So, Bokolis corralled someone's account and hung in long enough to watch Mike Tyson be carried by Jake Paul for eight abridged rounds of what they claim was boxing. This came somewhat close to retroactively ruining my childhood- some punk-ass white boy from the Cleveland suburbs besting a muthafucka from the streets.
Bokolis hopes Tyson got paid well for this. According to the broadcast, Paul claims the idea for this circus was hatched when he asked a friend, do you think I can beat Mike Tyson? Of course, I was able to rationalize that this wasn't the same Mike Tyson that I had built up in my head.
Already in a dark state of mind, this was a guy who showed up to the ring looking like it was past his bedtime. Aside from sharing the belief that a legacy ain't nothing but a muthafuckin' Subaru, Bokolis can relate because I had fallen asleep during the undercard. Twenty years ago, it might have been a disco nap. But, these days, it is decidedly an old-man nap.
Aside- also conducive to sleep was that this broadcast was brutal. Is this what programming has become?
That was enough for Bokolis to think, uh-oh. Other than seeing a random clip of Tyson training here and there, I know nothing about the build-up to this. I've had friends telling me he looked good and in decent shape.
But, what Bokolis saw was a guy likely both neutered and bloated from painkillers. Paul looked like he was on whatever the current version of Adderall is. Tyson offered a modicum of energy in the first round, faded in the second- at least, that's what we saw after restarting the feed due to the buffering- and that's when I noticed that Tyson was working with a bum wheel.
If memory serves, this was the issue in his final proper fight. His knee was gone, so he tried to get himself DQ-ed and, when that didn't work, begged off.
He didn't need to beg off against this opponent, as Paul is not an elite-level pugilist and Tyson was still able to mostly dodge what he threw. That got Tyson to the finish line, well behind on the scorecards.
Rounds 3-8 were sad to watch, as Bokolis knew that Tyson had no chance. The crowd was muted by its realization that 1986 Mike Tyson was not in the building. Further humbling surely came with the realization that they had suckered themselves, and would have to wait for someone else to knock the GH out of Jake Paul.
The only saving grace was that his reflexes were such that he didn't stand in front of Paul's right hand long enough to get KTFO. This would've really fucked my shit up.
It was an eerie parallel to June 8, 2002. Bokolis was watching Lewis-Tyson in, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio. From the second round, it became clear that Tyson didn't have it and was going to get knocked out. Unlike the nostalgic saps in jerry's place last night, the crowd in the bar in Cleveland was decidedly anti-Tyson. While Tyson was champion in the hood, these middle-America white folk were full-on cancel culture.
It might have also been that it was a generation later, people who only knew Tyson as an ex-con rapist who wanted to eat his children and as the guy who, at the pre-fight hype fest that ultimately got the fight pushed back, told the punk-ass white boy who yelled out to put Tyson in a straightjacket that he would fuck you 'til you love me, faggot (after Tyson walked up and- a work, just like Tyson's slap on Paul was- threw a hook toward Lennox Lewis).
Disclosure- on three occasions, Bokolis has worked this into the act when shagging a bird, minus the part after the comma. Needless to say, there was no second trade on any of them. One was too thick- figurately thick- to get that it was coital shit-talk, the second was repulsed and couldn't wait to get away from me, the third liked it, and I couldn't wait to get away from her.
Just like that night in Cleveland, it ended with Round 8 and with Bokolis closing off another chapter.
