ARLINGTON, TEXAS — When Jake Paul slowly rode in a car through AT&T Stadium to the stage, with his brother Logan Paul beside him and dousing him with the YouTuber-turned-boxer’s own W brand body spray, speakers were blasting “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. The ride took such a long time that the crowd stopped booing Paul — who had been the subject of a cacophony of jeers for the last eight months that he’s been promoting this fight — and stood mesmerized.
In just a few minutes, 27-year-old Paul would go on to defeat Mike Tyson, a 58-year-old freshly unretired boxing phenom, who had been stoic and existential for the final days leading up to the fight. Tyson told a 14-year-old reporter, “We are dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”
At press events proceeding the event, he said, “I’m just ready to fight. I’ve said everything I had to say.” Sports analysts went on and on about how unlikely it would be for a man his age — no matter how unstoppable he was in his prime — to be able to keep up with a young fighter like Paul. They were right.
Jake Paul is brought to the ring by car before his match with Mike Tyson at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Friday. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Boxing is all about pageantry, though. It’s not unusual for personal attacks between fighters to ramp up the closer they get to fight night. On Thursday at weigh-ins, Tyson slapped Paul for stepping on his foot, and Paul screamed with the savagery of an enraged warrior that Tyson “must die.” There had to be drama between them to get butts in seats and in that regard, they succeeded by filling a football stadium, breaking ticket sales records and drawing so much at-home attention that Netflix crashed.
None of the people I spoke to at the fight — from cowboy hat-wearing lovers of the sport to fans decked out in vintage Tyson merch — were rooting for Paul. They wanted to “see Mike teach that annoying kid a lesson” or “punch that YouTuber’s head clean off.”
Paul became wealthy and famous enough to found Most Valuable Promotions, the promotional company that collaborated with Netflix to put on the show, through his natural showmanship shared on social media. He started his career on the six-second video platform Vine, and became even more successful when he pivoted to YouTube. He even did a brief stint on Disney Channel, but departed after his reputation as a chaotic troublemaker grew. An amateur boxing match with a fellow YouTuber gave him the bug, and since then, he’s been on a quest to be taken seriously. He inspires a lot of vitriol — he is the villain in every single matchup — but people tune in specifically to see him get punched.
Every time an image of Tyson appeared on the big screen at AT&T Stadium, fans jumped to their feet and applauded. They were cheering for the hope of seeing a boxing legend emerge from his retirement as powerfully as he exists in their minds. People were rooting for an underdog, for their own nostalgia and for the defeat of a hot-headed young guy.
Before Paul and Tyson took the stage, it had been a depressingly chaotic night. A highly-anticipated rematch between two of the best female boxers in the world, Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, ended on what many consider to be the wrong call. Netflix’s stream kept buffering, making the whole show hard to watch. The feed inadvertently showed Mike Tyson’s bare butt, which quickly became a meme, briefly undercutting the audience’s anticipation of his return to merciless ferocity. He’s always funny, but the people wanted Iron Mike.
The fight itself was depressing and difficult to watch. The people I spoke to who were anticipating a quick and violent showing from Tyson were horribly disappointed. It was immediately apparent that he was tired, and in return, Paul wasn’t fighting him very hard. That continued for all eight of the abbreviated, two-minute rounds. At a press conference after the fight, Paul said he never felt Tyson’s power.
Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight. (Timonthy A. Clary/AFP)
If Paul were really as villainous as many expected him to be, he would have knocked Tyson out. But that brought up early concerns, once again — did this YouTuber dupe us into watching a fight that was never going to be entertaining at all? Is this the largest and most successful instance of clickbait of all time? Was the ultimate act of villainy getting people hopeful for a revival of their childhood hero, luring them in with the promise of nostalgia, then showing the bad guy mercifully and gently emerging triumphant?
One audience member, a man wearing a shirt declaring himself “Mike Tyson Greatest Fan,” fled the second the final round ended and before a winner was declared. Hundreds of other people in similarly expensive floor seats did the same. The stadium that was once electric with anticipation now had only a dark cloud of disappointment looming over it as Paul accepted his unanimous victory.
I marched out of the stadium, climbing a seemingly endless spiral ramp with hundreds of very quiet ticket holders. Their faces were solemn and their bodies swayed like zombies as they endured the near Sisyphean task of returning to the real world. No one had much to say besides, “Is this ramp ever going to end?!”
Jake Paul and Mike Tyson hug at the end of their heavyweight boxing bout. (Timothy A. ClaryAFP via Getty Images)
I walked a few blocks to a closed Taco Bell, where I sat on the sidewalk and waited for an Uber with a gaggle of 40-something men vaping and reading X posts to each other. As they scoured the internet for hope — condemnation of the fight’s mere existence from boxing experts, the promise of Tyson back in the public eye and jokes about how Paul’s next opponent could be a litany of people too old to face him in the ring — they reached the end of their tolerance for jokes and returned to staring morosely.
On social media, some people compared Paul’s victory to President-elect Donald Trump’s, but it’s not quite so simple. When polls ahead of the presidential election were in a deadlock between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Paul was the prevailing favorite to win for many simply because he wasn’t 58 years old. If the audience could have voted, it would have been Tyson in a landslide. In a way, that helplessness — though depressing — did unite the people in that stadium.
Jake Paul announced as winner against Mike Tyson. (Al Bello/Getty Images for Netflix)
Tyson thinks a lot about his legacy, but it’s likely this loss will be a footnote in his storied career that includes becoming the youngest heavyweight champion at 20, biting Evander Holyfield’s ear and forging a huge comeback after spending three years in prison for a rape conviction. People already overlook much of Tyson’s story when remembering his greatness. He will be fine, and he made a lot of money despite his loss.
What will become of Paul? On X, he’s asserting his respect for Tyson and challenging fellow sports villain Conor McGregor to an MMA-style fight, though he’s historically struggled to find anyone to fight him. The Tyson bout was so mismatched that some commentators say Paul didn’t really prove anything about his own prowess — he’s just being accused of elder abuse for setting the fight up in the first place.
Even if Paul had lost the fight and been knocked off his feet in the first round, he still won by getting us to watch him perform, just as he has been doing since he was 16 years old. A Tyson win would have made a lot of people very happy, but in Paul’s new regime, we’re all united in our bitter resentment.
