NFL Hall of Famer Michael Irvin thinks the fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson was a ruse and claimed a clause in the contract prevented the Internet personality from getting hit.
On the latest episode of It Is What It Is, the three-time Super Bowl champion gave his thoughts on the highly-publicized fight that ended with Paul defeating Tyson by unanimous decision . According to Irvin, the whole fight was one big lie because there was a clause in the contract that said Tyson couldn’t go all out.
“They had no intentions to really scrap at all,” said Irvin. “If you look through that, I didn’t see one patented uppercut by Mike Tyson. What if Mike Tyson hit him with an uppercut? Then I heard some people talking about they put that in the contract. He couldn’t body and then uppercut. Like, how can you put that in a fight contract?”
He continued, “You got all these people out here, and he couldn’t body him and do that patented uppercut. All of that is Mike Tyson is not Mike Tyson anyway, and now you taking away Mike Tyson’s best gift, which was that uppercut. Man, that’s a big lie to me. That’s like making me play a game without running a slant route in the deep end or the deep out. You do what you do best. If they take that away you not that dude anymore, and they took that away.”
DJ Whoo Kid said he heard something similar regarding the fight contract. According to Whoo Kid, both fighters could legally not hit each other. If Tyson were to fully connect with Paul.
Judges ruled in favor of Paul with a score of 80-72, 79-73, and 79-73. According to the scorecard, Tyson landed 18 punches out of 97 and Paul had 78 out of 278, an odd stat for the former heavyweight champion.
During the post-fight press conference, Paul revealed that he had held back from using his full power as he didn’t want to hurt Tyson any more than he had already done .
“I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want hurt someone who didn’t need to be hurt,” said Paul before adding he didn’t feel Tyson’s power. “I didn’t wanna hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt.”
