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IRVING, Texas — Jake Paul patrolled the dais Wednesday night, obviously offended that nine of the 12 boxers scheduled to fight on his undercard picked Mike Tyson to beat him in the main event.
The only three fighters that chose Paul — Lucas Bahdi, Shadasia Green, and Amanda Serrano — are all represented by Paul’s MVP Promotions. A perturbed Paul wanted to bet big money with each of the nine Tyson supporters on the outcome of their eight-round heavyweight fight at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in nearby Arlington.
“I love it,” Paul said as he got up from his seat at Toyota Music Factory. “I love it. You know, hey, when I see dumb people saying dumb predictions, I just feel bad for them. So, at the end of the day, who wants to bet on it, huh? Does anyone want to bet on it? I’m shaking hands. So how much we want to bet on this?”
Indian middleweight Neeraj Goyat seemingly bet Paul one of his houses, supposedly valued at $1 million. Australian featherweight Dana Coolwell sheepishly offered to put $20 on Paul’s 58-year-old opponent.
Mario Barrios, who defends his WBC welterweight title on Friday night; Barrios’ opponent, Abel Ramos; Melinda Watpool, who fights Green; and Armando Casamonica, who battle Bahdis, all declined Paul’s offer. Brazilian comedian Whindersson Nunes, Goyat’s opponent, deadpanned, “I don’t speak English,” when Paul approached him.
Undisputed women’s 140-pound champion Katie Taylor, Serrano’s foe in a highly anticipated rematch, playfully asked about wagering Paul’s entire purse, though not her own record payday, reportedly $6 million. Paul was polite to Taylor, though not nearly as kind to featherweight contender Bruce Carrington, whose career earnings Paul belittled when Carrington strongly supported Tyson, a fellow native of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
Professional gamblers have exhibited similar reluctance to place wagers on Paul-Tyson, which has been sanctioned as an official professional boxing match by the Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation.
According to a story posted this week by ESPN.com’s Mike Coppinger, gaming regulators from only 31 of the 38 United States that offer legalized sports betting have approved online and physical sportsbooks to take action on a bout between a wildly popular, polarizing influencer and a long-finished former heavyweight champion. Such restrictions are typically placed on events perceived as exhibitions, most notably within this context Tyson’s unofficial fight with another retired legend, Roy Jones Jr., in November 2020.
Andy Foster, executive director of the California State Athletic Commission, clearly stated before Tyson-Jones Jr. that theirs wasn’t a sanctioned eight-round bout and official scoring would not be used to determine the result, which ended unofficially as a controversial split draw. Celebrity judges scored that bout, but some sportsbooks took action on it anyway, which led to threats of class-action lawsuits.
There is no such confusion related to Tyson-Paul. Industry-leading sportsbooks — namely BetMGM, Caesars, Draft Kings, and FanDuel — all listed Paul, who is 31 years younger than Tyson, as an approximate 2-1 favorite as of Friday morning.
Of course, conspiracy theorists insist Paul and Tyson have reached some sort of silent agreement and won’t truly try to hurt one another.
Nakisa Bidarian, Paul’s business partner and co-founder of MVP Promotions, scoffed at the suggestion that, while obviously an unusual spectacle, Tyson-Paul is anything other than an authentic athletic contest.
“Number one, Jake Paul, every fight he is in, it’s either that it’s fixed or that he’s cheating. Right?” Bidarian told Uncrowned. “That’s Jake Paul. Jake Paul has never fixed a fight. Jake Paul has never cheated in a fight. And we have never once considered anything contractually that said anything other than this is a true professional fight. So, that’s number one. And number two, in this instance specifically, you have Netflix involved — the largest media company in the world that’s a [for-pay] platform. To think that they’re going to do something illegal, which would be illegal because this is professional fight, where there are gambling dollars taken in on it, it’s just beyond ridiculous.
“Even if Jake Paul and Mike Tyson were like, ‘Hey man, let’s just do this and have a gentleman’s agreement,’ then you’re also saying that Netflix is doing that and they want to break federal law and take bets on a fight that isn’t actually a real fight. That’s just ridiculous. It’s beyond comprehension that people actually go down that route. And then to think that Mike Tyson, who’s like the baddest man ever, he’s going to agree to have a gentlemen’s agreement with Jake Paul, because he’s afraid of getting hit by Jake Paul, it makes zero sense.”
Paul, of Westlake, Ohio, made concessions to account for the huge age gap between him and Tyson.
They’ll fight eight two-minute rounds, rather than the eight or 10 three-minute rounds for many male non-title fights. They will wear 14-ounce gloves as well, which have more padding than the customary 10-ounce gloves used in heavyweight bouts.
Eight-round bouts aren’t abnormal for boxers with Paul’s limited experience (10-1, 7 KOs), but Tyson has five times more professional experience than Paul (50-6, 44 KOs, 2 NC). Two-minute rounds, the standard for women’s boxing, will be used in a fight Netflix will stream as the main event of a four-fight show that’ll start at 8 p.m. ET to grant Tyson more of an opportunity to succeed against a far younger, fresher opponent.
Tyson, because he is older than 36, underwent additional testing administered by the Texas athletic commission. He was examined extensively after he suffered a medical emergency, an ulcer flare-up according to Tyson, on a flight from Miami to Los Angeles late in May.
Promoter Lou DiBella, a longtime friend of Tyson, is one of the sport’s most critical cynics. The former HBO Sports executive nevertheless believes that Paul-Tyson is on the up and up.
Just don’t mention the word “legitimate” to him when discussing this circus-like event.
“I don’t want to hear about the legitimacy of the event,” DiBella told Uncrowned. “The event’s a spectacle. A 27-year-old, full-time athlete, who’s not really a great boxer, not even a particularly good boxer, who lost to Tommy Fury, but a guy who’s 27 years old, has physical gifts, does nothing but work out and box full-time, who’s less than half the age of an iconic, all-time great heavyweight champion, who was losing to less than ordinary opponents a generation-plus ago — we’re talking the legitimacy of that? No. It’s a spectacle. Can a 27-year-old athlete, who’s really a boxing novice, beat a nearly AARP-age former heavyweight boxing icon and pop culture star, who’s one of the most recognizable names on the planet?
“Can that man, as a senior citizen, beat a guy who’s less than half his age, who’s a full-time athlete? I don’t want to hear about the legitimacy of that. If you tell me you want to see it, that’s cool. You want to buy a ticket, that’s cool. Am I going to watch it? It’s a curiosity. Of course I’m going to watch it. … But a 27-year-old athlete is supposed to beat up a senior citizen, or someone who is damn near close to it. That’s why I don’t want to hear about legitimacy. But we live in a day and age now where if you say something’s real, it is. No one cares about standards or about anything making sense.”
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