Jake Paul and Mike Tyson’s made-for-Netflix fight on Friday night has oddsmakers anticipating record wagering for a boxing match.

“We expect the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight to be the most bet on boxing match in BetMGM history,” senior trader Alex Rella said.

Paul, 27, will step into the ring against the 58-year-old Tyson at 8 p.m. ET on Friday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The fight was rescheduled from July 20 because Tyson had an ulcer flare-up in late May.

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 

Paul, the YouTube star turned professional boxer, enters the fight with a 10-1 record that includes seven knockouts. The most recent was a sixth-round TKO of Mike Perry, who filled in for Tyson in July.

Meanwhile, Tyson (50-6, 44 KOs) will fight professionally for the first time since losing to Kevin McBride in 2005. The former undisputed heavyweight champion from 1987-90, Tyson began his career with 19 consecutive wins by knockout, with 12 coming in the first round.

Friday will mark Tyson’s first bout since an exhibition in November 2020.

The Tyson-Paul bout will consist of eight two-minute rounds, instead of the regulation three-minute rounds. Also, each fighter will use 14-ounce gloves instead of the standard 10 ounces to limit punching power.

Paul is the heavy favorite at most sportsbooks. That includes DraftKings, where he has been backed by 64 percent of the money at -275. Tyson has drawn 66 percent of the total bets at +210, with the book setting the Over/Under for total rounds at 5.5.

Tyson has been the more popular play at BetMGM, where his odds have shifted from +275 to +188 while being backed by 59 percent of the bets and 76 percent of the money. Meanwhile, Paul’s odds have shifted from -275 to -190 since the market opened.

The most popular prop has been a Tyson win by KO/TKO or disqualification at +250, followed by a Tyson win on points at +1100.

“Bettors want to see Paul get knocked out and love Tyson as an underdog,” Rella said. “The book will be rooting for Paul to win.”

The most-bet fight in BetMGM history was Gervonta Davis’ win by TKO over Ryan Garcia in April 2023, followed by Paul’s unanimous decision victory over Nate Diaz in August of that year. Paul has six of the top 25 most-bet boxing matches in the book’s history.-Reuters

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