On November 22, 1986, my 14-year-old self watched a 20-year-old Mike Tyson become the youngest heavy-weight boxing champion ever when he knocked out Trevor Berbick. On November 15, 2024, my 52-year-old self watched a 58-year-old Mike Tyson get beat by 27-year-old Jake Paul in a unanimous decision. A lot of life has happened in the 38 years between that day and this.

What did the 70,000 people that filled AT&T Stadium and the 120 million that tuned in (or attempted to tune in) via Netflix want? What did I want? Did I want to be 14 again? Did I want Iron Mike to be 20 again? Maybe I just wanted some sort of proof that age is just a number, and that even in our 50s we possess the power to summon forth our younger selves if we so desire?

The proof in the pudding was undeniable, and like a bowl of lukewarm tapioca it was neither savory nor satisfying. Despite whatever it was that each of us wanted, reality, stiff-legged and lumbering, was what we got. So it goes. I suppose if we were never to experience anything we found unsavory or unsatisfying we wouldn’t enjoy that which we do find savory and satisfying to the same degree.

I don’t blame Iron Mike for the proof he revealed in this serving of tepid tapioca, for as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”

Sometime around 1980, my dad thought it was a good idea to get my brother and I boxing gloves. Perhaps his reasoning was that since we fought all the time, we may as well settle our never-ending disputes in a sporting manner? Whatever the reason, those gloves inevitably served to fuel more fights than they ever sportingly settled. I remember that they were black with a white “Rocky Marciano” signature across the palm, and I remember feeling “tough” just by virtue of slipping them onto my hands.

There’s a space between feeling tough and being tough that some bombastically fill with talk, and some, quietly fill with putting their fist in your talker. Of course, most professional fighters do both, while most of us that have chosen a less bruising vocation, recognize the pain in that gap as largely avoidable and undesirable and are quite happy to just feel tough while we quietly shadow box.

As it turns out, that shadow boxing opponent can prove to be a salty foe…relentlessly present, knows all our so-called moves, takes advantage of each and every weakness, never falls for a feint…as psychologist Carl Jung said of the “shadow self”, “I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.” The dark side…earlobe deep in tepid tapioca.

As I watched the fight unfold, as my enthusiastic prefight prediction of Iron Mike laying Jake Paul low 48-seconds into the first round shuffled by, as giddiness took an uppercut from reality amidst the ever-present commentary not-so-subtly hinting that 58-years-old was old…too old…I began to hope that at the very least, both fighters would leave the squared circle none the worse for wear. Health and humility intact.

I am reminded of what is often said of events such as this, “It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.” I am also reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut once said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

Thanks for trying Iron Mike…thanks for farting around.