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The Hauser Report: Crawford, Avanesyan, Spence, and BLK Prime
On December 10, Terence Crawford knocked out David Avanesyan in the sixth round of a fight promoted in Crawford’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, by a virtually unknown company called BLK Prime. The promotion was destined from the start to lose millions of dollars and seemed to make no sense from a business point of view. The organizers have a track record of – shall we say – questionable business dealings. And the fight that fans wanted to see was Crawford vs. Errol Spence, not Crawford-Avanesyan.
Let’s dissect the mess.
Crawford is a complete fighter. He can box. He can punch. He transitions seamlessly from orthodox to southpaw and is equally effective from either stance. When he beat Julius Indongo at 140 pounds in 2017, he became the first champion to hold all four major sanctioning body belts in any weight class since 2006. He has been a fixture at or near the top of pound-for-pound lists for years. The only thing missing from his resume (which now shows 39 wins with 30 knockouts in 39 fights) is a signature win over another elite fighter.
Spence has long been the logical opponent for Crawford to fight. But the boxing business isn’t logical. As Carlos Acevedo wrote, “Boxing rarely yields to the wishes of the public. In the real world, fans would be the equivalent of consumers and no company in its right mind would ignore, much less insult, its customer base. Most companies are interested in developing a quality product and maintaining some kind of relationship with their clientele, who have purchasing power behind them. But promoters are impervious to market forces because market forces, for the most part, do not exist in boxing. It hardly matters if a ticket sells, a Nielsen point is produced, a pay-per-view is ordered. All a promoter needs to do is bend the ear of a network executive [or gullible investor], preferably one with little interest in quality control, and – voila! – he is flush. This is the business model to end all business models.”
Spence has consistently put a damper on prospects for Crawford-Spence. “Me and Terence Crawford are on different sides of the street,” Errol said in 2019. “He’s just signed with ESPN. I don’t fight for ESPN. I fight for Showtime or Fox. Terence Crawford has got to come across the street.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘across the street,” Crawford responded. “Back in the day, you never heard fighters say ‘across the street.’ What street? This is boxing. Everybody fights everybody.”
Then, this year, Crawford’s contract with Top Rank expired and he became a promotional free agent. It was an ugly parting with Terence suing Top Rank for alleged racial bias and breach of contract. The claim of racial bias seems unfounded and legally frivolous. Not having seen Crawford’s contract with Top Rank and a full accounting with regard to his fights, it’s impossible to voice an opinion with respect to the contract claim.
Regardless, the major impediment to making Crawford-Spence had been removed from the mix. Or so it seemed. The problem was that Premier Boxing Champions impresario Al Haymon [Spence’s de facto manager) continued to take negotiating positions that worked against making the fight.
More specifically, Haymon wanted Crawford to fight Spence on a percentage basis with no minimum guarantee. And according to Crawford, PBC refused to insert a clause in Terence’s contract that would have required financial transparency to ensure that he got an honest accounting.
Remarkably, Crawford was amenable to fighting without a guarantee. That’s how badly he wanted to fight Spence. But the lack of transparency was a sticking point.
“I never heard of a fighter ever taking zero guarantee in a fight,” Terence said in a November 1 Instagram Live session. “That is something that’s new to me, but that’s something that I was willing to do to make this fight happen. I told him, ‘All right, cool; I’ll take no guarantee. I’ll take the less end of the money. Whatever it is you want, I’ll take it because that’s how much confidence I got that I’m gonna beat that man. So even though I knew I was getting f*****, I just wanted a little transparency. I said, ‘Okay, if I’m gonna bet on myself, then I want a little transparency.’ I wanna know things that’s gonna affect my check. I wanna see if the numbers add up to what they tellin’ me. It’s just simple to me. To think that a person would go in a business with a person and this person would tell them, ‘Oh, well, I’m not gonna tell you how much we really made, but I’m gonna just give you this. You just gotta trust me.’ Come on, now. It don’t make no sense.”
Here one might note that asking a fighter of Crawford’s magnitude to fight with no guarantee and without full transparency sounds like Haymon was taking a play out of Don King’s old playbook.
Crawford also maintained that, at one point in the negotiations, two hedge funds offered to pay guaranteed purses of $25 million each to him and Spence but that, in his words, “Al told me straight up, ‘I’m not letting anybody touch this fight.'”
Maybe the hedge fund money was real. Maybe not. If it had been put in escrow, that wouldn’t have been Crawford and Spence’s problem. Then again, if the money had been put in escrow, Crawford and Spence would have had transparency. They would have known exactly how much money was there to be divided between them.
Bottom line . . . It appears as though Crawford wanted the fight and Team Spence didn’t. “I believe in my abilities and I believe in myself,” Terence said. “Errol Spence, he can’t say the same.”
Then the earth shifted. Attorney John Hornewer had been negotiating Crawford-Spence with Haymon and Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza on Crawford’s behalf. On October 20, Hornewer got a telephone call from Team Crawford telling him to stop. Later that day, Hornewer learned from news reports that Crawford and David Avanesyan had signed contracts to fight each other on December 10 at CHI Health Center in Omaha.
Avanesyan (Russian-born and now living in England) has beaten some good fighters but not any very good ones. One of his losses came by stoppage at the hands of Egidijus Kavaliauskas (who Crawford knocked out).
Crawford-Avanesyan was funded and streamed by a little-known subscription video-on-demand service called BLK Prime and was also available on traditional outlets. It was publicly stated that Crawford’s contract called for him to receive a $10 million purse with half of that amount having been placed in escrow as of October 20. This could have been an accurate number. More likely, it was an exaggeration for the sake of publicity and ego.
How did the deal come about?
“These people [BLK Prime] came out of the woodwork,” Frank Warren (Avanesyan’s promoter) told this writer. “I have no idea who they are. They contacted us through the fighter. George [Warren’s son and CEO of Queensberry Promotions] and [Queensberry event manager] Andy Ayling put the deal together. And I can assure you; there’s no way in the world that David would be going to the United States unless his money was safeguarded.”
“It is what it is,” Crawford said after the deal was announced. “I’m moving forward with my career. I agreed to everything that I needed to agree to get that fight [Crawford-Spence] made. But there’s only so much I can do. Al told me, ‘Well, you take this fight or you got nothing.’ I don’t know like the type of caliber of people that he been dealing with. Like, what do you really expect? You expect me to be disrespected, ran over, stepped on, and just sit there and just take it. We’re gonna turn up with BLK Prime. We gonna do our thing. They turnin’ boxing around, man. All the biggest fights going through them. They the new wave. You wanna fight this guy, you wanna fight this guy. They gonna make it happen.”
Okay . . . So what is BLK Prime? As noted above, it’s a video-on-demand service. As of this writing, it charges $3.99 per month for content exclusive of pay-per-view events. It’s hard to think of a promotional company about which so little is known that appeared on the boxing scene in conjunction with a fight of similar magnitude.
The driving force behind BLK Prime appears to be Desmond Gumbs, who has been on the fringe of the entertainment business for years and is alleged in various internet postings to have left a trail of unpaid creditors in his wake.
Gumbs is also listed as the athletic director and head football coach at Lincoln University – a private school in Oakland. According to Wikipedia, Lincoln is on the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) List of Institutions on Heightened Cash Monitoring.
“Heightened Cash Monitoring,” Wikipedia explains, “is a step that FSA can take with institutions to provide additional oversight for a number of financial or federal compliance issues, some of which may be serious and others that may be less troublesome. The list notes ‘severe findings’ for Lincoln University.”
In addition, a November 1, 2018, report from an online publication called Record Searchlight ties Gumbs to a motel called Market Street Manor which the Shasta County (California) District Attorney’s office said was purchased in April 2017 by Desmond and Chandler Gumbs through a company called Earl Freddy Invest C LLC.
In a news release, District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett declared, “The Market Street Manor has become a hub of crime and violence in our community and it is a public nuisance. I cannot permit this business to continue violating the law without consequences.” The news release also referenced “deplorable living conditions” in the motel including the allegation that some rooms were “infested with rats, mice and bedbugs” and Bridgett’s claim that “the Gumbses’ ownership is putting a strain on law enforcement and affecting neighboring businesses.”
A company in the United Kingdom called BLK Prime Limited is registered as a property management business and lists Desmond Gumbs as a director. BLK Prime G LLC is listed by Bizapedia as a California limited-liability entertainment company whose filing status has been “suspended” by the Franchise Tax Board for failure to meet state tax requirements.
These are not good credentials.
Crawford, as noted above, said that his purse for fighting Avanesyan would be $10 million. That was far above market value and considerably more than Terence received for recent fights against Jose Benavidez Jr ($3.5 million), Amir Khan ($4.8 million), Egidijus Kavaliauskas ($4 million), Kell Brook ($3.5 million), and Shawn Porter ($6 million).
“I already got half of my money,” Crawford told Brian Custer several weeks before the bout. “And I’mma get the other half before I even step in the ring, like a week before or so. That way, I don’t have to worry about if they have the money or they don’t or have to go through all those hoops on getting paid. My money is already secured.”
Avanesyan’s purse was $550,000 with no option clause should he win. The contract also called for him to receive partial payment had the fight fallen through due to no fault on his part. Avanesyan’s purse was held in escrow by attorney Leon Margules. The final payment to the escrow fund was due on December 5 and was received by Margules on December 9.
Expenses for the promotion, if Crawford had in fact contracted for $10 million, were expected to total close to $12 million. Where would the revenue to cover these costs (or even a $5 million purse for Crawford) come from?
Tickets for the event were priced from $500 down to $50. In a best-case scenario, the promotion could hope for a live gate of $1 million to $2 million. The other substantial revenue stream would come from pay-per-view buys. But Crawford has never been a pay-per-view draw. “His marketability,” Bob Arum has observed, “didn’t measure up to his ability. Terence’s numbers on PPV have always been dreadful.”
Crawford vs. Shawn Porter generated a dismal 135,000 pay-per-view buys. And that was with two talented “name fighters” competing against one another and ESPN’s marketing muscle behind the promotion. BLK Prime had no marketing platform to build on.
By way of comparison, ESPN’s main Instagram page has 24.2 million followers. BLK Prime’s main Instagram page is credited with 47,000.
Moreover, Crawford-Avanesyan would be airing opposite the Heisman Trophy presentation followed by a Top Rank card featuring Teofimo Lopez on ESPN. Best estimates were that Crawford-Avanesyan would generate well under 50,000 buys.
On November 28, 2022, BLK announced that Crawford-Avanesyan would be distributed on pay-per-view through traditional cable and satellite outlets by Integrated Sports and streamed by BLK Prime and PPV.com for $39.95. Protocol Sports Marketing was chosen to market and distribute worldwide media rights (excluding the United States and Canada).
In an effort to bolster the promotion, 37-year-old Cris Cyborg was added to the card in a four-round lightweight boxing match against Gabrielle Holloway (another MMA fighter who engaged in two boxing matches six years ago and lost both of them).
Todd Grisham was brought onboard to handle the blow-by-blow commentary with Paulie Malignaggi and Antonio Tarver beside him.
On the afternoon of the fight, it was announced that Adrian Broner will face off against Ivan Redkach on BLK Prime in Atlanta on February 18, 2023, with Tevin Farmer vs. Mickey Bey on the undercard. This assumes that Broner isn’t in jail, can make weight (a dubious proposition), and shows up for the fight.
BLK Prime doesn’t have options on Crawford. The widespread assumption is that it lost millions of dollars on Crawford-Avanesyan and would lose millions more on a Broner venture.
And for what? Crawford-Avansyan did next to nothing in terms of getting the BLK Prime app off the ground. Nor did it establish the company as a significant player in boxing. What is the long-term business plan?
CHI Health Center seats 17,000 for boxing. The announced crowd for Crawford-Avanesyan was 14,630. The undercard was undistinguished. The television production suffered from a lack of multiple camera angles. Crawford (a 12-to-1 betting favorite) knocked Avanesyan unconscious with a highlight-reel left-uppercut-right-hook combination in the sixth round.
And a thought in closing . . .
Four decades ago, a man named Ross Fields (who adopted the alias “Harold Smith”) formed a company called Muhammad Ali Professional Sports and, with Ali’s consent, began promoting fights. Smith paid outlandish purses to fighters and MAPS hemorrhaged money until it was revealed that the source of his funding was $21 million ($73 million in today’s dollars) that had been embezzled from the Wells Fargo Bank of California.
BLK Prime’s boxing venture might be on the up-and-up. But it’s worth remembering what Bob Arum said about Harold Smith’s promotional activities way back when.
“I am totally bewildered,” Arum stated, “why anybody would go into boxing ventures for the purpose of losing substantial sums of money. They are paying double and triple what other promoters could afford to pay and remain solvent. How they do it and why is a mystery. Where does the money come from?”
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, he was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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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.
**
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.
—
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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