On Saturday, November 28, two of the most feared fighters of all time, Mike Tyson (50–6) and Roy Jones Jr. (66–9), came out of retirement for a charity exhibition match.
The highly anticipated fight featured three undercard bouts, including a faceoff between YouTuber Jake Paul (2–0) and 3-time NBA Slam Dunk contest winner Nate Robinson (0–1). The fight between Paul and Robinson ended with a second round technical knockout (TKO) after Paul landed a vicious right hook on Robinson, knocking him out cold on the canvas.
Tyson and Jones Jr. made their ring walks at 11:50 p.m. and the main event began around midnight. The fight consisted of eight two-minute rounds where Tyson and Jones battled back and forth.
The fight went as I expected. Tyson displayed his typical self, coming out of the gate strong in the opening rounds and landing several hard strikes to start the match, while Jones put his fighting style on display and picked up steam in the later rounds to battle back and take the upper hand.
Tyson took control of the fight early and won four of the first five rounds by a score of 10–9 while Jones looked exhausted in his corner during the early rounds. However, Jones battled back in the last three rounds to win each round 10–9, bringing the total score for the match to 76–76, and a draw.
Neither fighter landed many substantial hits, both threw one or two punches at a time before grabbing his opponent and being separated by the referee. Both fighters showed glimpses of their former selves with Jones occasionally landing his trademark no look jab while Tyson landed a few left hooks, a hit famous for helping him achieve 44 knockouts.
After the fight, Tyson seemed satisfied with the outcome, while Jones appeared more disappointed.
Jones said, “I wear draws, I don’t do draws.”
Tyson also hinted at the possibility of another charity bout between the two champions saying that he planned to participate in more exhibition matches and hoped to run into Jones again.
Personally, I would like to see a rematch between Tyson and Jones. Tyson and Jones are two of the greatest fighters of all time, with a total of 91 KO’s between them, and I’m keen to see which fighter would come out on top.
I feel Tyson would have the upper hand in a rematch; During the fight on November 28th, Tyson appeared to be in much better shape than Jones. This, combined with his style of coming out of the gate strongly, could be bad news for Jones. Tyson expressed an interest in rematching Jones in an eight round fight with three-minute rounds, and in a fight this length conditioning would play a key role in the outcome. If Tyson landed several hard shots at the beginning of the match he would weaken Jones for the rest of the fight, and possibly win by KO.
