Jake Paul Was Terrible for UFC. He’s Even Worse for Boxing.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / GettyThere’s a poetic irony in the coincidence that the most recognizable young boxer in America also has one of the country’s most punchable faces. That face, of course, belongs to YouTube superstar Jake Paul, who announced last week that he will fight 57-year-old Mike Tyson this summer. Actually, Tyson will be 58 when he fights 27-year-old Jake Paul—for reference, Mike Tyson is closer in age to Joe Biden than he is to Jake Paul. This multigenerational match will be carried on Netflix, and in the announcement video, Paul billed the bout as “the biggest fight of the 21st century.”The problem is that the 21st century has already seen its biggest fight: the 2015 matchup between world champions Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, which made $410 million in the United States with 4.6 million PPV buys. Six years later, when Logan Paul (the elder and more socially acceptable brother) fought Mayweather, the fight generated just over one million PPV buys. That’s still a huge number but it couldn’t match the figures for Jake Paul’s fight against wrestler Ben Askren, which reportedly had over 1.5 million buys—making it one of the top-selling fights of the century.The Tyson-Paul fight will undoubtedly sell a lot of tickets and maybe even a few Netflix subscriptions. But no, Jake Paul is not going to fight the biggest fight of the 21st century against Mike Tyson. And yet you can’t blame him for making that claim. He didn’t invent the gimmick. Boxers have been talking themselves up since Muhammad Ali invented the routine. And you can’t blame legitimate, gray-haired fighters for stepping into the ring with YouTube superstars. The paydays are absurd. Mayweather boasted that he made $30 million from the advertisements on his trunks alone, quipping, “Your kids can’t eat legacy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.