‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 4 – Bodywork and the Uppercut

Published

2 years ago

May 10, 2023

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There is a certain type of Joe Louis opponent. He is not defined by the style with which he boxes, his size or his temperament. What binds these men together is that they gained the attention of Joe Louis as adversaries. Think of men like Jersey Joe Walcott (more of whom in Part Five), Max Schmeling and Billy Conn. At a given moment it dawned upon each of these men for the first time that Joe Louis had really noticed him. So many fighters who had the bravery to take to the ring with him were interchangeable. Paycheck, Dorazio, McCoy, Roper, Lewis, these men did not stir in Louis even the merest suggestion that he was doing anything other than what came naturally; he was a shark that had come to feed.

For each of those that troubled him long enough for him to notice them in a more fundamental way, a way that called for studied consideration, the moment of realization came at different times. Walcott learned last, as he took to his heels and ran from Joe in the final round of their first fight. Schmeling likely realized in the moment his back was broken by a Louis punch in their rematch. Conn recognized his predicament as he came to from an inexplicable reverie in his dressing room before his own second fight with Louis long enough to mutter, “this will be the worst fight ever” and trudging to the ring with the same expectation of a positive outcome as a man heading to the gallows.

And what of Arturo Godoy, the Chilean jack-in-the-box bruiser who extended Joe Louis fifteen rounds in February of 1940, when did he realise he had drawn the special attention of a champion who always wrought terrible havoc on the fighters that caught his eye? History doesn’t record the exact moment but if I were guessing I would speculate that it was whenever he learned that Louis was working in training specifically to nullify the Godoy style. According to The San Jose Evening News, Louis had been working with sparring partners who were told to recreate the “croquet-wicket stance” of the Chilean contender whilst Louis worked upon tactics to nullify the awkwardness of an opponent who had split the decision in that first fight.

It seemed Godoy had caught the attention of Jack Blackburn, too.

After the debacle that was the first Schmeling fight, Blackburn tended to satisfy himself with a solid training camp that saw Louis turn up and do what he was told. Blackburn was hired in part because he was tough enough to handle a man with Joe’s astonishing gifts but by the time the German had been set up for them, a problem that even canny manager John Roxborough could not have foreseen emerged—Blackburn had gone soft. This embittered, giant-killing, murdering alcoholic had fallen so completely for Joe Louis that he couldn’t bring him to heel. Blackburn complained bitterly to the Norfolk Journal and Guide about Joe’s new relaxed attitude to training.

“You newspaper men have made him think he can just walk out and punch anyone over and that Schmeling’s the easiest pushover of the lot. Well Joe’s likely to get hit on the chin by one of them Schmeling rights…”

The trainer’s total prescience in predicting not just Joe’s downfall but the specific mode of that downfall is arguably the best thing that ever happened to Louis. Little Chappie had no more problems getting Big Chappie to listen to what he was told thereafter. Louis worked in training, only pausing long enough to let Blackburn taste the sweat on his shoulder when, after weighing the salt content, he would indicate whether Joe should continue or hit the shower.

Whilst they talked about the specific strengths and weaknesses of the opponent, Blackburn did not have a modern-day trainer’s access to film or internet and Godoy had not boxed in the United States since 1937. In early 1940, Blackburn and Louis had been caught by surprise and had been run close. They would not repeat that mistake four months later.

“I don’t like other fella to make me look bad,” said Joe. “They usually find out I don’t like it.”

Another Joe Louis punch was about to come of age.

The Uppercut

“Perhaps the shortest of all blows is the uppercut.”

This is the first word on the uppercut in the Joe Louis boxing manual. I hope readers are by now familiar with How to Box. Joe did indeed throw uppercuts shorter even than the narrowest of his hooks, but it was not a punch that he used to bombard and overwhelm opponents until the second fight with Godoy. The uppercut in volume solved both problems Godoy had set for him in the first fight, discouraging the headbutts Joe felt the Chilean had reigned down upon him and punishing every reckless step in his swarming attack. The punches themselves are dizzying. Louis begins with a right uppercut inside, “bending to the right and slightly forwards” as How to Box advises on throwing the right uppercut, before stepping back as Godoy (pi

Burman

ctured) tries to crowd him and landing a left uppercut/overhand right twice in quick succession, “dropping your right arm a few inches and making sure the fingers of your fist are facing your own body, bring your right arm up in an underhand arc to your opponent’s chin.”

A missed or even a landed uppercut can be an invitation to the wildest of counters because, as per the above description, it commits the bodyweight to the same side as the punch that is being thrown. You transfer the weight to your left side as you throw your left. Joe’s problem with the commitment he shows to this punch is that it makes him vulnerable to exactly the type of rushes that Godoy excels in. This, then, is why Louis is so careful to throw another punch behind it, generally his wildest, least technically fussy punch. His balance allows him to commit to this sort of plan. Imagine for a moment the practical difficulties in maintaining balance, never mind punching position, whilst being leaned upon and butted by a 200 lb. man and steering your weight right and throwing the uppercut—now add the technical detail of the second punch (see Part 3—The Right Hand). My guess is that there has been no fighter around his weight capable of making this fight plan work with the possible exception of Evander Holyfield or Ezzard Charles, who were never able to generate anything like the speed and power Louis had on these punches.

Godoy would say afterwards that these were the blows that dissuaded him from his highly publicized pre-fight strategy of slugging it out with Louis. He had lasted perhaps thirty seconds.

Going now to the fight-plan that had caused Louis so much frustration in the first fight, Godoy tried to swarm his way in from the crouch, Louis greeted him with the right uppercut to the body. The punches that come right after this blow are the ones that had made so little impression on the challenger in the first fight, but Louis has his single welcomer down pat already—the uppercut is working.

Just how much he needs that uppercut becomes apparent as the rest of the round plays itself out. Louis spoke after the first fight of his concern for his hands. Beating a tattoo upon Godoy’s bowed head, he claims to have never risked the wrath of his full-blooded straight punches in that fight—there is indeed a noted difference in the Louis jab, which Blackburn has convinced him he needs to throw with impunity in the second meeting—but the straight right stays in the holster. The other punches skit and whistle off Godoy as he burrows in, the angles are all wrong as he gets inside the arc of the left hook and even that messier cross. Whenever a near-to-flush punch finds him, he dips even lower to ditch whatever comes behind it. Through the second, third, fourth and fifth Louis peppered uppercuts into what may have seemed at the time a repeat of the first fight, but that punch was telling. Sometimes he just lifted them into the face or body of the oncoming Chilean as he mauled forwards, low-risk, low-reward punches that did a cumulative damage to his opponent. But every now and again he would turn the style on and throw the punch as it’s described in How to Box, giving it “the slight twist of the hip” that will often “send your opponent tumbling to the canvas.”

At the end of the fifth, Louis told Blackburn that his stubborn opponent was “getting soft” and was “ready to go.” Blackburn hesitated, then told Louis to keep boxing for one more round. The frustration in Joe’s work in those three minutes is there to see; it is, I believe, his worst round of the fight. He’s a shark that came to fight but is now ready to feed. Blackburn saw the redundancy of holding him back any longer, and in the seventh, Louis came to kill. The weapon of choice, of course, was the uppercut.

By the beginning of that seventh, Joe had already inflicted upon Godoy the wounds, predominantly to his left eye and his lips, that would lead The Afro American to describe him as “the worst battered piece of meat ever to walk from the Yankee Stadium,” easy to write off as hyperbole were it not for The Calgary Herald describing him one week later as “still looking like he had been hit with a meat-clever.”

Louis landed more than a dozen flush uppercuts of the perfected variety in that seventh round and to appreciate their power is to watch Godoy lose touch with his own boxing as the round ticks down. No longer fighting to contain his man he now makes half steps, turning Godoy as he goes, opening doors for one or other of those cleaving punches that cost him so little in terms of balance. The knockdown, which comes right at the end of the round, is a sight to see, as Godoy bobs twice below waist height, a bemused Louis looking on, missing with his first punch, but then straightening Godoy to almost his full height against his will on the end of first a left-handed, and then a right-handed uppercut. This is the Louis solution to the Godoy crouch in a nutshell: punch him underneath his chin until he stands up straight.

The eighth is a master class in the uppercut. Louis recognizes immediately that Godoy no longer has the balance or strength to swarm and that he is now only following. He immediately transfers his offense to the backfoot, fighting laterally and backwards making room by turns for each hand. Godoy is a rampart crumbling.

The straight right hand is finally uncorked to dispatch the gutsy Chilean, but the uppercut is the punch that solved the puzzle, won the fight, and opened Godoy’s face like a can of blood-frothed beer. The “dozens” of stitches he needed in his eyebrows post-fight likely contributed to the end of his prime—Louis had broken another one and Godoy won only four of his next twelve fights.

But he was spared the expected body punching, outside of the occasional uppercut. The press had been almost unanimous pre-fight in predicting that Louis would go to the body in an effort to “straighten Godoy up.”

Bodywork

When Joe Louis stopped Red Burman with a body punch in January of 1941, the most telling reaction was surprise. Louis just didn’t knock guys out with body shots.

“For the first time in his three year reign as king of the fistic world,” wrote the Lewiston Morning Tribune, “[Louis] knocked out a rival with a punch to the body.”

The punch itself was a straight right hand, the most precise and deadly of the Louis finishers as outlined in Part Three, this time driven to the heart.

“So unexpected was it,” the newspaper continued, “that the crowd in Madison Square Garden let out an audible gasp as the Brown Bomber revealed this new way of arriving at the old result. Up to tonight he flattened 10 of the 12 battlers who had challenged the reign he began when he finished old Jim Braddock…the head punches were the crushers.”

Burman had also surprised up until that point, doing well and arguably winning the third on a hard left hand that “half turned” the champion, but in the fifth he was brought to heel, cut and bloodied before being trapped upon the ropes and very nearly broken in two.

Louis vs. Burman

“A funny look spread over [Burman’s] face,” said the Tribune of the challenger’s reaction to the final punch. “Then he toppled. He fell with his head and neck across the bottom strand of the ropes and stayed that way, moving only slightly.”

“That was just about the hardest punch I ever threw,” Louis offered post-fight.

The above remark is worthy of your consideration. Louis still had some incredible punches ahead of him including, amongst others, the destruction of Buddy Baer (more of which in Part Six) but his more famous single punches— the left hook against Galento that brought blood from the face of “the little man” in rivers, the cannonball right that left Braddock in repost on the canvas, the shot that brought the famous scream from Schmeling—were behind him. But Joe’s pick—or “just about”—was the body shot he threw at Burman, twelve defences into his extraordinary title run. What this tells us is that Louis is as capable of hurting a man to the body as he is to the head. The reason that he doesn’t have more stoppages via body punches is that he was every bit as much a headhunter as his single peer, Muhammad Ali. But Louis was far too drilled, far too much the perfect technician to neglect body punching in the same way. He used it as a tool to facilitate his headhunting, and so great a fighter was he that he sharpened this tool not upon journeymen as is customary, but upon two former heavyweight champions of the world.

A little under a year after turning professional with a record standing at just 19-0, Joe Louis matched not just a former world champion but a man who outweighed him by more than sixty pounds in the shape of Italian giant Primo Carnera. In the first, Louis ripped punches into Carnera’s head and Carnera did his best to grab his tormentor, closing down avenues for Joe’s more exact punches upstairs but opening up the body. In the second Louis attacked that body two-handed as Carnera’s eyes were filled by what the Lewiston Daily Sun ringside reporter described as “a look of horror.” By adding bodywork, Louis had transformed himself into a lit stick of dynamite, still possible to smother, but only to one’s detriment. He continued to mix his punches in this fashion until the fourth, during which he rested a little only to open up in earnest in the fifth.

As always, Louis is looking to land his jab, but here he goes to the body. Carnera has a serious size advantage and whilst Louis hasn’t struggled to reach him the jab is his way in. When he throws this punch to the body it is not quite as perfect or snapping as is the respective punch to the head. Louis “pumps” his left when he throws it downstairs, often taking a step to his left or straight back as he does so, a nod to his temporary vulnerability as, for just a second, his bodyweight goes over that front foot. Adding a stout jab to the chest, his offense is in motion without his having to overreach himself in any meaningful way. Carnera is understandably but ineffectually trying to maintain distance with his own jab but Louis has a dramatic advantage in handspeed which allows him to close that gap. When the Italian manages to move off the ropes having suffered a handful of Joe’s Sunday punches, Louis again returns to the jab to the body, lowering Carnera’s guard and setting him up beautifully for the feint Louis launches at around 1:50 of the round, a step inside as though he were about to jab the body followed by a shift and a clattering hook upstairs. Carnera’s bewilderment is now complete. He is guarding against a jab to the body, a jab to the chest, flashing punches upstairs and a feint off the low jab. With just two different jabs downstairs, Louis has bought himself total tactical superiority over a much larger former champion of the world.

In the sixth, a scything left hook is added to the wheelhouse right Louis dropped at the end of the fifth. This punch causes Carnera notable discomfort as it is delivered in the same fashion as the left hook to the head, short, fast and powered through the right leg (see Part Two—The Jab & Left Hook). As a rule Louis displays no equivalent to the straight right hand to the body (though he seems to have made an exception for the unfortunate Burman) but he throws his other power punches in near identical fashion to the ones he throws upstairs. For all that, they are rarer and generally abandoned when it is time for Louis to finish, although he does feint a left to the body as he prepares the giant’s coup-de-grace.

Only weeks later, bodywork played a less crucial role against another former heavyweight champion, Jack Sharkey.

Sharkey was there for Joe’s punches more than Carnera had been by virtue of his lesser size but Louis utilized a great uppercut to the body in that fight, straight through the middle as Sharkey went into his crouch, foreshadowing his eventual solution to the Godoy problem. Sharkey’s lack of dynamism and abandonment of his offense also left him vulnerable to a newfound fluidity in Louis as he went round the houses on Jack, landing a left to the head then a right to the body then a left to the body and a right to the head. But these body blows are not the eye-catching punches, and nor should they be. How to Box offers little, a single paragraph which notes dryly how body punches are liable to “weaken the opponent,” but as we’ve seen they were much more. The body punch that laid Red Burman low led him to label Louis “the killer-driller,” a nickname that may have stuck were it not for the fact that Louis had been “The Brown Bomber” for many defences by that stage. The real function of Joe’s bodywork was not to “kill” however, rather it was designed as a second front, a secondary wave of attack to confuse and stretch the opponent’s defence. Louis, like all great destroyers, understood to take the opponent’s defences to pieces. Furthermore, like all great fighters he has a defence of his very own. It is not the deeply flawed defence of legend, either. It is layered, for the most part technically sound, designed to facilitate the punches that made Joe Louis famous and the subject of Part Five.

I hope you can join me.

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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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