The word legacy only sounds like ego to me and it doesn’t interest me: Mike Tyson

The unforgettable Mike Tyson is not worried about his legacy in the world of boxing, a word that associates with the notion of ego and that settles with detachment. The man who was recognized as the most fearsome in the sport in the 80s and 90s of the last century, will return to boxing this Friday almost two decades after his retirement and at the age of 58 to compete in Arlington, Texas, at youtuber Jake Paul, who boasts of having 70 million followers, a figure he cannot aspire to no champion.

What do I care about my legacy?Tyson said in a wide-ranging talk with Interview Magazine this week; I never knew what a legacy was and people started throwing that word around very lightly. A legacy sounds like an ego to me and I’m going to die soon. Who cares what anyone thinks of me when I’m dead?

For others, this fight is a media circus promoted by the entertainment platform Netflix that is only seeking a fortune in a mixture of morbidity and cleverness, by taking advantage of the name of a legendary boxer and a character with disproportionate fame.

It’s one of the most obvious money fights in the dirty old boxing business; It’s not a personal rivalry, it’s just over cash. And a lotSteve Bunce wrote about it for the British newspaper The Independent.

This is the Tyson who won and lost world titles and participated in some of the most memorable, harrowing, but also some embarrassing fights in the sport.adds Bunce; Paul is just a prospect with millions of followers on social media; It’s a genuine promise, but advertising has its limits.

fifteen minutes of fame

Given the nature of Friday’s spectacle, it is perhaps telling that Tyson chose to speak so effusively to a magazine founded in 1969 by Andy Warhol, who reportedly once opined that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Tyson, who once seemed bent on self-destruction with the same fury with which he destroyed his rivals, languished in jail for three years after being convicted of rape and later declared bankruptcy after squandering his estimated $400 million earnings. dollars in the rings, today he claims to have found spiritual enlightenment by smoking toad poison.

That peace and serenity is evident in the fighter whose tattooed face made him look like a ruthless warrior. Today, however, he talks about healing the soul and claims that he has received divine messages.

I tried a spiritual medicine called saposaid the former heavyweight champion; You see a toad, you burst the pus out of it, you put it in a mirror until it hardens. You rub it so that it turns into fine sand and then you smoke it. Then you meet God. And this is what he told me to do.

Fans whose parents were barely out of their teens the last time they put on boxing gloves will make up the bulk of the expected multimillion-dollar television audience. The content platform Netflix has a miniseries about that fight that has captured the attention of fans of boxing and shows.

Jake Paul, for his part, chose him as the definitive enemy of reality show. Even though he youtuber He had only been born a few months before Tyson’s legendary defeat in 1997. That night when Mike, uncontrollable with anger, bit off a piece of his rival Evander Holyfield’s ear.

“You have a youtuber with 70 million followers. No champion has that many and I am the best boxer from the beginning of life, what difference does it make? That makes an explosion of emotion. And that’s what life is about: causing the greatest impact before dying,” he stressed.

It will not be a simple exhibition, like some that former boxers, Tyson himself, have offered, but a fight with certain peculiarities. It will be eight two-minute episodes. The gloves will be heavier than those used in that division, 14 ounces and not 10, which reduces the possibility of damage, although as they say, no matter how large these wrappers are, they can be very dangerous in the hands of a lethal fighter. But above all it is amazing that a man of almost 60 years old returns to fight in a ring and with such noise around him.

Tyson is a contrasting representation of the character he built in the ’80s and ’90s. At that time he was portrayed as the baddest man in the world, a characterization that he himself enjoyed. Even when he decided to tattoo his face, he acknowledged that he did it to look more fearsome and inspire fear in his adversaries. Decades later, he also admitted that that image was a curse that haunts him. An image that now would like to disappear.

In the Netflix documentary for this fight, he recounts that other sensitive and shy side that he has exposed on different occasions, both in interviews and in his theatrical monologue or in his documentary about caring for pigeons, his great passion. In fact, he says he became a fighter after a bully ripped off the head of one of his beloved birds when he was a child in Brooklyn, New York.

When I fought him, people applauded me. Then I started fighting every daysays Tyson.

Anyway, this fight has already fulfilled its mission by attracting the attention of the world, not just sports. Paul has gained prestige in his fights and hopes to offer his best version against a legendary man, but who is in his sixth decade of age.

(With information from Europa Press and ©The Independent)