WELL…I WAS WRONG
Before the keyboard warriors get their undies twisted into a knot, let me quickly explain why I am reviewing a fight on my page. First off, I review much more than movies and television shows on this site. I write about anything I want – because, after all, it’s my freaking blog. Secondly, a lot of what we experience in our modern life is scripted, unfortunately. We just experienced a heated Presidential election where we witnessed the left rewrite modern history, while turning Donald Trump into an unbelievable villain. In a nutshell, we were lied to. And, I have a feeling we were kinda lied to – again.
The Tyson/Paul fight was billed to us as the fight of the year. Tens of millions of people tuned into Netflix, which crashed the servers. If you watched the stream live, you were treated to an incredible pixelated buffering show, that looked as though you were on dial-up. I literally had to watch the stream delayed by a few minutes so that I could get crystal-clear HD.
We were led to believe that Tyson still had some gas in the tank.
And we were bamboozled into hating Jake Paul, the arrogant, easy-to-hate influencer who just needed his bell rung.
None of that was true. Tyson was clearly past his prime, and Jake Paul, in real life, is not to be hated. He’s actually a decent human being.
It was all a well-crafted story by Jake Paul to get us to tune in.
JAKE PAUL TYPE 3 “Achiever”
It was clear to me from the beginning that Jake Paul clearly cared about his image. Entering into the ring on a car while live-streaming himself on his cell. Wearing million-dollar boxing shorts. He clearly was a Type 3 “Achiever” who wanted to be validated in some shape or form. What I saw on screen was either a well-crafted act to paint him as an antagonist, or a clear way to make himself the center of attention. But it didn’t matter what the truth was. Both options were dead giveaways to this personality type.
Now, Type 3s are quite often cons, especially when they are not at their best. They are the used car salesmen, gym-selfie influencers, politicians, and pyramid scheme-weaving individuals who will say anything and do anything to score a win. This makes them very scary because you really never know what’s real or fake with them, as they are extremely charming and outstanding liars.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE FIGHT
The marketing and lead-up, in hindsight, were manufactured storylines. There’s no doubt that both men trained their ass off for this fight. Impressive training videos of Mike were leaked that made him look incredible. Paul’s training footage, on the other hand, was horrible. But there was no way a 58-year-old athlete would beat a 28-year-old up-and-coming professional. That would be equivalent to asking a 68-year-old Joe Montana to win against the youngest backup QB in the current NFL. No matter how hard Joe would train, he would lose to a backup QB, because he’s too old.
But from my experience as a boxer, I honestly thought differently. In my opinion, boxing would be a little different when it came to age. And I truly believed Tyson would eat Paul for lunch.
Now, why did I think that? It’s not because of the story that was fed to us. It’s mostly because I self-projected myself into Iron Mike.
See- I used to box.
I started in my late 20s and was trained by an extremely talented local boxer who was in his late 60s. Coach, even though he was a senior citizen, still had a punch. And the few times he had me box him, I couldn’t get in on him. His hands were fast, his punches were devastating, and he could hurt you. So, I thought, maybe boxing would be different.
I was wrong.
Really wrong.
Before I wrote this article, I talked to a good boxing friend who also trained under Coach. We both respected Coach and agreed that we would not want to fight him. But boxing is different than fighting, it’s a sport, and it’s very strategic. And we both concluded that how Jake Paul fought Tyson would be precisely how we would fight, Coach. For the first two rounds, we would avoid getting hit by Coach because we would probably get knocked out if he connected a solid hit. If he got in on us, we would clinch to avoid his deadly uppercuts. Then, by the 3rd round and on, he would have no power in his punches, and we could jab to keep him away. We would throw no strong right-crosses or uppercuts because we don’t want to hurt Coach. And by the 8th round, Coach would be ready to call it quits because Coach had a problem just walking to his car. Would we knock Coach out before the bell, even though we could? Of course not, because we had too much respect for him.
And that’s how it played out.
An asshole would knock Coach out. An asshole would knock Tyson out. That didn’t happen. And for that, I have another level of respect for Jake Paul because he’s not an asshole.
So, is Jake Paul a legitimate fighter? I would say definitely. He’s not the equivalent of Tyson or any of the greats in their prime, but he can hurt someone. And he is a strong puncher. His style is very sloppy, though, and it’ll get him into trouble with a boxer in his prime. He needs to snap his punches, especially his jab. And he has to have better footwork, and get his hip into his punches.
MY GRADE
This wasn’t a good fight at all. It was frustrating. Tyson is too old to fight, and Jake Paul just proved to me that he’s a class act. But this doesn’t bring Paul close to a championship. He needs to start fighting better boxers.
GRADE: F
Steve Young
