Michael Bisping was once an elderly fighter on Jake Paul’s hitlist, so he knows a bit about how ‘The Problem Child’ tries to stack the deck in his favor.
Jake Paul is set to box Mike Tyson on July 20th in a bout that’s been widely panned by serious fight fans. That won’t stop the masses from showing up at the 80,000 seat AT&T Stadium in Texas, or tuning in (for free!) on Netflix.
The obvious issue with this fight is the age discrepancy. Jake Paul is 27 years old. Mike Tyson is 57. There’s plenty of video footage of the aging boxing legend limping around with a cane. If Jake Paul is taking this fight seriously (and he claims they’ll be going 100% and chasing knockouts) it could get really ugly.
One man who has a good understanding of Jake Paul’s schtick is Michael Bisping. For a while, Bisping was another aged former UFC champion in Paul’s crosshairs. “The Problem Child” said he was willing to fight Bisping anywhere in the world — and they’d have to go deep into unregulated territory because Bisping only has one eye.
It’s this shameless level of advantage-seeking that sticks in Michael’s craw.
“He talks about being one of the best ever,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “He just called out Canelo Alvarez after he beats up an Uber driver. Okay? This is what we’ve seen. It’s Jake Paul 101 all the way. He takes on older people initially, people that weren’t even boxers. Started with basketballers, then it was wrestlers, then it was mixed martial artists.”
“Fair play, he took on Anderson Silva, got the job done. Okay? I had respect for him for that. It wasn’t prime Anderson Silva, but it was still Anderson Silva that had won a couple of boxing matches. Then he loses to Tommy Fury. S—. Rethink everything. ‘Give me some washed up bums.’”
In Bisping’s opinion, you don’t get to stack the decks so heavily in your favor and then chirp like Paul does.
“If he was to come out and be a little bit more humble,” Bisping suggested. “And be like, ‘Look, I didn’t grow up as a boxer, I enjoy boxing, it gives me a rush. I enjoy enjoy the thrill of competition, and I’m just testing myself and see where this goes.’ Alright. Fair enough.”
“But he’s marketing this as a real fight, as a real test going up against the baddest man ever. And guess what? The people are not buying it.”
“It’s on Netflix,” Bisping concluded. “It’s gonna be free to watch if you got a subscription. I’ll watch it. You’ll watch it. I hope Tyson gets through it okay. The reality is, can he still take a shot at 58 years old? We don’t know. And will Jake Paul really go for it? Because you’d have to be a certain level piece of s— to really go and try and knock this man out.”