Mike Tyson wasn’t taking his fight with Jake Paul to add to his stats — neither the 44 knockouts nor the 50-6 record.
This wasn’t just about the $20 million payout either, though the lump sum is likely the most he’d ever earned for one fight.
Instead, Tyson, 58-years-old and at least a decade past his prime, was squaring off against an internet sensation half his age, he said, so his children could see what he once was — could get a glimpse of one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport.
A fighter, Tyson knows, was before his children’s time. Most all seven of them.
Iron Mike’s kids range in age from 13 to 34 and come from four different mothers. The fighter also had a daughter who tragically died at the age of 4.
Appearing on his podcast “The Pivot” on Friday, Ryan Clark recalled being struck by one sentiment from his recent interview with the legendary boxer.
Clark, an ESPN NFL analyst and former NFL safety, referenced Tyson saying before Friday night’s fight at AT&T Stadium that “to my kids, I’m nobody, but on this night they’ll find out I’m very special.”
“I think it made me sad and also made me happy for him in a way,” Clark said. “He’s thinking about this opportunity that Jake Paul and Most Valuable Productions are pretty much just giving him to say, ‘Hey man, watch how all of these people feel about me. Because that’s why we’re going to watch. That’s why we’re going to show up.”
The fans have showed up all throughout Tyson’s career.
He was the undisputed world champion from 1987-90.
He won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, including 12 in the first round.
He became, at 21-years-old, the youngest boxer to ever win a heavyweight title and, later, the first to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles.
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promoter Don King Walks by his side. CORBIS/Bettmann
But those feats belong to another lifetime.
Before his unanimous decision loss to Paul on Friday, a contest in which many felt Tyson was carried by his opponent, Iron Mike’s last sanctioned contest was in 2005.
“For some of us, Mike Tyson represents something special,” Good Morning Football host Kyle Brandt wrote on X ahead of Friday’s fight. “In the 80s I wasn’t afraid of Freddy [Krueger] or Jason [Voorhees]. I was terrified of Mike Tyson. But it was fun. I loved it.”
On Friday, 77,000-plus crammed into AT&T Stadium hoping to see one of the greatest of all time return to his prime.
Millions more watched Tyson through a sometimes buffering Netflix broadcast and via Antonio Brown’s unsanctioned X live stream.
But Kid Dynamite could neither duck nor dodge father time.
And yet, Friday night’s fight wasn’t for those fans.
“The way that our kids believe we are somebody is not by what we do,” Clark, also a father, said. “It’s about how present we are, it’s about how available we are, it’s about how we show [up] in their lives every day.”
