Tyson fought for me, for all of us

“Who do you think will win,” he asked, showing a crayon-on-paper of two boxers. The black boxer was bulkier but shorter. We were waiting for the school bus, and it was a bright winter morning in the late 80s in Assam. Oblivious of who the boxers were, I picked the taller guy. “No, Tyson will win,” he said with a laugh. The interaction with a school senior flashed back three decades later as millions across the world watched Mike Tyson, 58, take on 28-year-old Jake Paul.
That was possibly the time that I imbibed, unconsciously, that “it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that counts”.
I started following Tyson’s fights and life, getting my dope from newspapers, mostly delayed by days because of limited air service between Calcutta and Dibrugarh then.
Tyson was already the youngest heavyweight champion.
Just like for millions of others, Tyson fed my fights in my growing-up years. Those are the millions who still idolise him.
Win or lose, Tyson can’t be defeated.
That’s because Tyson springs back. He has a thick neck and can take punches.
Tyson was troubled. He returned from jail, convicted of rape, and bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear. Many say it is the concussions.
It was Tyson’s “madness” that was cited to me as an example by a former Air Force doctor to get me off the ring. I started boxing and even became a district-level champion in Ajmer, where I had gone for studies.
Tyson kept returning to the ring and the public imagination.
It isn’t Tyson the champion that people love. People love him because he rose from nothing to be the king of the ring, lost everything and rebuilt from scratch.
He was born and grew up in an impoverished society that pushed him into crime even before he was a teenager.
He engaged in his first fight because a bully killed his bird by breaking its neck.
He would be arrested multiple times. It was at a juvenile correctional facility that he was introduced to boxing. The coach adopted him. The story from there is known to all.
Tyson fought his way up, unlike YouTuber Jake Paul, who beat him in the ring on Saturday.
Paul was born in 1997, the year Tyson bit off Holyfield’s ear and fought the police in an unforgettable moment.
Jake Paul’s father gave him and his brother, Logan Paul, a camera, and they shot to fame, feeding social media their crazy clips.
Tyson, who earned around $400 million in the ring, filed for bankruptcy in 2003 due to a reckless and lavish life.
At the time when Tyson was rebuilding his life all over again, Paul had millions in his account and became a nuisance to his neighbours. He had too much money and didn’t know what to do with it. He was drifting. So, he took to boxing.
Boxing would become the saviour for both Tyson and Jake Paul. It would help one to punch out of poverty, while it taught the other to be disciplined.
It was Jake who needed this fight more than Tyson, who was happy with his family and birds. Tyson was worth $10 million and was doing fine with Tyson 2.0 cannabis brand and entertainment gigs.
But which boxer can refuse a spectacle, the deafening cheers of thousands and the eyeballs of millions?
While Paul made $40 million with his company — Most Valuable Promotions — coordinating the fight with Netflix, Tyson got just $20 million.
Tyson, the legend of the pre-internet era, fell prey to commercial cunning, which an OTT giant was drooling to milk.
But even stepping into the ring at 58, Tyson was taking an exceptional challenge.
This is exactly why Tyson was fighting our fight inside the ring on Saturday. It was a fight between satisfaction and brutal commerce, of sanity vs madness, and ultimately, the fight to remain human. It is also the courage to play by new rules of a new world. And he promised to return to the ring.
There will be many questions. Should the 58-year-old Tyson have stepped into the ring to be out-punched by a 28-year-old whose claim to fame is puff content and a few fights? Was it even a fight befitting the legend? But even as he lost, Tyson proved the strength of human will, the beauty of being a person of flesh and blood, never willing to give up. And suddenly, there’s hope for the boy from Assam as he ages. Not everything can be taken away by age, and the age of ruthlessness. We will play by the new rules, and remain undefeated.