Can we talk about Mike?

When a fight is more than a fight. Plus, a reading in San Diego.

You’re busy, I’m busy, and the world keeps breaking our hearts, but for reasons that are both obvious and mysterious, I’m captivated by Mike Tyson’s upcoming fight with Jake Paul on November 15.

Mike Tyson is one of those figures that transcends sports like Michael Jordan or Tony Hawk. Except Mike Tyson is different. Michael Jordan never went to jail for rape. Tony Hawk never bit off a chunk of an opponent’s ear.

For better or worse, if you were born before 1980 you know who Mike Tyson is, even if only from playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! on Nintendo or watching him in The Hangover.

Mike has a childhood straight out Dickens. He grew up in dire poverty in Brooklyn. His father abandoned him and he was bullied constantly because he was chubby and spoke with a lisp in a high-pitched voice. His home life wasn’t much better. The utilities were frequently shut off. He was arrested 38 times by the time he was 13.

A social worker took him to a boxing gym and that changed his life. When he was 16 years old, his mother died, and he was taken in by the trainer Cus D’Amato. Four years later, he was heavyweight champion of the world—the youngest to claim the title.

For a while, Mike Tyson was the most feared man on the planet. For people of my generation he always will be.

Who is Jake Paul?

Exactly.

Without looking up anything about him here’s what I, a middle-aged Gen Xer, know about Jake Paul. He’s the younger brother of Logan Paul, a famous YouTuber who got in trouble for filming a dead body in a forest in Japan. Somehow Jake became more famous than Logan, reinvented himself as a fighter, and has his own line of energy drinks.

(Whoops, turns out his brother is the energy drink entrepreneur. Jake does have his own line of grooming products, which is weird because he looks like a muppet that someone left out in the rain.)

Let’s be real. Jake Paul is famous for being famous, the opposite of Mike Tyson, who earned every bit of his infamy.

I’m drawn to Mike for a number of reasons, but mainly for the way he speaks his mind. As someone who earns his living by talking to people and cobbling together the things they tell me into a compelling narrative, I’ve found that people fall into one of two categories: big egos with a strong sense of their own narrative, and people who don’t give a fuck and will tell you anything.

Mike Tyson, as you may have guessed, doesn’t give a fuck.

I don’t know if it happened while Mike was in jail but at some point in his life he started reading: Greek classics, medieval history. He has many interests. He especially likes The Aeneid. Why?

Because he relates to Hector, which makes sense. They are both warriors. When his memoir came out Mike did an event with the NYPL and the German host began the discussion by putting the cover of his book on screen and asking Mike to respond to the image. Mike thought about it and said. “A reluctant surrender.”

As you might expect, Mike Tyson has some darkness in him. He has battled drug addiction. His daughter died in an accident when she four years old. Here he is responding to someone who yelled “Put him in a straitjacket!” I’m using the meme version of this clip to add some, ahem, levity because Mike’s outburst is appalling and very, very NSFW.

At different times in his life Mike has been scorned, admired, feared, hated, laughed at, and loved by millions of people he will never meet, which must mess with his mind. It would mess with mine.

In spite of all that and whatever perfectly valid feelings you might have about Mike Tyson, in this fight he has become the symbol of Generation X. He represents our values and our experiences: authenticity, absent parents, self-determination, say-it-to-my-face toughness. He is the embodiment of the fuck-around-and-find-out generation.

Jack Paul, from my perspective, is the opposite of all that. Not only did he grow up on the internet, he came of age in its most toxic corner where content creators turn attention into money. He is cut from the influencer class. You could say he comes from influencer royalty, a combination of words that makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

The real question, the question I don’t know the answer to, is what does Mike mean to Gen Z? As much as anyone can know the mind of Mike Tyson, does Jake Paul know what he’s getting into?

There’s a clip of Jake Paul telling his dad he’s going to fight Mike Tyson, and Mr. Paul, who probably belongs in the dad hall of fame, not for the way he raised his sons, but for having to put up with their endless shit, looked at Jake as if he’s out of his mind.

(The more I think about it, the more I believe this whole bit was probably staged—like so much of what we see on social media.)

Now for the elephant in the room. As much as I’ve painted this as a battle of the generations, Mike Tyson is nearly two years older than I am and Jake Paul is thirty years younger than Mike. As someone who started training at a boxing gym a year-and-a-half ago, I have respect for both men: Jake for putting in the work and learning the craft and Mike for getting in the ring with a much younger fighter.

Of course, I’ll be rooting for Mike and soaking up all the drama along the way. In his press conference last weekend, Mike refuses to get riled up by Jake’s misogynist taunts. Jake talks about how he secured the deal and brought it to Tyson, which is worth talking about.

It’s not a pay-per-view in the conventional sense where consumers purchase the fight from a media company. The fight will be aired live on Netflix, which means that the 277 million subscribers won’t have to pay a dime to watch the fight when it airs live. This could be a transformative moment in live televised sports.

Some will say you have to give Jake credit for having the clout to broker the deal. I would argue, no, actually, you don’t. This is just another stunt that Jake has pulled to enrich themselves. I do not respect people for their ability to earn money, and the younger generation’s adulation of the uber rich is another data point in Gen X’s grievances with Gen Z. I respect Jake for getting in the ring with Mike Tyson, but make no mistake: I hope Mike turns his face into toothpaste.

Is there any chance of that happening? In other words, is this a real fight? Yes and no. The fight has been sanctioned as a professional fight by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, but with certain waivers. Instead of twelve three-minute rounds, the fight will be limited to eight two-minute rounds. By cutting the length of the fight in half, this limits the opportunities for either fight to inflict or receive punishment.

Jake has fought 11 matches, mostly against UFC fighters, and won 10 of them. The one fight he lost was to a boxer. Mike has 50 wins, six losses, and two, er, no-contests. I don’t know what to expect. No one does because no one really knows which Mike Tyson will show up for the fight. Will it be one of the hardest-hitting boxers ever to step in the ring? A middle-aged man cashing in on a lucrative payday? Or someone who lets his anger and emotions overwhelm him in ugly ways?

I suspect, however, what we’ll see is The Aeneid, with Hector being taken out by Achilles. Is that too grandiose? Probably. The stakes are much lower, which fuels so much of my dissatisfaction with The Way Things Are Now. So much of “real life” is mediated by screens. There’s what we see and what’s really going on behind the scenes. We know this (because we’re all complicit) so we’re always questioning the validity of things, which really sucks.

It wasn’t always like this and Mike Tyson, for all his flaws, represents a time when things were different. I don’t want to go back, and I’m sure Mike doesn’t want to either, but I don’t want to live in Jake Paul’s future.

Reading in San Diego: Monday August 26 at 7pm

Speaking of the future, I’m going to be appearing at Every Prose Has It’s Thorn at its new location at San Diego Writers, Ink at Liberty Station on Monday. It’s a reading and an open mic. I’ll be reading with my old pal Jimmy Jazz and have some books to sell and zines to give away. Come by and let’s hang out afterward when it ends at 8:30pm.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider preordering my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get my deepest gratitude and Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.