By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart
An opinion piece from the only Donald worth listening to…
Full Stop – In British English grammar a full stop is a lengthy pause, in the US, you call it a period. In the UK that tends to suggest feminine products. Here it means a period of time where I look at something in boxing in a little more depth. I am typing from my perspective of a fan who watches the sport closely. It’s an opinion. It is my opinion. Don’t like it? There are other opinions out there but if you don’t like it then good, debate and democracy are a good thing. If you do like it, feel free to spread the word.
Car Crash Boxing
This time round if he has tummy trouble it’s off then? My advice? Hide the Rennies and anything likely to suppress any form of acid reflux or ulcers. Mike Tyson should not be fighting.
Recently there was a news conference where Jake Paul continued his assault on our senses by having a go at Tyson and the fact, he had to pull out of their fight because of a flare up in his stomach. Nothing to do with being “terrified” of taking on the “YouTuber” but probably a body screaming at him and anyone who might be in earshot that this fight is bonkers.
As many a Scottish mother has shouted at their children across many centuries – “Somebody is going to get seriously hurt, if you do not stop that!”
But I have to admit, merely because it is a fact, that this fight has caught the attention of huge numbers of boxing fans. Most will want Tyson to do what Tommy Fury did and beat Paul. He might not. Some will want to know what all the fuss was about this Iron Mike Tyson guy because they are too young to remember him, and they want to see Tyson in devastating form. They won’t. Some will be intrigued as seasoned boxing people to see if the Paul train can be derailed and put back into its box to allow boxing to concentrate on proper fights. They probably won’t see that either.
To be fair, Jake Paul takes his boxing seriously. He trains hard and he works the social media circus like a ringmaster. There is little doubt that he has put the hours in and for that deserves a modicum of respect. To earn that, he has that. To keep that, he needs more than just the work.
This is a circus fight. There is little jeopardy involved, except the very real possibility that someone is going to get very hurt. Tyson, asking for it to be a professional contest has put something in place as a safety net. It is ridiculously sanctioned, right, but it means that it has to be monitored and looked after properly.
Mind you, many a recent professional fight has had the same safeguards and tragedy still strikes.
So why has sport, which has stopped returns to the ring of past fighters like Nigel Benn, not realized that Mike Tyson might be his own worse enemy. Have they not read his biography? How many times do fighters who have been pulled out of the ring by their own teams eventually tell the macho tale of they need someone to save them because when fighting they are incapable of doing anything other than just keep going, fighting to a standstill, being a warrior going out on their shield etc. etc. etc.…
The greatest desire is that Tyson goes in, hits Paul on the chin in round one, Paul hits the deck and is counted out. Tyson then counts all his cash, invests it wisely and never gets in a ring to fight ever again whilst Jake Paul becomes a boxing irrelevance OR fights for a regional belt in a small hall and begins a proper boxing journey. Tyson is over 3 decades older than him. If this was a fight in a Walmart car park it too would be on YouTube with a litany of comment calling the younger man out for picking on an older dude.
I don’t care if it is over 2-minute rounds or if the gloves are heavier. I don’t care that Tyson has kept active in the gym and is a wonderful specimen physically. Tyson lost his last two competitive fights against Kevin McBride and Danny Williams. Don’t feel bad about saying, who?
And I do not care if Amanda Serrano rematches Katie Taylor as a co main event on the card. That should be the headline, and the circus should be relegated to the place on the itinerary where you would normally bring in the clowns. My greatest fear is we watch a legend be unpicked and exposed. Afterwards the overriding emotion becomes sadness and as he counts the cash and we count the loss of his legacy. And then Jake Paul claims he can go in and fight for a world title, and some sanctioning clowns entertain it. And then the music begins again, the ringmaster calls us over to the side of his stage and starts to herd people back into the tent like the Pied Piper of Absurdity… Perhaps the WBA are looking for a new official and Jake Paul might fit their criteria already…
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