Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson Could Bring in Largest Audience in Decades
On Tuesday’s edition of Toucher & Hardy, Chris Mannix who covers boxing and the NBA for Sports Illustrated, joined the show and explained how the upcoming bout between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson could bring in more then 50 million viewers.
I Think The Audience is Going to Tune in…
Fred Toucher: Is there any incentive for them to try? Since it doesn’t go on their professional record? Like, what’s the incentive for the two of them to, like, hurt each other?
Chris Mannix: I mean, it’s a good question. I guess the incentive is not to humiliate themselves in front of the largest audience boxing has seen in decades, right, because I think the audience is going to tune in. You know, 40 million, 50 million, maybe more watching this fight on Netflix. Who is going to do, I’m sure an incredible job marketing it leading up to July 20th. You know, I talked to to Lou DiBella, the long time boxing promoter, over the weekend, and I was asking him about, you know, filling up AT&T Stadium in Dallas. He’s like, “oh, I think they can do it.” I think they can get, you know, 60,000 fans inside that building for fight night because of the names of Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. So if you have that kind of television audience and you have that kind of in person audience, you’re gonna be motivated to to to at least have a good showing there. What that ultimate looks like? I don’t know, but I don’t think it will just be, you know, two guys kind of hugging get each other, getting through a six round fight.
Hardy: Fred has worried about this because you don’t want to see Tyson embarrassed. I kind of of the same thought process here that it doesn’t matter if he still possesses that knockout powers of former heavyweight champion at his age. It’s all about conditioning. Will he be able to have the legs and the lungs to stay in there long enough to not embarrass himself or maybe even do some damage as compared to somebody who’s 30 years younger than him.
Chris Mannix: Yeah, the short answer to that is no, he doesn’t. He’s almost 58 years old and he smokes weed every day. Like, we cannot expect him more than the first 20 or 30s of every round to be anything but an old man in the ring. I mean, we’re all going to be watching god knows how many Instagram videos of Mike(Tyson) hitting the patch. That’s great, but show me the video of the next 30s. Show me the video of the next minute when you know Mike Tyson is exhausted and and trying to to recover from those quick flurries that he’s throwing. The fear that I have is that Jake Paul, who regardless of what you think about him, he can punch. Like Jake has a great right hand. If Jake somehow gets clipped with something that energizes him, he throws a big right and he puts Mike Tyson down. That’s that’s not impossible here. It’s not, Mike Tyson at the end of his pro career was getting beat up and knocked out. That was almost 20 years ago when he was locked formally in the ring, against a quote unquote “real fighter”. Jake Paul is not championship level by any stretch. But he’s not terrible.
Listen to The Full Segment Here!
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