‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 3 – The Right Hand

Published

2 years ago

May 5, 2023

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The Afro American was in Johnny Paycheck’s dressing room only minutes after his devastating knockout loss to Joe Louis in the second round of their March 1940 heavyweight title fight. Louis had been champion for three years and Johnny was his ninth successful defence. No press ever had access to a Louis knockout victim so soon after the offending punch and the sight made quite an impression.

His legs “still quivering” as his brain continued to try to absorb the catastrophic messages of disaster Louis had inflicted upon it, still fear-stricken, in a state of wonderment” Paycheck spoke with Art Carter, The Afro’s sports editor, “slowly and softly.”

“God, how that man can hit. I don’t remember anything after the first knockdown.”

The Afro American did not go easy on Paycheck in thanks for this easy access. Under a banner headline naming him “A Pathetic Figure” they went on to describe him as “a pathetic loser.” If Paycheck was pathetic, he was no more or less so than the Titanic right after it was ripped opened by the iceberg. Paycheck reacted courageously in my opinion, campaigning briefly and redundantly for a rematch.

Perhaps he believed lightning couldn’t strike in the same place twice.

For it was indeed thunder and lightning that laid him low in the shape of two of the most devastatingly effective punches in boxing history, two blows tipped by the same spear: the Joe Louis right hand.

The Straight Right

The straight right hand that won Joe Louis the heavyweight title of the world drove Jim Braddock’s gumshield through his top lip and opened a wound that would require twenty-three stitches. A crimson stain “a foot in diameter” spread across the canvas as the referee tolled off the ten. Louis had thrown a perfect punch by the highest of standards—his own.

“The straight right is one of the most dangerous blows in boxing,” says the Joe Louis manual How to Box. “It is always preceded by the left lead and carries lots of force.”

Louis had indeed preceded this murderous straight right with a left hand and it is an interesting one. Written up in the press almost exclusively as a “left to the ribs,” this is how the punch is generally described even in modern books on both Braddock and Louis, when in fact Joe throws a left hook at Braddock’s left bicep. At the beginning of the action, the champion is guarding against the murderous right hand with his left hand held high, running interference through Joe’s arch of attack. Whilst Louis probably could have pecked a right hand across that left, he couldn’t have thrown the punch exactly as it is described in How to Box without compromising his position. The hook Louis threw was far more devastating than the reported shot to the ribs and I do not believe for even one moment that this was a happy accident. Louis positions himself for the left hook – readers of Part 2 of this series will note that the punch is channelled primarily through Joe’s right leg—and then throws it within the parameters of his kill-zone, defined by the limits of his balance, which will be familiar to readers of Part 1. Braddock has taken no evasive action. The punch to the biceps does not seem to alarm him.

But it should have. It allowed Louis to commit to the mechanics of the straight right hand with impunity.

“Shift your weight to the left leg and wing the right side of your body forwards, driving your right fist straight out.”

A note must be made here of how easily Louis is able to transfer the weight to his left leg from his right behind a left hook. As Louis comes forward behind his left he transfers from right to left with naturalism. There is no moment for adjustment between the left leg taking the weight of the hook then the straight right, as described by Joe Frazier (see Part 2). Louis’ straight right is a fire that burns the oxygen the left hook produces rather than a punch that hinders it with minor reorganisations. It is the most natural pairing imaginable and no other heavyweight in history, to my knowledge, throws these two punches in this manner.

“Try to drive through your aim, and not just at it.”

After leading with the left, Louis would often cock his right hand in a salute to his intended victim, his elbow still holding position at his ribs whilst the right pointed straight to the heavens before launching it forwards at the exact moment he transfers his weight. This creates a wind-up that deals almost exclusively with straight lines. The title-winning right hand was such a punch, but Louis never made do with impact. This perfect punch ripped through Braddock’s face, scarring him for life, continued through the target and down, terminating finally at his hips, perpendicular to his thigh. His head remained poised though, maintaining a rigid balance through his lead leg and torso—he looks briefly like a pool player about to attempt a particularly tricky shot—and then Braddock is falling bonelessly to the canvas, seemingly in four separate pieces, wet and lifeless but curiously unruffled, a child counting out the 100 for hide-and-go-seek. Whether you believe Braddock when he said he could have gotten up but “saw no point” or the newspapermen at ringside who deemed him insensible, it is hard to doubt that Braddock wouldn’t have risen even if the referee had counted to such a number himself. All agreed that the punch was amongst the loudest ever heard at ringside, the audio and visual combining to make The Cinderella Man seem the victim of a gunshot.

Such punches are rare for most fighters, but not for Louis. Returning to March of 1940 and the Louis destruction of Paycheck, the first knockdown is the result of a similar blow. Only seconds into the first, Louis had bundled, jabbed and battered a clearly intimidated Paycheck back to the ropes. Then, the right. As a punch it is not quite the equal of the one that ended Braddock for several reasons. Firstly, the leading jab missed the mark, reaching the point of Paycheck’s chin but failing to get over as the challenger pulled his head back and to his left in the moment that Louis pushed forwards onto his left foot, firing his right. Having failed to get his man under control with the jab, Louis found himself fully extended with the right resulting in a lack of the follow-through seen on the title-winning punch. Instead of driving his whole forearm though a rebounding opponent who has just been jabbed, he got the point of Paycheck’s chin and another inch whilst his positioning is clearly slightly off as the challenger has managed to edge his way outside of the straight-armed portion of the champion’s kill-zone. The vibration jolted the fallen fighter all the way to his ankles. This, a less perfect version of the Louis straight right, is the punch that separated Paycheck from his memory. Likely a blessing, he never would be able to recall the moments between his bravely regaining his feet and the painful journey to the dressing room where he was able to express his wonderment to The Afro American.

Up at nine, Paycheck is driven to a neutral corner, but has the wherewithal to block the next lightning Louis right hand. Recognizing his man is ready to be taken, Louis tries to set up a second right hand with a left jab. The straight right is often the finishing punch of choice for the Brown Bomber, although the left hook he tags on behind it for an effortless three-punch combination is a nice insurance policy. Paycheck avoids being stopped here by jabbing his left into the air creating a break with his own forearm which he’s able to apply to the Louis right as it zips past—this transforms the punch from a scalpel to a club and Johnny is able to survive.

Somehow he found his legs for the second round but his footwork was skittish. Gliding, clever footwork is arguably a part of the recipe for success against Louis but static small moves and feints do not impress him. Any boxer moving his feet but remaining in the kill-zone is playing right into Joe’s hands. He is a fighter that is programmed to destroy what is in front of him and the details are not particularly relevant. This mistake had cost Paycheck a nightmare start, and that pattern was set to continue. Remaining disciplined, Louis jabbed his opponent back keeping himself firmly in range but throwing only a probing left hand for the first few seconds, working on his timing before firing, at thirty-one seconds, the punch he had been brewing since the bell for round two.

It was all the more shocking for the fact that he had been “shufflin’ Joe” only seconds before, moving forwards in those small, measured steps, looking like the fighter some casual fans have come to misunderstand, especially post-Tyson. These gradual moves, these narrow approaches, these “shuffles” are the equivalent of Tyson’s menacing bull-rushes. They are bought with less energy but are layered with just as much menace and require nothing like the admittedly impressive physical acrobatics Tyson is forced to perform to close the distance.

As a punch, it may be even more perfect than the one that pole-axed Braddock. Just as he did then, Louis gets all his weight onto his front foot and follows through all the way, his forearm running horizontal to the black strip on his trunks before it comes to rest as Paycheck is rocked all the way back on his heels before collapsing at Joe’s feet, flat on his back. Louis engineered the punch so that Paycheck was circling into it as it landed, making it even more calamitous to the victim’s senses, a veritable iceberg of a punch, un-survivable for even the unsinkable.

I say engineered and I mean it. There is a final adjustment of the feet as Louis lands the jab that unlocked the final gate keeping him at distance. Coming that little bit closer allowed Louis to get outside Paycheck and drive his right through his victim’s left jaw and on as the recipient moves to his left. Throwing the punch without the adjustment would have seen him land straight-down-the-pipe on an opponent who is going away, still possibly lethal for a man as hurt as Paycheck but perhaps not the ultimate in killing punches, which is what it became as Louis made that move inside. It seems a small thing, but it is hard to teach and hard to learn and it requires both a cool head and sublime technique to execute. It is the difference between being a good puncher and good technician and a great puncher and great technician.

But in a roundabout way it reveals a weakness in the punch—and in Louis.

The killing field for Joe’s straight right is extremely narrow. As stated above, finding comparable punching technicians is not easy but as an out-fighter, the great strawweight champion Ricardo Lopez is perhaps comparable. Nothing like Joe’s equal as an infighter or short arm puncher, at distance the little man executes in combination as well as anyone and although he lacks the killing power of Joe’s straight right, I would consider him more flexible. He found ways to reach with the punch, to stab with it. He can be seen using it as a reverse jab. Most of all the width across which he is willing to throw it is much wider, his targeting for the punch is less impacted by tunnel vision. Louis has to bring his opponent into a very specific kill-zone to activate the trigger for that punch. He is arguably too much the perfectionist. He lets opponents get away—he let Billy Conn get away for a spell —because Conn could read and stay out of the narrow cone where the Louis straight gets lit up in.

For the knockout of Johnny Paycheck Louis used a covering jab and footwork to engineer an opening two inches across and then landed a technically flawless punch on that opening thereby creating a finisher which almost no fighter in any era would have survived. That is wonderful skill, and it must not be forgotten or minimized. But if there was a flaw in the punch it was the same flaw that would dog Louis for his entire career and beyond—that he was too specific. Whilst the beautiful improvisation of a left hook to Braddock’s biceps in order to facilitate a clear path for the narrow trench the straight right needed can dispel notions of stiffness in his boxing to a degree, Louis still needed a dirty counterpart to this precision punch.

The rolling thunder.

The Right Cross

What How to Box calls the right cross would most likely be referred to today as the overhand right. But as the great man once said: “What’s in a name?”

How to Box: “In order for the right cross to have the proper effect it should be remembered that its success depends upon the speed with which it is carried out.”

By any other name we recognize this as truth. The overhand right, the right cross, whatever it is named, the slower version is an open invitation to a counter. Of all the punches it is the most difficult to neaten up due simply due to the natural arc. Whilst every other punch tends to work in terms of the distance between point A and point B where A is the fist and B is the target area, the right cross travels a longer path as a consequence of form.

“Assuming the proper stance,” Joe Louis and ghostwriter Edward Mallory continue, “bend your body slightly forward from the waist, then throwing your body power into it, bring your right arm up, over and across (making almost a complete semi-circle).”

In 1937, Bob Pastor had boxed ten rounds with Joe, making the scheduled distance. Although he was soundly beaten, gaining one round on the two judges’ cards and the referee giving him nothing, Pastor celebrated like he had won the fight and the image seemed to resonate with the public. Pastor gathered himself for a shot at Joe’s world title in late 1939. Louis had been frustrated if not befuddled by Pastor’s tactics in the first fight and was determined to stamp his authority early in the rematch. The right cross was to be his weapon of choice.

Pastor’s tactics are interesting because they are a more realistic version of Paycheck’s later tactics, and, I would argue, part of a double foundation for Billy Conn’s strategy against Louis (along with some of the tougher lessons Fritzie Zivic taught him). Showing genuine mobility rather than Paycheck‘s queer half-feints and a sharp offense when Louis steps into range is a very reasonable strategy on paper. Unfortunately, Louis had already measured his man in that first fight and Joe and Chappie Blackburn had their tactics in place. Louis prods with his jab, an almost feint, the blinder as the old-timers called it, before slashing with his right cross. Louis doesn’t fight for position or use the left as a covering measure to reposition or to swat defensive ramparts out of the way; he uses it as a distraction, a killdeer bird, a lie, a message that the attack is weak.

The right hand he throws behind it is a punch far less fussy than the straight. It doesn’t need to be nursed into position and is the dirtiest punch in the Louis arsenal from the technical perspective. He lands it less than a minute into the fight against Pastor in 1939 behind the flapping pretty-birdy left. Pastor took it high on the head which likely saved him from an immediate count. Sagging into the ropes with his back to the camera, Bob’s expression is not revealed but he does seem to pause for a moment in consideration of the hardest punch Louis had landed on him up until that point—not even the punches Joe managed to get across in the first fight had prepared him for that one.

Pastor comes back at Louis and they maul momentarily before Joe, without taking a step back or to the side, makes space for another cross. It’s a reactive punch, thrown in answer to the tiny amount of room Pastor provides as he fights for his own balance. Louis follows all the way through on this punch, just as he does on the straight, his hips turned eighty degrees, Pastor turns with him under the force of the blow and as the punch finally comes to rest the two are looking away from their own fight, each of them looking out across the ring and into the 33,000 strong crowd before Louis snaps back into position and Pastor crumbles to his knees. How to Box insists that you throw the punch “with all the energy and strength you possess” and Joe commits to that tenant with enthusiasm, but what is displayed here is his continued control of total balance even whilst following through on such a punch. On the rare occasions his balance is compromised it is generally this punch that has caused the blip. But for the most part he arcs the punch as he describes, rockets through the opponent (or even misses) but remains welded to the canvas, his torso returning smoothly to front and centre after the follow-through. Watching the great heavyweights throw this punch one comes to understand how rare a talent this is. Even men like Dempsey and Tyson, compact power-hitters who also trade off balance and speed, can struggle behind.

But for all this, Pastor is up at one, Louis closes quickly and treats him to a straight right—behind a jab, naturally—which doesn’t quite make the cut as a Louis punch, appearing to hit at rather than through his man. This time Pastor gets up at nine and although he looks in control of his faculties as he hobbles back to ring centre streaked in resin, he looks very much the new boy at school, unsure just how far his new playmate is willing to go in this dangerous game. Louis gives as brief an answer as possible throwing two rare lead right hands to drop Pastor for the third count, but Pastor is running from these punches now and Louis is not catching him clean. This is where Louis really relies upon the cross. It’s a barrage punch he can throw at a retreating target, one that can’t be baited into contesting space or trying to punch back. If he was to rely upon the straight right hand in these situations, his right hand would become a non-factor against a hurt or fleet-footed opponent.

At the beginning of the second Louis tries both the straight right, to no avail, and a clipping hook which gets home without the desired result. After that he goes back to his money punch when up against a runner, rolling in the thunder. These aren’t broadsides, it’s not like Joe’s dirty punch is anything other than compressed, succinct, but it’s targeted in a less specific fashion, there’s no self-enforced flight-path or perfection bought with multiple preliminary moves. He just lashes them out there, catching Pastor high on the head with the first one, sending the smaller man on the run for nearly a full minute during which barely a punch is landed. Louis stalks him patiently and when Pastor finally tries a serious punch, a jab, he parries, then shows the challenger that birdy, that half-formed jab again and all of a sudden Pastor is on the ground again looking up.

Louis still requires patience to land, but it is telling that in a round where his fleet-footed opponent spent almost the entire three minutes on the run Louis threw more crosses than he did power punches of any other kind.

Pastor survived the second and spent most of the rest of the fight on the run, aside from the eighth, where he mounted his only offense, arguably winning that round. Louis had limited success but did well enough that he was able to go back to his corner at the end of the tenth and tell Blackburn, “The next round is the one, I’m going to get him.”

Pastor had indeed tired, and he made his fatal mistake within seconds of the restart, trying to jab and then move across Louis to his own left. Louis threw a covering left and then brought the right hand over as Pastor moved. In the end it was almost too easy. Pastor collapsed backwards like his ass suddenly weighed two metric tons and Louis had fulfilled his prediction.

“I didn’t even see the punch coming,” remarked the beaten challenger post-fight. “The next thing I knew the referee was counting nine.”

They belong together these two punches. If Louis had just been armed with the laser-guided straight right, he would have spent much of his career being out-maneuvered. Had he been armed with just the cross he would have visited with the judges more often, likely to his detriment. But they intertwine to create a right-hand offense that I’d consider unparalleled. If Louis has a tiny handful of betters where his jab is concerned and if there is a serious argument to be had regarding the status of his hook, there are no peers to his right-hand offense at his weight. For all that fighters like Foreman and Lewis who came after him were bigger and stronger, nobody has ever put together the fundamentals of great right-handed punching like Louis—and we haven’t even come to what made him really special yet, the way he wove these different punches together.

We’re getting there, I promise. The series is now at the halfway point. Next up for us, inside. Getting close and personal is the last thing you wanted to do if you were actually in the ring with Louis, but it should be safe for us. And we just might learn something.

The photo: Joe Louis Collapses Johnny Paycheck

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

Published

2 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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