The well-known UFC announcer, podcaster and host Joe Rogan is one of the many who do not forget the great grievance of seeing Mike Tyson lowering himself for the benefit of the show ofJake Paul in a boxing ring last November in a very publicized and watched event from the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
It was on January 29 when, on his famous podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan went back on the subject, remembering how uncomfortable he felt watching the fight between legendary heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul, something he would rather never have seen, because of the admiration he feels for Tyson and the respectful distance he has with Paul.
“I’m glad they made money”: Joe Rogan
His guest on that occasion was film and television director Peter Berg, who put the issue on the table by asking Rogan directly for his opinion on whether fights like Tyson vs. Paul are real: “Are the fights real, like the Tyson fight? There are videos of Tyson not throwing punches early in the fight against Paul. A left hook is 100% possible. Tyson, you know, in training, 99% of the time, throws that punch and held back. Do you think it was real?“. Rogan simply replied: “I’m glad they made money. I’ll leave it at that“.
Did Mike Tyson take his punches?
But both went back to poke the wound and went all out: Berg, director of many action films and Netflix’s new seriesAmerican Primeval, said that it seemed that Tyson was ‘holding his punches’, to which Rogan added: “It seemed like a sparring match to me (…) I wouldn’t want to speculate because I haven’t talked to anyone about it. But, my educated assessment? Yes, it looked like a sparring match, it didn’t look like a fight“, he said bluntly.
It’s hard for Tyson to confess whether he held back or not, but what is a fact is that at the end of the fight, Jake Paul himself acknowledged that he ‘held back his punches’ and at the time he said: “I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt someone who didn’t need to be hurt.”
Did they both do it, and Rogan and Berg are right, just like almost everyone in the boxing world?, or worse do Tyson and Paul know it and don’t give a damn today?
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