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Mike Tyson shared a card with Jake Paul on Saturday night, but the heavyweight boxing legend admits he had never heard of the 23-year-old YouTube celebrity until recently.
In fact, it wasn’t until Paul and his older brother Logan started engaging in high profile celebrity boxing matches that Tyson’s sons initially mentioned siblings to him.
“I didn’t know he existed until my sons wanted to fight him someday,” Tyson said after going to a draw with Roy Jones Jr. on Saturday night. “I said, ‘Who are you going to fight? This guy? Come on, ”and he was a big star.
“Everyone knows who he is, and I’m so happy he joined the train with me and Roy.”
The night Tyson first returned to the ring in 15 years, Paul took part in the co-main event and demolished former NBA player Nate Robinson with a second round knockout. Paul is now 2-0 as a professional boxer and plans to devote even more time to the sport in the future.
While Paul and his brother have received a ton of criticism from boxing purists for their involvement in the sport, Tyson argues that they actually deserve a lot of credit and a lot more respect than they get. have been so far.
“Look, my ego says so many things, but my reality is that they help so much with boxing,” Tyson explained. “Boxing owes these guys, they owe some kind of respect to these YouTube boxers. They should give them belts because these guys bring boxing to life.
“Boxing was pretty much a dying sport. The UFC was kicking us, and now we have these YouTube boxers with 25 million views. Boxing is back. Thanks to YouTube boxers. “
To put that into perspective, the Logan Paul-KSI YouTube pay-per-view where Jake Paul took part in the sub-card drew over 2.25 million viewers while generating a live gate of 3.5 million. dollars for the event.
Of course, boxing has flourished around massive events like the heavyweight title fight between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, as well as recent cards being released on networks like ESPN with high profile fights like Vasyl Lomachenko. confronting Teofimo Lopez.
While boxing seems to come to life around high profile fights like these, the UFC is a more cohesive product with notable events happening week to week and massive events promoted when superstars like Conor McGregor, Israel Adesanya or Khabib Nurmagomedov clash.
In an era when TV networks struggle to maintain their ratings while clashing with streaming services and videos on YouTube and TikTok gaining billions of views, Tyson believes boxers like Paul are exactly what sports. needs right now.
“I believe the more you box, the bigger it is for the sport,” Tyson said. “Because boxing has taken a few hits since the UFC was founded.”
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