Jake Paul knocked out Mike Perry in a lopsided boxing match Saturday night, and after knocking out Perry in the sixth round, Paul called out another Mike: boxing legend Mike Tyson .
Of course, Paul was scheduled to fight Tyson — not Perry — yesterday. Paul and Tyson have agreed to face each other in an event held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas and streamed exclusively on Netflix. However, Tyson, who turned 58 last month, suffered a stomach ulcer flare-up while on a plane in May, forcing the heavily criticized fight to be postponed until November.
After defeating Perry, a former MMA fighter with success in bare-knuckle boxing, Paul turned his attention back to Tyson.
“He was as hard as steel… but I just hit him too hard and he got hurt a lot,” Paul said after the Perry fight. “ Mike Tyson , you’re next. … Anyone, anytime, anywhere.”
Jake Paul has created a figurative murder in boxing. An actor turned influencer, Paul often targeted MMA fighters throughout his famous boxing career. Besides Perry, whose only other professional boxing match is a fourth-round knockout loss in 2015, Paul has defeated former Bellator and ONE Welterweight champion Ben Askren, former UFC Welterweight champion Tyron Woodley (two times), former UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva and former UFC star Nate Diaz in the boxing ring.
Partly due to his own success before getting into boxing and the popularity of the many MMA stars he faced, Paul has become one of the sport’s biggest box office draws. His popularity prompted Netflix, which had begun dipping its toes into live sports, to agree to broadcast a bizarre match between Paul and Mike Tyson.
Dubbed “The Baddest Man on the Planet”, Tyson was past his prime. A former world heavyweight champion and the sport’s most beloved fighter, Tyson last fought professionally in 2005 at the age of 38. While Tyson performed very well in an exhibition bout, show in November 2020 against Roy Jones Jr., Tyson is more than 30 years older than Paul, who has fought professionally nine times since Tyson’s exhibition bout with Jones.
Fans, media and those in the boxing world were concerned about the fight being approved considering the large gap in age and activity. However, before Tyson’s ulcer flared up, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation went ahead and approved the boxing match as a professional fight consisting of eight two-minute rounds.
