will continue just because of the heel factor. If they continue because of the heel factor, then they’re not saving boxing either. It’s going to be the same scripted content that the WWE has, unfortunately, and the title cards will always be some hated celebrity of the week versus whoever is necessary to get eyeballs.
But those undercards? That’s where boxing will live on, and that’s where boxing will flourish, because no matter what year it is, no matter what’s on television, and what’s going on in the world, there will always be some gym out there, somewhere in America with two people beating the ever loving $#!@ out of each other fighting for nothing more than the recognition that they could one day be the best.
Boxing is dead. Long live boxing.
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