Boxing legend Mike Tyson returns to the ring. His fight with blogger Jake Paul will be broadcast on Netflix

27-year-old Jake Paul, who was previously successful as a video blogger and actor, and then became interested in boxing and unexpectedly succeeded in it, challenged 58-year-old Mike Tyson to a fight. The fight, which has become the most anticipated event in the world of boxing, will take place on Friday evening in Arlington, Texas.

The fight will be broadcast live on Netflix, which has 280 million subscribers worldwide. Paul and Tyson are expected to enter the ring at 22:00 local time (04:00 GMT, 07:00 Moscow time).

On Thursday, Tyson and Paul paid tribute to the tradition in which boxers often trade insults or even blows during pre-fight weigh-ins.

Tyson walked up to Paul and suddenly hit him in the face. Before leaving the stage, he said only two words to the camera: “The conversation is over.”

Paul, who missed the kick, called his opponent an evil little elf, adding: “Now it’s personal – he has to die.”

“Iron Mike,” who was the absolute world heavyweight champion, has 50 victories (44 of them ended in knockout) and six defeats. In four years of boxing, Paul has 10 wins and one loss. True, not all of these fights were with professional boxers.

At the same time, thanks to Paul’s fame, both he and his opponents receive much more than professional athletes for these fights.

“Jake is in big trouble,” Tyson said. – He can say whatever he wants. The party starts only in the ring, and there he will have to have fun with the older guys.”

Tyson is known as one of the most controversial boxers of our time. During a fight in 1997, he bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear, for which he was briefly stripped of his boxing license. In 1992, he was found guilty of rape and sentenced to prison, and in 1999 he found himself behind bars again: for road rage.

Various information appeared in the press about exactly what amounts Tyson and Paul should receive for this fight.

Jake Paul himself claimed that he was going to earn $40 million from the fight. The London Times wrote that each boxer would receive 20 million, and some other media reported that Tyson's fee would indeed be 20 million, but Paul would receive twice as much.

Tyson was once considered the highest paid boxer in history. As the Times notes, he is not in poverty even now. Boxer is a co-owner of a farm in Nevada where legal marijuana is grown in that state, and his fortune is estimated at approximately $10 million.

In 2005, after losing to Kevin McBride, whom he had previously promised to “gut like a fish,” Tyson announced his retirement from his professional career. “I will not continue to disgrace the sport by losing to fighters of this caliber,” he said.

After this, Tyson held several exhibition fights (such meetings are not sanctioned by any sports organization and are not included in the track record). The boxer has been repeatedly accused of staged fights with predetermined results.

But the meeting with Paul will be Tyson's first sanctioned fight in 19 years: it was formally approved by Texas sports authorities.

True, the rules will be slightly modified: Paul and Tyson will use heavier gloves that better protect against injury, and the rounds will last not three, but two minutes. The duel will take place in eight rounds.

The fight was originally scheduled for July 20, but it was postponed: Tyson's stomach ulcer worsened. In a recent interview with BBC Sport, when asked about his health, Tyson replied that he was fine.

In an interview with Reuters, Tyson said that he is not doing this for the money. “I just want to test myself,” he said. According to him, nothing in his life will change after this fight.

Jake Paul's blogging career began in the early 2010s on the now-defunct video platform Vine. When the service closed, Paul had more than 5 million subscribers. Then he moved to YouTube, where more than 20 million people subscribe to his channel.

Because of his shocking antics, he received the nickname “Problem Child,” which later stuck with him in the world of boxing.

In 2018, together with his brother Logan, they decided to hold boxing matches against other blogger brothers, KSI and Deji. The audience's interest was great, and so began a series of fights between Paul and other non-professionals, such as blogger Eson Gib and basketball player Nate Robinson.

In 2021-2022, he began to compete against professionals, and defeated boxers Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley (the latter twice) and Anderson Silva in the ring. They were all significantly older than him. Then he fought young professional boxer Tommy Fury – and lost.

As Forbes notes, Paul's opponents earned more for fights with him than professional boxing organizations UFC or MMA pay.

At the same time, Amanda Serrano, who is called one of the greatest female boxers of all time, earned more from fights organized by his company Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) than in her entire career.

“I proved to everyone that people are wrong. Let me remind you: the most hated and criticized boxer in the history of boxing before he was loved was Muhammad Ali. So I’m an anti-hero, and people will soon love me once they understand what I’ve done for this sport and who I really am,” Paul told Forbes.

In the sports world, the fight between Tyson and Paul was heavily criticized even before it took place.

British promoter Eddie Hearn called the fight dangerous, irresponsible and disrespectful to boxing.

Sports Illustrated magazine, which publishes “signs of the apocalypse of the week,” included the event in its weekly column.

Times sports journalist Owen Slote joked about another sign of the apocalypse while talking to boxer Lennox Lewis. Before his 2002 fight with Lewis (which he ultimately lost), Tyson promised to eat his children, and now those same children are going to Arlington to see the show. The British boxer himself, when asked what he thought about the fight, rolled his eyes and said: “This is nonsense.”

The same event will feature a fight between female boxers Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.

They will fight for the world super lightweight championship belts. It's one of the most anticipated fights in women's boxing and critics say it's unfair to sideline it because the day's focus will be on the Tyson-Paul show.

Nakisa Bidarian, co-founder of MVP and Paul's promoter, says his deal with Netflix was done before Tyson was chosen as an opponent.

“These are people ranging in age from four, five, six years old all the way through to their 70s and 80s, to people who were Mike fans in the nineties and eighties. We believe that this is a unique combination,” is how he described the audience for the upcoming fight.