Mike Tyson Vs. Jake Paul Sold Us Wolf Tickets
Were we not entertained?
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A little more than ten years ago now, UFC fighter Nick Diaz introduced me and much of the MMA-following world to the term “wolf tickets.” Diaz was angry at the time (probably rightly) that the UFC and much of their compliant media were depicting his impending fight with UFC golden boy Georges St. Pierre at UFC 158 as a battle of good vs. evil, babyface vs. heel, nice guy vs. jerk — with Diaz cast in the role of villain, mostly against his will. Diaz accused Dana White, the UFC, UFC-friendly media outlets, and even GSP himself of all “selling wolf tickets.”
“Wolf tickets,” as I understand it, is a slang term for talking a big game without the intention to back it up. Like a boy who cries wolf, or a dog whose bark is worse than its bite (or someone who “woofs themselves up”). Diaz lost the fight, but maybe it’s more important that he gave us the ideal lexicon for describing the build-up to Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson over the weekend.
This was the textbook definition of “selling wolf tickets.” As a few wits put it over on BluSky (holler if you were the first) “i think we've all learned something tonight, about the size of the market for events where there's a chance to see an influencer get beaten to death.”
It’s doubtful that a better summation of the draw exists. Indeed, all day Friday my group chats were abuzz with the desire for Mike Tyson to knock this obnoxious kid’s head off, expressed mostly by intelligent people who should’ve known better. The old salt putting the young punk in his place was the obvious hook, but were we really so dumb as to believe it?
On some level I get it. I wanted to believe too. That finally, this overhyped clown who had fought one actual professional boxer in his entire career (and lost) would finally get his comeuppance, courtesy of the vicious human pitbull who spent most of our childhoods delivering ferocious knockouts and striking fear in the hearts of boxers half a foot taller. Nevermind that Tyson’s best highlights were 30 years old, and his speed-dependent style was already starting to prove a liability 20 years ago. He was knocking guys out when I was in kindergarten, and I wake up every morning with a sore back.
Such is the power of wanting to believe. Even Lennox Lewis, who exposed Tyson’s difficulties beating bigger heavyweights in 2002, was predicting a Tyson win. Roy Jones Jr., who himself fought Tyson to a draw in an exhibition match four years ago, was telling us that Tyson still had the speed and the power to knock out Jake Paul right up until the first bell. The fight didn’t make it to the next bell announcing the end of the first round, before the same guy was saying “Tyson doesn’t have the legs.”
And he didn’t. Of course he didn’t! The rest of the fight proceeded about as I expected, though not nearly as bad as I feared, or close to as well as the dumb piggy part of me still allowed myself to secretly hope for. Mike Tyson lost, and there was never really a moment where it looked like he might win. But he also didn’t end up asleep on the canvas, as so many of my combat sports heroes have when they took fights past their prime. (George St. Pierre gave us perhaps the best gift of all by retiring on a 13-fight win streak. Meanwhile, Nick Diaz was pulled from his fight next month after his girlfriend posted some concerning video of him appearing to try to light a fire outside a YMCA. The latter is mostly how this combat sports thing usually goes.) I don’t really buy that Jake Paul was going easy on Tyson out of some nostalgia or hero worship — while he couldn’t explode well enough to get to Paul, Tyson did retain his ability to slip punches and roll away from danger.
Tyson could still throw big power, of course. And generally looked great from the waist up. But at 58 he just didn’t have the quickness to get close enough to make his power matter against a younger fighter with a reach advantage. Maybe his rumored knee injury made a difference. Maybe it didn’t. Mostly the frequency of knee (and back, and hip, and shoulder) injuries happening to 58-year-olds who are training for a fight every day is why you don’t see many 58-year-olds fighting.
Probably we should’ve known Tyson was doomed from the pre-fight interview. Tyson, being interviewed by his visibly nervous son (that drama felt genuine), tersely predicted a “devastating victory.” And then he turned around and showed 65 million people his bare ass. How good was that? That smash cut to ass crack felt so comedically perfect as to seem staged, like a scene out of The Hangover (which Tyson had a cameo in, and Jake Paul referenced by using “In The Air Tonight” as his walkout song). But if it was intentional, Tyson’s face never betrayed it.
More portentously, that was the moment when all doubt in my mind that Tyson would lose vanished. Any man that comfortable with his own locker room nudity is probably too old to win a professional boxing match. Hey, at least he wasn’t drying his balls with the communal hair dryer.
The nudity should’ve been a tell, and yet the show went on. And predictably, as soon as the fight was over, the same commentators who had sworn up and down that Tyson was going to crush this kid were staring into the camera asking “What did you expect?” like we were misbehaving children.
What did we expect? Gee, I don’t know, maybe the fairytale ending you all spent the last eight months selling us? “What did you expect” might’ve been a fair question coming from anyone but the manufacturers of irrational expectations. But lots of us bought it when we should’ve known better, so fuck us, I guess.
While we do not, under any circumstances have to hand it to Jake Paul, it’s hard not to notice that Gen Z has at least figured out how to capitalize on the disdain of the general public. Jake Paul never had to complain about someone selling wolf tickets, because he’s the one manning the till. I have a hard time giving any influencers credit for being smart, but they do seem to have a rat-like cunning, particularly when it comes to finding ways to exploit their own commodification. Unlike Nick Diaz, Jake Paul was forged in the fires of the recommendation algorithm.
Public perception seems much more malleable, more a thing to be exploited than a thing to be feared, for anyone who’s never known a world before social media. My stepson and nephews seemed to be as excited about the possibility of Jake Paul getting beaten up as any of us adults, and these are the same kids who demand to be driven across town to find the newest flavor of Prime (that’s the Gatorade knockoff promoted by Jake’s brother Logan and KSI — not to be confused with his line of toxic Lunchables with Mr. Beast, a collection of words that will never cease to make me laugh). The line between “public figure I love” and “public figure I hate” seems to have been blurred for this younger generation, if not collapsed entirely. And guys like Jake Paul seem to understand that intuitively.
And Mike Tyson may have looked his age in the ring, but in terms of understanding media narratives he was like a Jedi. Maybe going from unbeatable knockout king to convicted rapist to novelty cameo actor to redemption arc has given him that kind of personal narrative nihilism. He was a Zen master.
We bought the wolf tickets and took the ride. Are we any worse off for it? At the very least, we got two undercard fights that were nothing short of thrilling. Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos both nearly knocked each other out on their way to a split draw finish; and Katie Taylor won a controversial squeaker against Amanda Serrano, during which Serrano got her face split open below the eyebrow from an accidental headbutt, a massive gash which Taylor seemed to intentionally grind her forehead into for the rest of the fight, even being deducted a point for it. That should’ve been enough to satisfy any bloodlust we were denied in Tyson-Paul. (Of course, it wasn’t really blood we were after so much as influencer humiliation).
In the aftermath, do we somehow think less of Mike Tyson or more of Jake Paul? I doubt either of them care too much. And the truth is, Tyson had it right all along. Expressed, hilariously, in an interview with a 14-year-old: