‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 1 – The Foundations of Skill

Published

2 years ago

April 25, 2023

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It’s still in print. You can log on to Amazon right now and buy one for yourself, renamed, repackaged, all shiny and new. But I like that mine is old. It comes straight out of Joe’s own era, has followed its own path through these past seventy years to find itself in my hands. It was printed late in 1948 in those perfect months that followed Joe’s eventual destruction of Jersey Joe Walcott in the rematch of their first controversial meeting, after his twenty-fifth straight title defence but before his ill-fated comeback. A legend, a hero, there had never been one quite like him, there arguably never would be again.

Heavily ghosted by Edward J. Mallory, How to Box was not exclusively in Joe’s own words, but it was a capture of his technical essence. Nobody, not Louis, not Mallory, certainly not I myself can take something as perfectly formed and improbable as the boxer born Joseph Louis Barrow and expect to produce a story fully told with only words. Homer himself, wonderful though his account of the boxing match between Epeus and Eurylas may have been, could not have conveyed the splendour of Joe Louis in full flow, so for me, the task is impossible.

But then, nor can I describe the feat of engineering that is The Ambassador Bridge. The nuts, though. The bolts. Hand me them one at a time and I can describe them to you. If we work at it long enough and hard enough, maybe we can begin to understand the process that brought it together, the building of the bridge that once allowed us to cross the water and visit the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

The nuts and bolts of Joe’s brilliant engineering are here in this book. If we could put this instruction manual to work for us and study the construction for ourselves, what might we find out? It’s an intriguing idea and one that wouldn’t leave me alone. The result is this close look at Joe Louis, based primarily upon How to Box but with conclusions drawn only from the fight films that travelled the same crooked path as the manual, all the way from the thirties and forties and into our possession. No doubt there will be blind alleys and false leads. I don’t apologise for them. Joe walked those roads too, striving for the perfection.

Legend has it that before beginning the fighter-trainer relationship that would help define him, Louis worked with one Holman Williams, then a promising professional from Detroit who boxed mainly out of Michigan. Williams, soon to be one of the greatest fighters ever to have lived, would never scale the championship heights as did Louis but nevertheless is credited by some with supplying Louis with perhaps the most precious gift he ever received—his jab. But Williams is also said to have taught Louis the rudiments of the defence and was supposedly the first man to encourage Louis to punch in combination. “Don’t throw one punch at a time and wait for the guy to fall,” Holman is said to have urged Louis. “Hit him again!” Passed down to us by the victim and those lucky enough to be in attendance comes the description of his first knockout combination, thrown by Louis at amateur Joe Thomas at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1932. A double jab was followed by a right hand to the body before the teenaged Joe Louis closed the blinds on Thomas with another right hand to the temple.

But his trainer for his move into the professional ranks, Jack Blackburn, would still have his work cut out for him. If Holman Williams was to be an unlucky fighter, Blackburn had written the book on it. One of the most brilliant boxers of his generation he had shared the ring with both Joe Gans and Sam Langford several times, getting the better of each at least once. But the fight game had not been good to him. In between matching the greats and the giants he faced in his time boxing as a lightweight and welterweight, Blackburn found time to find the bottle and find trouble. He was a bad, dangerous man with a dangerous heart.

When he first set eyes upon Louis, he famously sent him away saying, “a coloured boxer who can fight and won’t lie down can’t get any fights. I’m better off with white boys who aren’t as good.”

He changed his mind when he saw Louis punch.

“He was likely to trip over his own feet, but he could kill you with that left jab. I figured, man, if he can hit you that hard with a jab, wonder what he can do with his right?”

What Louis needed to learn from Blackburn, more than anything, was how to move. How to get balanced, how to move, how to box. He knew how to punch, but he didn’t yet know how to fight.

“Boxing is built upon punching and footwork,” says How to Box. “If the stance is too narrow for balance, move the right foot a few inches to the right to widen the stance; if too wide, glide the right foot forwards a few inches. Don’t lock the left leg but keep it straight.”

Freddie Roach described Joe Louis as the “best textbook fighter of all time.” Here we see the first great foundation of that inch-perfect style. Louis hardly ever made small adjustments with his left foot. Watching him, I sometimes get the impression he would prefer not to move it at all. His left jab is always perched over that lead foot, ready to be thrown. Many of Joe’s critics accuse him of being robotic, stiff, of lacking dynamism in his footwork. This is not a criticism without basis, but nor is it the whole story. He sacrifices dynamism upon the altar of destruction; he trades footspeed for handspeed; he swaps a natural establishment of range for naturally being in position to punch—always.

The description of footwork in How to Box is so simple but to see it in action is to understand why simplicity is so often more akin to genius than complexity. Louis does as he describes, leading with his left foot, “a few inches at a time, with the right foot following, always maintaining a proper stance.” Louis almost never abandoned the stance Blackburn drilled into him: The right arm crooked, elbow protecting the ribs, “both arms relaxed, ready to attack or defend…chin down.”

His left hand would famously float; Louis would have that error corrected for him, mainly by Max Schmeling but with more than a little help from James J. Braddock and Tommy Farr. But that stance was, for the most part, developed early and adhered to throughout a career that encountered more styles and types than any other fighter at the weight.

It was visible as early as February 21st ,1925 for Joe’s rematch with Lee Ramage. The first fight had seen Louis drop the boom with Ramage ahead on points. In the rematch, Louis would demonstrate the fundamentals that would take him to the title and then beyond. The ring is not Disney—there are no fairy tales. Every dramatic narrative is built upon the twin pillars of will and skill.

Ramage fought on the backfoot, having previously been hit many times by Louis and finding he did not care for it. As discussed, his footwork lacked dynamism, so Louis never tried to get that step ahead of the opponent. He tended not to pre-cut the ring, and avoided getting ahead of his man as he was circled. Rather, he kept his front toe perpendicular to his man’s backfoot, keeping the psychological and physical pressure firmly upon him, moving with him, the definitive stalker forcing the mistake, stressing balance both in the ring and in print.

“You must be able to move the body easily at all times so that balance will not be disturbed.”

On film, Louis dips as he moves onto Ramage, jabbing, and even when he flashes forwards driving his opponent to the ropes for the first time, Louis is not compromised. He facilitates brutal blows with his studied mobility and is within hitting distance again only seconds later. The second time Ramage comes crashing off the ropes, Louis rotates his torso as he punches, the foundations are so solid that he is able to utilise a plane of movement not seen again in the heavyweight division until Mike Tyson, at least not by a killing puncher. Tiny adjustments with the backfoot are enough to transfer his weight around his body to wherever it needs to be for the punches he is using to douse Ramage’s enthusiasm.

Ramage actually boxes well for much of the second half of the second round. He moves away, jabbing, he looks reasonably skilled, quite graceful. But Louis is so fundamentally correct that even were he not Ramage’s superior in every single way he would still be the master. He is so well balanced that he can call upon almost any punch from almost any position, whether he is dipping in and slipping a jab or moving back throwing clipping uppercuts as Ramage tries in vain to crowd him. He can commit to punches other fighters would be unable to utilize in similar positions having compromised themselves. Joe almost never compromised his fundamentals. This near perfection proved too much for Ramage after only two rounds as first a right hand and then a left hook laid him low.

Of course, there were limitations, and these were exposed by nobody so completely during the Brown Bomber’s prime as they were by Billy Conn. Conn recognized early that he would be trouble for Louis telling his trainer and partner in pugilism John “Moonie” Ray to “get me in with this guy! He wouldn’t be able to hit me with a handful of rice!” years before his first outing at heavyweight. Conn was right. Louis did struggle to hit Conn, for a variety of reasons. Most of these are related to Conn’s brilliance, but that’s a story for another day. Here we are interested in the great heavyweight champion.

Firstly, Billy’s footwork was every bit as disciplined as Joe’s. Going backwards he tended to use the same small moves as Louis did coming in, meaning that he minimized dramatic errors and dented Joe’s momentum. Louis forced his opponents to make the angles. He punished mistakes. He did not, as a habit, make these angles with his footwork, rather he made them with the virtual threat of his fists. He forced the opponent to make the angle. In and of itself, this is one of the hardest skills in boxing to master, but it does not pay to rely too heavily upon even the deftest of skills against a fighter like Conn.

When Conn did abandon his small moves in favour of big ones, they tended to be brilliantly judged and perfectly executed. Joe’s lack of dynamic footwork was exposed.

Conn was also very careful to punch Louis whenever the opportunity presented itself whilst he was going away. Grossly underrated as a puncher at heavyweight (fighting men weighing over 175 lbs. fifteen times Conn registered eight stoppages including one over Bob Pastor), Conn’s work prohibited Louis rushes.

On the inside, he set up a brick-wall defence and cuffed the champion, but his brilliance was not so prosaic. Repeatedly, Conn walked Louis in clinches, he tilted him, he pushed him to the side, he tugged upon his arms, he pushed his head into Joe’s face and chest. In short, he did anything and everything he could to interfere with Joe’s balance. He knew the importance of disrupting Joe’s foundation. Bereft of his most exquisite attribute Louis could not turn over his punches in the special way he had learned and get his power across. Conn survived those cuffing punches both on the inside and the outside where Conn’s perfect footwork and granite chin combined to make him the most elusive of targets for the killing blow. If this sounds like an easy fix, take note of the following—every fighter that tried it got knocked unconscious or something like it, including Billy Conn.

From How to Box:

“…when Billy missed me with a zipping left hook, I quickly crossed a right to his jaw and followed it by several straight rights that sent him crashing to the canvas. I had to wait for Billy to miss.”

I think Louis hits the nail on the head here. He is indeed reduced from forcing the mistake as he did in so many of his twenty-five successful title defences, to waiting for a mistake. But with Louis you would make only one.

“Clever footwork does not mean hopping and jumping around,” we learn from How to Box. “This will put you off balance and the slightest blow will upset you. The purpose of clever footwork is to give your opponent false leads…it also carries you out of danger when hurt.”

This is Louis in a nutshell: economy. Every movement has a purpose, there is no such thing as show. He is often derided for this and is sometimes compared negatively with the only other heavyweight to inhabit that stratosphere reserved for the true greats, Muhammad Ali. I don’t want to get into that too heavily here, but as a final word I want to say that in my opinion, Joe’s footwork is every bit as impressive, in its own way, as is Muhammad’s. Even if Louis had been technically capable of producing Ali’s own brand of genius, Blackburn would not have allowed it. Indeed, amongst the many other services he rendered, Blackburn took Louis down off his toes. The reasoning was simple—to perfect his balance and thereby maximize the kill on his delivery. This is what Blackburn means when he says that Joe Louis is a “manufactured killer, not a natural one.”

Louis, by moving conservatively, kept his powder dry for late round knockouts—KO11 Bob Pastor, TKO13 Abe Simon, KO13 Billy Conn, KO11 Joe Walcott—versus only three visits to the judges’ scorecards—UD15 Tommy Farr, SD 15 Arturo Godoy, SD15 Joe Walcott—in title matches.

No heavyweight had better footwork than Joe Louis given his individual style.

But having said that…it’s not why you watch Joe Louis fight. You don’t watch Joe fight for his footwork—Muhammad Ali, yes, Joe Louis, no.

You watch Joe Louis for a different reason. To quote Jack Blackburn:

“Your fists, Chappie. Let your fists be your judge.”

We’ll talk about his judges in Part 2.

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Philly’s Jesse Hart Continues His Quest plus Thoughts on Tyson-Paul and ‘Boots’ Ennis

Published

8 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Luis A. Cortes III

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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.

—

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

Published

2 days ago

November 19, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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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.

—

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 100^th 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.

—

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

Published

4 days ago

November 17, 2024

Thomas Hauser

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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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