Mike Tyson, the one-time “Baddest Man on the Planet”, was throwing no punches on Wednesday in reply to criticism of his fight with YouTuber-turned boxer Jake Paul in Texas next month.

Boxer Jake Paul attends a news conference, ahead of a sanctioned professional fight versus Mike Tyson which is set to take place at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on July 20, in New York City, U.S., May 13, 2024. REUTERS/David ‘Dee’ Delgado/File Photo

Now 58, the former heavyweight world champion will step into the ring in Arlington on Nov. 15 against a man 31 years his younger but with only 10 professional fights to his name.

British promoter Eddie Hearn this month dismissed the bout at the 80,000 seat AT&T Stadium as “dangerous, irresponsible and disrespectful to boxing” and said he would not be watching.

“I’m in awe of him. He’s one of my favourite ever fighters, one of the greatest of all time, but he’s a 58-year-old man,” Hearn told the BBC. “You only need to speak to him and look at him to know this guy should not be in a ring again.”

“Everybody loves a dollar bill, including me, but sometimes the green-eyed monster can make you take some bad decisions and I think this is one of them.”

Tyson, who in 1997 was stripped of his licence after infamously sinking his teeth into Evander Holyfield’s ear, refused to bite.

“Well, that’s Eddie’s opinion, and that’s all I can say,” he told reporters in a video call from Las Vegas.

As for the fight, he had no doubt who would win.

“I’m doing well. I’m just looking forward to the fight. Really looking forward to it. When you think about it, regardless of me being how old I am, this guy only has 10 fights,” Tyson said.

“If I see this fight 10% of what I was, he only has 10 fights. He couldn’t match that. And that’s being sincere. If I’m 10%, he can’t match it.”

‘A NICE PERSON I AM NOT’

Tyson, who made and spent many millions through his career and filed for bankruptcy in 2003, denied money was the motivation and said he was just doing it for himself.

“This money from this fight is not going to change my lifestyle any,” he said.

“You know, I could use a buck like everyone else, but this is not for financial reasons. My life is not going to change, not one percentage after this fight. We will always be able to live this way. And I’m just doing it because I want to test myself.”

Tyson, who was convicted of rape in 1992 while maintaining his innocence, said things had changed for the better in his life but that still did not make him a nice man.

“I try to do the right thing, but a nice person I am not. So, anybody who has that kind of auspices that I’m a nice person, they’re going to be disappointed. I’m just not,” he said.

“I’m not a nice person. I don’t make people happy out of, you know, for no reason. I’m just who I am. I’m not trying to gain friends, that’s basically what I’m saying.”

Tyson, who has a 50-6 record with 44 knockouts, was one of the most feared heavyweights in history but has not fought a professional fight since 2005. Paul has a 9-1 record.

-Reuters

Over the last half-century, the world heavyweight title has beaten an increasingly erratic and sadly inconsequential course.

It has traipsed its gaudy cloak through bust casino towns and dead-end leisure centres, pitching up most recently in the Saudi desert, and been contested in one spurious form or another on all five major continents.

It has survived so-called ‘bite nights’ and interruptions by errant paragliders, and been claimed both by those who deserve to be called all-time greats, and others who, in the words of Larry Holmes, were not fit to carry their jockstraps.

Now, as 58-year-old former champions prepare to cash in by lacing on the gloves against YouTuber Jake Paul, it cannot be long before it endures the ultimate indignity of being scrapped out among social-media celebrities.

In the thousands of rounds and hundreds of venues and forest-loads of hype and bluster that have followed it, the so-called ‘richest prize in sport’ has never again reached the heights it scaled on October 30, 1974 in the African nation then known as Zaire.

It was about more than Muhammad Ali’s audacious and some said ill-advised attempt to become the first man to win the heavyweight crown for a third time, three years after his previous bid ended in a savage 15-round loss to Joe Frazier in New York.

More than the expected anointing of a new superstar in George Foreman, the savage-punching Texan who had scored an ominously impressive second-round knockout over Frazier to take the world title in Kingston, Jamaica the previous year.

More than the maniacal ego of a power-crazed dictator in Mobutu Sese Seko, a man so predisposed to splashing his nation’s cash he would also build a Concorde-sized landing strip in the middle of the forest in order to facilitate his wife’s shopping trips to Paris.

More, even, than the outrageous, opportunist vision of a newly shock-haired promoter in the shape of Don King.

It was the sum of all those parts and so much more: part sporting contest, part cultural festival, part global statement of black empowerment. It all added up to the Rumble in the Jungle – the most famous boxing match there was and ever will be.

Set aside the contest’s extraordinary circumstances, and the plain fact of the match-up between Ali and Foreman would have been enough to seize attention across the world.

Ali still split opinion following his conviction for draft-dodging in 1967 and his conversion to Islam. He had lost to Ken Norton – and sustained a broken jaw in the process – the previous year, before a rematch win, and a gruelling decision over Frazier in January 1974, justified his return to title contention.

The surly, brooding Foreman – at 25, seven years younger than Ali – had waged a trail of destruction through the heavyweight ranks since turning professional after his gold medal win at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Ali might have enchanted the media throng who followed him to Zaire with his vows to float like a butterfly, and his tall tales of wrestling alligators and tussling with whales, but few were prepared to predict he faced anything other than a painful career swansong at the behest of Foreman’s powerful fists.

Few, that is, apart from the thousands of locals whom Ali enchanted during a one-month delay to the contest due to Foreman sustaining a cut eye in a sparring session.

While they saw in Foreman a symbol of oppression – he made one ill-advised visit clutching the leash of a German shepherd, the dogs used to contain crowds under the country’s former hated Belgian rule – in Ali they embraced one of their own.

“Ali – booma ye!” they chorused – literally “Ali – kill him!” as he pounded the dust roads in the days and hours that ticked down to the 4am start time demanded in order to beam the fight live back to the United States.

Millions of words have already been written about the way Ali slammed two right hands to send Foreman swirling to the canvas in the dying seconds of the eighth round and win the world heavyweight title back for the third time at the age of 32.

As if the magnitude of that achievement was not enough, Ali’s ‘rope-a-dope’ strategy drew astonished observers to label his performance one of the most audacious and ingenious tactical masterstrokes in sport.

Instead of seeking to impel his ageing limbs to dance away from Foreman’s clubbing shots, Ali invited them in, tempting an increasingly frustrated Foreman to punch himself close to a virtual standstill, before pouncing to claim the most improbable of victories.

Hours later, the rains swept in, subjecting the 20th of May Stadium to such a sudden drenching it was as if the elements themselves refused to be denied their bit-part in such a night of improbable drama.

Ali died in June 2016, aged 74, having clung to life through the awful fog of Parkinson’s disease for many years after being diagnosed in 1984. Meanwhile the vanquished Foreman has made his fortune selling fat-reducing grills.

But the story of the Rumble in the Jungle has been passed down generations and remains just as pertinent and extraordinary – the night Muhammad Ali underlined his status as ‘The Greatest’, deep in the dark heart of Africa.

-INDEPENDENT

A half century since the “Rumble in the Jungle” was beamed around the world from the Congolese capital, the city is preparing for anniversary celebrations to mark the heavyweight showdown that inspired a generation of boxers.

Underdog Muhammad Ali triumphed over the then-undefeated champion George Foreman on Oct. 30, 1974 in a match that became legend.

Ahead of the festivities being organised by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s presidency and the U.S. Embassy, about 20 boxers from across Africa recalled the fight as they sparred at a sports ground in Kinshasa during an amateur championship this month.

“The fight of the century … is a great memory for us. It’s a cause for great celebration for the Congolese because it happened here,” said Tshilombo Mukadi, coach of Congo’s national boxing team.

“It means a lot to the young people, we encourage them with this so as not to erase history.”

His boxers were among those ducking and weaving in the dusky light at the open air ground, gearing up for the 21st African Amateur Boxing Championship.

“Muhammad Ali was more technical and made an impressive spectacle. We can learn a lot from following his movements,” said Zadia Modestine, a boxer from Kinshasa whom Mukadi had earlier put through her paces.

The televised fight attracted some of the world’s most prominent figures to a country known by most westerners at the time only for its periodic bouts of instability.

In victory, Ali regained the world title seven years after it was stripped from him for refusing to be drafted to fight in Vietnam, cementing his iconic status which has endured to this day

-Reuters