‘Iron Mike’ would be more than happy to step into the ring with the Paul brothers, because he knows they’re the big money fight in boxing right now.
It’s been nearly a year since Mike Tyson stepped into the boxing ring against Roy Jones Jr. in a fight that made a whole lot of money for everyone involved. That didn’t stop Tyson and his then-promotional partner Triller from splitting and getting into a legal fracas that may be delaying “Iron Mike” from scheduling another ‘super exhibition’ bout.
But that doesn’t mean he’s done. When speaking with rapper Freddie Gibbs on his Hotboxin’ podcast, Tyson said he definitely wants to compete again.
“Hell yeah. Yeah … The last fight, I broke all the records,” he said. “When I was champ they were my records. I wanna spar with Tyson Fury. He told me if I keep doing it up, he’ll give me an exhibition.”
The conversation turned to the current state of boxing and Gibbs spoke for us all when he said “I’m sick of seeing all these Jake Pauls fights.”
“That’s the money fight,” Tyson replied. “Those are the fights that make the money, those guys got 35 million people watching them.”
“Would you fight one of them?” Gibbs asked.
“Yeah. Hell yeah,” Tyson said. When Gibbs questioned if the Pauls would accept it, Tyson laughed. “They would. That would make a lot of money … A hundred million dollars, they do anything, they don’t care about being beaten up for a hundred million dollars.”
Gibbs responded that he wanted to see someone knock the Pauls out, and yeah … same. Unfortunately, these exhibition bouts don’t seem to be the format where anyone’s getting particularly tested. The rules going into Tyson vs. Jones Jr. explicitly barred knockouts, and while both camps made a show of saying they were gonna go to war, the bout was more of a glorified sparring match between legends.
With Tyson’s third eye wide open and his chill maintained by a mountain of marijuana, we’re not sure if he has any real intent to hurt anyone, the Pauls included.
But “Iron Mike” is right … the money is there if either of the Pauls wanted to do it. Logan seems to be the brother willing to bite off more than he can chew against top legends in the sport while his lil brother Jake is trying to carve out a semi-legitimate niche. With either brother, there’d be enough eyeballs just in the hopes Tyson turns out their lights. But that, as a wise man once said, is just wolf tickets.
A friendly spar between Mike Tyson and Tyson Fury for charity though? Sign us up.