Jake Paul flattened Mike Perry in a lopsided boxing fight last night, and after the sixth-round knockout of Perry, Paul called out another Mike: boxing legend Mike Tyson.
Of course, Paul had been set to fight Tyson — not Perry — yesterday at one point. Paul and Tyson agreed to face each other in an event staged at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas and streamed exclusively on Netflix. However, Tyson, who turned 58 last month, suffered an ulcer flare-up while on an airplane in May, necessitating the highly criticized fight to be postponed to November.
After knocking out Perry, a former MMA fighter who has found success in bare-knuckle boxing, Paul turned his attention back to Tyson.
“He's tough as nails … but I just hit too hard and he took a lot of damage,” Paul said after the fight of Perry. “Mike Tyson, you're next. … It's anyone, anytime, anyplace.”
Jake Paul set to fight Mike Tyson in November
Jake Paul has made a proverbial killing in boxing. An actor-turned-influencer, Paul has often targeted MMA fighters during his high-profile boxing career. In addition to Perry, whose only other pro boxing fight was a fourth-round knockout loss in 2015, Paul has defeated former Bellator and ONE Welterweight Champion Ben Askren, former UFC Welterweight Champion Tyron Woodley (twice), former UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva, and former UFC star Nate Diaz in a boxing ring.
In part due to his own success before boxing and the popularity of many of the MMA stars he faced, Paul has become one of the sport's biggest box-office draws. His notoriety led Netflix, which has begun to dip its proverbial toe into live sports, to agree to air a bizarre fight between Paul and Mike Tyson.
Nicknamed “The Baddest Man on the Planet,” Tyson is well, well past his prime. Once the heavyweight champion of the world and the sport's most popular fighter, Tyson last fought professionally in 2005 at age 38. While Tyson performed surprisingly well in an exhibition fight in November 2020 against Roy Jones Jr., Tyson is more than 30 years older than Paul, who has fought nine times professionally since Tyson's exhibition vs. Jones.
There has been concern among fans, media, and people within boxing about the fight being sanctioned considering the large gap in age and activity. Before Tyson's ulcer flare-up, however, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations went ahead and sanctioned the boxing match as a professional fight consisting of eight two-minute rounds.
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