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Gervonta’s Baltimore Homecoming Awakens Echoes of Harry Jeffra
Seventy-nine years ago this coming Monday (July 29), Baltimore native Harry Jeffra successfully defended his featherweight title with a 15-round unanimous decision over Toronto’s Spider Armstrong. This match — refereed by The Ring magazine founder Nat Fleischer – is being recalled as the last world title fight held in the City of Monuments in which a local man defended his title….until tonight, that is, when Gervonta Davis defends his World Boxing Association Super World Super Featherweight Title (that’s a mouthful) on SHOWTIME in an apparent soft defense against Panama’s unheralded Ricardo Nunez.
Harry Jeffra was very good and had a legitimate claim to the world featherweight title, but as title fights go, Jeffra vs. Armstrong warrants an asterisk.
No, there weren’t four international bodies vying for supremacy, but things back then were just as muddled. When Jeffra entered the ring that night, he was one of three recognized featherweight champions. The National Boxing Association (forerunner of the WBA) recognized Petey Scalzo. The New York and Maryland (and eventually Pennsylvania and California) boxing commissions recognized Jeffra. The Louisiana commission was partial to Jimmy Perrin. And overseas? Well, let’s not go there.
Harry Jeffra, who was Sicilian on his father’s side, was born in Baltimore on Nov. 30, 1914. His birth name was Ignatius Guiffre. With a name like that, it was inevitable he would adopt a different ring name, but folks knew him as Harry Jeffra before he ever laced on a pair of gloves. The name was applied to him by his schoolteachers who couldn’t pronounce Guiffre.
Jeffra was born in the shadow of Baltimore’s Pimlico Racetrack and in some of his early fights was billed as the Pimlico Kid. Ironically, in retirement, after working as a jockey’s agent, Jeffra became a stable manager at the fabled racetrack.
Turning pro at age 18, Jeffra had his first 39 fights in Baltimore with the exception of four excursions to nearby Washington, DC. He attracted national notice late in this run with a 10-round split decision over Puerto Rico’s Sixto Escobar, the generally recognized world bantamweight champion.
Jeffra and Escobar would meet five times; Jeffra winning four. The third and fourth meetings were stamped as world title fights. The finale, in Baltimore, would be Escobar’s final pro bout.
Escobar-Jeffra III was staged on Sept. 23, 1937 at New York’s Polo Grounds as part of the “Carnival of Champions” in which four title-holders risked their belts on the same card. Lightweight Lou Ambers and welterweight Barney Ross prevailed against Pedro Montanez and Ceferino Garcia, respectively. Middleweight title-holder Marcel Thill was upended by Fred Apostoli, the San Francisco Bell Boy (although New York continued to recognize Freddie Steele; go figure) and Harry Jeffra got things started by dethroning Escobar, winning a lopsided 15-round decision. “He buzzed around him like an angry hornet in a fight that was full of action,” said the correspondent for the New York Times.
Promoter Mike Jacobs anticipated a crowd of 50,000, but the announced attendance was only 32,600. Many boxing fans hadn’t yet recovered from the Great Depression and all sorts of amusements were in the doldrums.
Five months later, the Baltimorean and the Puerto Rican met up again on Escobar’s turf in San Juan. In this bout, Jeffra bore scant resemblance to the fighter that won their three previous meetings. He was knocked down twice in the 11th and once in the 14th and finished the contest with both of his eyes nearly closed. The announced attendance at the outdoor show was 12,000, but promoter Mike Jacobs, a whiz at creative bookkeeping, claimed that the gate receipts totaled only $13,900.
Jeffra had struggled to make weight for Escobar IV. Seven months later he returned to the ring as a featherweight and after adding eight wins to his ledger was pitted against veteran Joey Archibald who held a share of the fractured featherweight title. It was the first defense for Archibald who had won the belt in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, with a 15-round decision over Chicago’s Leo Rodak.
Archibald was managed by wily Al Weill who later handled the ring affairs of Rocky Marciano. Washington, DC was Archibald’s second home. Prior to his Sept. 28, 1939 bout with Harry Jeffra at Griffith Stadium, he was 18-0 in DC rings.
The skein continued with Jeffra losing a split decision that nearly caused a riot. Spectators booed for a good 15 minutes after the verdict was announced and pelted the ring with debris. It was a harrowing experience for ring announcer Jimmy Lake who couldn’t leave his post as the semi-main had been pushed back to the walk-out fight.
Jeffra got his revenge eight months later in Baltimore. He nearly had Archibald out in the second round but the Providence man stayed the 15-round limit only to lose a lopsided decision. Jeffra’s first defense against the aforementioned Spider Armstrong would stand for almost 80 years as the last winning effort by a Baltimore world title-holder in a Baltimore ring. He gave back the belt in a third meeting with Joey Archibald, another disputed split decision at Griffith Stadium, although not as contentious as the first, and then failed in an attempt to regain the title when he was stopped in the 10th frame by Archibald’s conqueror Chalky Wright.
After losing to Wright, Jeffra soldiered on for a few more years before retiring at age 32. A short-lived and unproductive comeback after a 44-month absence dipped his final record to 94-20-7 (per BoxRec). Although the titles he held were in dispute at the time that he held them, he passes the lineal test as a two-division world champion. The late Hank Kaplan, who was considered the foremost historian of the Sweet Science, is among those who believed that Jeffra did enough to warrant inclusion in the Boxing Hall of Fame.
As a teenager, Jeffra, who stood five-foot-four, was a two-sport standout. He was so good on the links that he considered pursuing a career as a professional golfer. After retiring, he won several amateur tournaments.
In retirement, Harry Jeffra became very involved in local charities including the Baltimore branch of the Veteran Boxers Association. He developed an amusing schtick and was in demand as a public speaker on the rubber chicken circuit. With the money that he saved he was able to send all four of his children off to college.
For years after he quit he ring, Harry Jeffra had a large presence in his hometown. But he eventually faded from view. His name stopped bobbing up in the papers when Baltimore became a major league sports town. Major league baseball returned to Baltimore in 1953 when the St. Louis Browns moved here, taking the name of the city’s Triple-A franchise, the Orioles. That same year, Baltimore acquired an NFL franchise, the Colts. Professional boxing, so vibrant in Jeffra’s heyday with club shows every week, virtually ceased and the old-time boxers spawned by the city, even the best of them, became more obscure with each passing year. When Jeffra died in September of 1988 after a lingering illness, it took several weeks for the news to hit the papers.
Ah, but there was a time when the erstwhile Pimlico Kid was the toast of the town.
Gervonta
At age 24, Gervonta Davis is the youngest active American-born champion. Undefeated, he has stopped 20 of his 21 former opponents including the last 12. His life growing up in Baltimore was quite different from that of Harry Jeffra. There was no golf for him.
“As a tiny kid,” writes Corey McLaughlin in Baltimore magazine, “Davis often slept on the floor of his drug addicted parents’ house in possibly the roughest neighborhood in Baltimore City before going into foster care.” Nowadays, he can laugh about smashing up his $170,000 Ferrari in the first week that he owned it.
This past Wednesday, Davis was given the keys to the city of Baltimore by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young in a ceremony at City Hall. In a city plagued by gang violence, the heavily tattooed boxer is being extolled as a role model, notwithstanding the fact that he has had several brushes with the law.
With the honor comes a responsibility, an obligation to give something back to his community. Harry Jeffra understood this. Now it’s Gervonta’s turn.
Gervonta photo by Amanda Westcott compliments of Showtime
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Philly’s Jesse Hart Continues His Quest plus Thoughts on Tyson-Paul and ‘Boots’ Ennis
Jesse Hart (31-3, 25 KOs) returns to the ring tomorrow night (Friday, Nov. 22) on a Teflon Promotions card at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University. During a recent media workout for the show, which will feature five other local fighters in separate bouts, Hart was adamant that fighting for the second time this year at home will only help in his continuing quest to push towards a second chance at a world championship. “Fighting at home is always great and it just makes sense from a business standpoint since I already have a name in the sport and in the city,” said Hart (pictured with his friend and training partner Joey Dawejko).
Hart’s view of where his career currently resides in relation to the landscape in the light heavyweight division leads you to believe that, at the age of 35, Hart is realistic about how far he can go before his career is over.
“Make good fights, win those fights, fight as much as I can and stay busy, that’s the way the light heavyweight division won’t be able to ignore me,” he says. Aside from two losses back in 2017 and 2018 to current unified cruiserweight champion Gilberto Ramirez at super middleweight, Hart’s only other defeat was to Joe Smith during Smith’s most successful portion of his career.
When attempts to make fights with (at the time) up-and-coming prospects like Edgar Berlanga and David Benavidez were denied with Hart being viewed as the typical high risk-low reward opponent, it was time to find another way. So, Hart decided to stay local after splitting with Top Rank Promotions post-surgery to repair his longtime right-hand issues and hooked up with Teflon Promotions, an upstart company that is the latest to take on the noble endeavor of trying to return North Broad Street and Atlantic City to boxing prominence.
In essence, it is a calculated move that is potentially a win-win situation for all parties. Continued success for Hart along with some of the titles at light heavyweight eventually being released from Artur Beterbiev’s grasp due to outside politics, and Jesse Hart just may lift up Teflon Promotions into a major player on the regional scene.
Tickets for Friday’s show are available on Ticketmaster platforms.
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As we entered November, a glance at the boxing schedule made me wonder if it was possible for the sport to have a memorable month — one that could shine a light forward in boxing’s ongoing quest to regain relevance in today’s sports landscape. Having consecutive weekends with events that could spark interest in the pugilistic artform and its wonderful characters was what I was hoping for, but what we got instead was more evidence that boxing isn’t immune to modern business practices landing a one-two punch on the action both inside and outside of the ring.
Jaron “Boots” Ennis was expected to make a statement in his rematch with Karen Chukhadzian on Nov. 9, a statement to put the elite level champions around his weight class on notice. What we witnessed, however, was more evidence of how current champions in their prime can be hampered by having to navigate a business that functions through the cooperation of independent contractors. Ennis got the job done – he won – but it was a lackluster performance.
It’s time for Ennis to fight the fighters we already thought we would have seen him fight by now and I do believe there is some truth to Ennis rising to the occasion if there was a more noteworthy name across the ring.
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Some positives emerged from the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul event the following week. Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor, and women’s boxing are finally getting the public recognition they deserve. Mario Barrios’s draw against the tough Abel Ramos, also on the Netflix broadcast, was an action-packed firefight. So, mainstream America and beyond got to witness actual fights before being subjected to Paul’s latest circus.
Unfortunately for fans, but fortunately for Paul, the lone true boxing star in the main event dimmed out from an athletic standpoint decades ago. In this instance modern business practices allowed for a social media influencer to stage his largest money grab from a completely unnuanced public.
As Paul rose to the ring apron from the steps and looked around “Jerry’s World,” taking in the moment, it reminded me of an actual fighter when they’re about to enter the ring taking in the atmosphere before they risk their lives after a lifetime of dedication to try and realize a childhood dream. In this case though, this was a natural-born hustler realizing as he made it to the ring apron that his hustle was likely having its moment of glory.
In boxing circles, Jake Paul is viewed as a “necessary evil.” What occurs in his fights are merely an afterthought to the spectacle that is at the core of the social media realm that birthed him. Hopefully the public learned from the atrocity that occurred once the exhibition started that smoke and mirrors last for only so long. Hopefully Paul’s moment of being a boxing performer and acting like a true fighter comes to its conclusion. But he isn’t going away anytime soon, especially since his promotional company is now in bed with Netflix.
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Boxing Odds and Ends: Oscar Collazo, Reimagining ‘The Ring’ Magazine and More
With little boxing activity over the next two weekends, there’s no reason to hold off anointing Oscar Collazo the Fighter of the Month for November. In his eleventh pro fight, Collazo turned heads with a masterful performance against previously undefeated Thammanoon Niyamtrong, grabbing a second piece of the title in boxing’s smallest weight class while ending the reign of the sport’s longest-reigning world title-holder. The match was on the undercard of the Nov. 16 “Latino Night” show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia headlined by the cruiserweight tiff between Mexico’s Zurdo Ramirez and England’s Chris Billam-Smith.
Collazo was a solid favorite, but no one expected the fight would be as one-sided. Collazo put on a clinic, as the saying goes. He took the starch out of Niyamtrong with wicked body punches before ending matters in the seventh. A left uppercut sent the Thai to the canvas for the third time and the referee immediately stepped in and stopped it.
Collazo, wrote Tris Dixon, “dissected and destroyed a very good fighter.” Indeed. A former Muay Thai champion, Niyamtrong (aka Knockout CP Freshmart) brought a 25-0 record and was making the thirteenth defense of his WBA strap.
A Puerto Rican born in Newark, Jersey, Oscar Collazo turned pro after winning a gold medal in the 2019 Pan American games in Lima, Peru. He was reportedly named after Oscar De La Hoya (we will take that info with a grain of salt), names Hall of Famer Ivan Calderon as a mentor and is co-promoted by Hall of Famer Miguel Cotto.
Collazo, 27, won the WBO version of the 105-pound title in his seventh pro fight with a seven-round beatdown of Melvin Jerusalem. He won a world title faster than any Puerto Rican boxer before him.
His goal now, he says, is to become a unified champion. He would be the first from the island in the modern era. Although Puerto Rico has a distinguished boxing history – twelve Boricua boxers are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame — there hasn’t been a fully unified champion from Puerto Rico since the WBO came along in 1988.
The other belt-holders at 105 are the aforementioned Jerusalem (WBC) and his Filipino countryman Melvin Taduran (IBF). Both won their belts in Japan with upsets of the Shigeoka brothers, respectively Yudai (Jerusalem) and Ginjiro (Taduran). Collazo would be a massive favorite over either.
A far more attractive fight would pit Collazo against two-time Olympic gold medalist Hasanboy Dusmatov. In theory, this would be an easy fight to make as the undefeated Uzbek trains in Indio, California, a frequent stomping ground of Collazo’s co-promoter Oscar De La Hoya who had a piece of the action when Dusmatov made his pro debut in Mexico. However, it’s doubtful that Dusmatov’s influential advisor Vadim Kornilov would let him take such a treacherous fight until the match-up had been properly “marinated,” by which time they both may be competing in a higher weight class. The Puerto Rican, who began his pro career at 110, is big for the 105-pound division notes the noted boxing historian Matt McGrain who is partial to the little guys.
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Outside the ropes, the big news in boxing in November was the news that The Ring magazine had been sold to Turki Alalshikh. The self-acclaimed Bible of Boxing, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022, was previously owned by a subsidiary of Oscar De La Hoya’s company, Golden Boy Enterprises, which acquired the venerable publication in 2007. Alalshikh purportedly paid $10 million dollars.
Alalshikh, the head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, confirmed the sale on social media on Monday, Nov. 11.
“Earlier this week, I finalized a deal to acquire 100% of The Ring Magazine, and I want to make a few things clear,” he said. “The print version of the magazine will return immediately after a two year hiatus and it will be available in the US and UK markets. The magazine will be fully independent, with brilliant writers and focusing on every aspect in the sport of boxing. We will continue to raise the prestige of The Ring Titles, and plans are already underway to have a yearly extravagant awards ceremony to celebrate the very best in the boxing industry.”
Alalshikh, blessed with an apparently unlimited budget, is already the most powerful man in the sport and more than a few concerns have been raised about his latest venture, especially in light of an incident involving prominent British scribe Oliver Brown.
Brown, the chief sports writer for the Telegraph who had previously covered three of Tyson Fury’s fights in Saudi Arabia, had his credential pulled for the Joshua-Dubois show at Wembley Stadium after calling the event “a grisly conduit for glorifying the Saudi regime.”
“I frankly do not trust Alalshikh to keep his personal aims from influencing the publication’s content,” says boxing writer Patrick Stumberg. One thing is certain: So long as the publication remains in the hands of the Saudis, the word “sportswashing” will never appear in the pages of The Ring magazine.
The Ring is the second major online boxing magazine to change hands this year. In February, Boxing Scene, one of the most heavily-trafficked sites in the ecosystem, was sold to Canadian-American entrepreneur Garry Jonas, best known as the founder of ProBox, a promotional entity headquartered in Plant City, Florida.
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Mike Tyson’s showing against Jake Paul was mindful of something that Jimmy Cannon once wrote: “…the flesh was corrupted by time. The mind operated as if it was in another man’s head…the talent has been contaminated by age.”
Cannon was describing Joe Louis in Louis’s farewell fight against Rocky Marciano.
True, Jake Paul is no Rocky Marciano. To include their names in the same sentence borders on sacrilege. But the fabled Brown Bomber was 37 years old when he was rucked into retirement by Marciano on that October night at Madison Square Garden. At age 58, Mike Tyson was old enough to be Joe Louis’s father and yet human lemmings by the thousands couldn’t resist betting on him.
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The Hauser Report: Some Thoughts on Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul
Jake Paul boxed his way to a unanimous decision over Mike Tyson at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Friday night. The bout, streamed live on Netflix, was one of the most-watched fights of all time and, in terms of the level of competition, boxing’s least-consequential mega-fight ever.
We’re living in a golden age for spectator sports. Sports generate massive amounts of money from engaged fan bases and are more popular now than ever before. Today’s athletes are more physically gifted, better conditioned, and more skilled than their predecessors. Their prowess is appreciated and understood by tens of millions of fans.
Not so for boxing. For the sweet science, this is an era of “fools’ gold.” Yes, fighters like Oleksandr Usyk, Canelo Alvarez, Terence Crawford, and Naoya Inoue bring honor to the sport. But boxing’s fan base has dwindled to the point where most people have no idea who the heavyweight champion of the world is. The sport’s dominant promoter has a business model that runs hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the red. And most fights of note are contested behind a paywall that shrinks the fan base even more. Few sports fans understand what good boxing is.
Mike Tyson is 58 years old. Once upon a time, he was the most destructive boxer in the world and “the baddest man on the planet.” Prior to last Friday night, he hadn’t fought in nineteen years and hadn’t won a fight since 2003.
Jake Paul is a 27-year-old social media personality who wasn’t born when Tyson lost his aura of invincibility at the hands of Buster Douglas. Paul began boxing professionally three years ago and, before fighting Tyson, had compiled a 10-1 (7 KOs) record against carefully chosen opponents.
Netflix has roughly 283 million subscribers globally, 84 million of them in North America. Recently, it made the decision to move into live sports. On December 25, it will stream the National Football League’s two Christmas games on an exclusive basis.
Netflix took note of the fact that Tyson’s 2020 exhibition against Roy Jones drew 1.6 million pay-per-view buys and concluded that Tyson-Paul had the potential to be the most-viewed fight of all time. It purchased rights to the fight as an attention grabber and subscription seller for (a best-estimate) $40 million.
Tyson-Paul was originally scheduled for July 20. A compliant Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations sanctioned the bout as an official fight, not an exhibition. In deference to Tyson’s age, the fighters agreed that the match would be contested over eight two-minute rounds (women’s rules) with 14-ounce gloves (heavyweight gloves normally weigh ten ounces).
But on May 26, Tyson became nauseous and dizzy while on a flight from Miami to Los Angeles and needed medical assistance for what was later described as a bleeding ulcer. The fight was rescheduled for November 15. Later, Tyson described the incident on the plane as follows: “I was in the bathroom throwing up blood. I had, like, eight blood transfusions. The doctor said I lost half my blood. I almost died. I lost 25 pounds in eleven days. Couldn’t eat. Only liquids. Every time I went to the bathroom, it smelled like tar. Didn’t even smell like shit anymore. It was disgusting.”
Does that sound like a 58-year-old man who should be fighting?
As Eliot Worsell noted, Tyson-Paul contained all the elements of a successful reality show. “There are for a start,” he wrote, “celebrities involved, two of them. One is ‘old famous’ and the other ‘new famous’ and both bring large audiences with them. They need only tap something on their phone to guarantee the entire world pays attention. And that, in this day and age, is all you really need to green light a project like this.”
But Worsell added a word of caution, observing, “This has been the story of Jake Paul’s pro boxing career to date; one of smoke and mirrors, one of sycophants telling him only what he wants to hear. He has been fed a lie just as Mike Tyson is now being fed a lie, and on November 15 they will both play dress-up and be watched by millions. They will wear gloves like boxers and they will move like boxers – one hampered in this quest by old age and the other by sheer incompetence – and they will together make ungodly sums of money.”
There was early talk that 90,000 fans would jam AT&T Stadium on fight night. Initially, ticket prices ranged from $381 to $7,956. And those prices were dwarfed by four tiers of VIP packages topped by a two-million-dollar “MVP Owner’s Experience” that included special ringside seating at the fight for six people, luxury hotel accommodations, weigh-in and locker room photo ops, boxing gloves signed by Tyson and Paul, and other amenities.
But by Monday of fight week, ticket prices had dropped to as little as $36. Ringside seats were available for $900. And the press release announcing the eventual MVP Owner’s Experience sale backtracked a bit, saying the package was “valued at $2 million” – not that the actual sale price was $2 million. It also appeared that the purchase price included advertising for the law firm that purchased the package since the release proclaimed, “Just as every fighter in the ring stands to represent resilience, grit, and the pursuit of victory, TorkLaw stands in the corner of the people, fighting for justice and empowering those who need it most.”
That said, the fight drew 72,300 fans (inclusive of giveaway tickets) to AT&T Stadium. And the live gate surpassed $18 million making it the largest onsite gate ever in the United States for a fight card outside of Las Vegas. More than 60 million households watched the event live around the world.
The undercard featured a spirited fight between Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos that ended in a draw. Then came the second dramatic showdown between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.
Taylor-Serrano II was for all four major sanctioning body 140-pound belts. Two years ago, Katie and Amanda did battle at Madison Square Garden on a historic night that saw Taylor emerge with a controversial split-decision win. Katie is now 38 years old and her age is showing. Amanda is 36. Taylor was an early 6-to-5 betting favorite in the rematch but the odds flipped late in Serrano’s favor.
Amanda began Taylor-Serrano II in dominating fashion and wobbled Katie just before the bell ending round one. That set the pattern for the early rounds. Serrano looked like she could hurt Taylor, and Taylor didn’t look like she could hurt Serrano.
Then in round four, Serrano got hurt. A headbutt opened a gruesome gash on her right eyelid. As the bout progressed, the cut became more dangerous. From an armchair perspective, it looked as though the fight should have been stopped and the result determined by the judges’ abbreviated scorecards. But the ring doctor who examined Serrano allowed it to continue even though the flow of blood seemed to handicap Amanda more and more with each passing round.
In round eight, referee Jon Schorle took a point away from Taylor after the fourth clash of heads that he thought Katie had initiated. By then, Serrano’s face resembled a gory Halloween mask and the bout had turned into a non-stop firefight. Each woman pushed herself as far as it seemed possible to go.
In the eyes of most observers, Serrano clearly won the fight. This writer scored the bout 96-93 in Amanda’s favor. Then the judges had their say. Each one favored Taylor by a 95-94 margin.
“My God!” blow-by-blow commentator Mauro Ranallo exclaimed after the verdict was announced. “How does one rob Amanda Serrano after a performance like that?”
In keeping with the hyperbole of the promotion, one might say that it was the most-watched ring robbery (although not the worst) in boxing history.
CompuBox is an inexact tabulation. But there’s a point at which the numbers can’t be ignored. According to CompuBox, Serrano outlanded Taylor in nine of ten rounds with an overall 324-to-217 advantage in punches landed.
From a boxing standpoint, Taylor-Serrano II made the evening special. Casual fans who don’t know much about the sweet science saw a very good fight. But they also saw how bad judging undermines boxing.
Meanwhile, as good as Taylor-Serrano II was, that’s not what Netflix was selling to the public. Jake Paul’s most recent events had engendered disappointing viewer numbers. This one was a cultural touchstone because of Tyson.
Paul has worked hard to become a boxer. In terms of skills, he’s now a club fighter (which is more than 99.9 percent of the population could realistically dream of being). So, what happens when a club fighter fights a 58-year-old man who used to be great?
Jack Johnson fought until the age of 53, losing four of his last six bouts. And the two he won were against opponents named Rough House Wilson (who was disqualified in what would be his only recorded professional fight) and Brad Simmons (who was barred from fighting again in Kansas because he was believed to have thrown the fight against Johnson).
Larry Holmes fought until age 52, knocking out 49-year-old Mike Weaver at age 51 and winning a unanimous decision over Eric Esch (aka Butterbean) in his final bout.
Paul was a 2-to-1 betting favorite. Serious PED testing for the fight was a murky issue but seems to have been minimal. Taylor and Serrano underwent VADA testing in advance of their bout. Tyson and Paul didn’t.
Tyson weighed in for the contest at 228.4 pounds; Paul at 227.2 (well over his previous high of 200). Following the weigh-in, Mike and Jake came face to face for the ritual staredown and Mike slapped Jake. But the incident was self-contained with no ripple effect and had the feel of a WWE confrontation.
That raised a question that was fogging the promotion: “Would Tyson vs. Paul be a ‘real’ fight or a pre-arranged sparring session (which was what Tyson vs. Roy Jones appeared to be)?”
That question was of particular note because sports betting is legal in 38 states and 31 of them were allowing wagers on the fight.
Nakisa Bidarian (co-founder of Paul’s promotional company) sought to lay that issue to rest, telling ESPN, “There’s no reason for us to create a federal fraud, a federal crime. These are pro fights that consumers are making legal bets on. We have never and we’ll never do anything that’s other than above board and one hundred percent a pro fight unless we come out clearly and say, ‘Hey, this is an exhibition fight that is a show.'”
Tyson looked old and worried during his ring walk and wore a sleeve on his right knee. The crowd was overwhelmingly in his favor. But it’s an often-repeated truism that the crowd can’t fight. And neither could Mike.
Once upon a time, Tyson scored nine first-minute knockouts in professional fights. Not first-round. First-minute.
Against Paul, “Iron Mike” came out for round one as hard as he could (which wasn’t very hard) while Jake kept a safe distance between them. Then Tyson tired and took all the air out of the fight. By round three, he was in survival mode with his head tucked safely behind his 14-ounce gloves. And Jake didn’t have the skills to hurt him.
The CompuBox numbers favored Paul by a 78-to-18 margin in punches landed. In other words, Tyson landed an average of two punches per round. The judges’ scores were 80-72, 79-73, 79-73 in Jake’s favor. It was a “real” fight but a bad one.
“I love Mike Tyson,” Terence Crawford posted on X afterward. “But they giving him too much credit. He looked like trash.”
Prior to the bout, Tris Dixon wrote, “Tyson-Paul is a weird event, and I can’t think of anything even remotely like it in terms of the level of fighters, celebrity, and their ages. The event is unique, and morally and ethically it is questionable. It is a cynical cash grab. I can’t see it being particularly entertaining as a high-level sporting event. But I’m sure once it starts you won’t be able to take your eyes off it.”
All true. But let’s remember that there was a time when Mike Tyson was universally recognized as the best fighter in the world. Not many people in history have been able to say that.
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Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1
In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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