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By: Sean Crose
Give the Paul brothers this – they attract top, albeit over the hill, talent. Less than a year after Logan Paul battled Floyd Mayweather in an extremely lucrative exhibition bout, The Sun is now reporting that younger brother Jake Paul is deep in “advanced talks” with none other than Mike Tyson himself. Those “talks,” over course, have to do with a potential multi-million dollar pay per view exhibition bout between the two men. “Tyson and Paul’s reps,” The Sun reports, “are thrashing out plans for a headline pay per view bout later this year.” If it’s agreed to, the match will reportedly go down in Las Vegas.
According to an unnamed “business associate” of Tyson’s: “A verbal deal has been struck to get it on, but like all forms of sports business, now it’s all about the contracts and money split…Mike is looking for a certain figure to get into the ring with a profit share guarantee.” With fighters like Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao now retired and figures like UFC star Conor McGregor finding themselves less dominant than they once were, the brothers Paul seem to be taking the phenomena of novelty boxing to new heights.
Of course, they can’t do it without big names, and Tyson is pretty much the biggest name you can get. Although he’s in his fifties now, the guy once known as the “baddest man on the planet,” was so ferocious, successful and well known in his prime that Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey, may have been the only other fighters to have previously reached such a level fame. No other fighter has since. That means a fight between Paul and Tyson, even an over the hill Tyson, will unquestionably bring in countless eyeballs and dollars.
The unnamed source states that Paul “is keen to show the world that stepping into the ring with a man once called the baddest man on the planet, takes his boxing career to the next level.” It will certainly take his novelty boxing career to the next level. The question, of course, is how will a promising fighter with limited experience – and that’s what Paul essentially is – do against an aging, well past his prime lion? Should this fight come through, that will be the question millions of people may pay to see the answer to.
