It’s late August and we’re still mired in rerun season, with the same plots and same cast of characters. Redundant narratives wheeze along with all the grace of a hobbled animal.
The latest grab-ass comes courtesy of PRIDE, which, after five years of vocal intent, finally seems prepared to run their first U.S. show in October. To challenge the brand domination of the UFC, with those three letters seared into the public consciousness as synonymous with MMA, will take some creative thinking. And their options are limited.
Few American pro wrestlers possess the aptitude or drawing power to take the plunge into freestyle fighting. You might enlist the odd cash-strapped mid-card talent, but even if he managed to bring some extra attention from the wrestling fan contingent, watchdogs on the California or Nevada commissions aren’t overly likely to approve a professional entertainer in a combat ring. Those pro wrestlers that can boast of a sufficient athletic background — like Kurt Angle — are, ironically, too banged up from faking it to take real bumps.
Actors? Despite the bleating of Wesley Snipes, few performers are going to risk mauling their meal ticket (i.e., their face) for a six-figure payout.
That leaves pro athletes from other sports: NFL wide receiver Michael Westbrook headlined a King of the Cage card in 2005. If that did anything for the show’s buy rate it remains a closely guarded secret. Athletes who would command mainstream attention are already making so much cash in their respective disciplines that it would take someone with a real psychological deficit to try their hand in a mixed fight.
The lone marquee attraction whose bank account is appropriately drained remains Mike Tyson, at one time the biggest sports draw in the world.
Tyson was fond of saying he could sell out Madison Square Garden just by masturbating — while the sentiment is crass, one wonders how literally he could’ve tested that notion.
In the late 1990s Tyson resuscitated a wheezing WWE, which had suffered greatly from a mass exodus of their top draws to Ted Turner’s WCW. His lone Wrestlemania appearance introduced previously apathetic fans to their current roster of talent. Before long, Steve Austin and the Rock were able to build on the interest he garnered. Tyson had been the carnival barker, commanding the attention that the promotion sorely needed.
Open up the sports pages between 2002 and now and you’d likely see quotes from a myriad of promoters boasting of a Tyson involvement in their product. In many cases, this was nothing more than a smokescreen, with fledging businesses looking to piggyback on the boxer’s name recognition and stature.
This was never more apparent than in 2003, when K-1 infamously trumpeted a Tyson-Bob Sapp (Pictures) showdown. Mike’s mug lorded over their New Year’s Eve program on a giant video screen, silently observing as Sapp bludgeoned the hapless Sumo Akebono.
Unfortunately, the hype had to be beamed from thousands of miles away — a convicted criminal, Tyson was barred from entering Japan.
His latest appearance, at a press conference for PRIDE’s “Real Deal” program, builds on reports that Tyson will box in 10 “exhibition” bouts, with one of those attached to a PRIDE U.S. event.
“Exhibition” is a tricky word to define. In some instances, it can mean a genial sparring match, as when Shaquille O’Neal pawed at Antonio Tarver in 2004 in comically oversized gloves for charity. Or it can mean an alteration in the duration of the bout, taking a 12-round conflict and condensing it into three or four.
Given Tyson’s questionable cardiovascular conditioning and age, it seems likely that he would agree to the latter.
Will people still pay to see Mike Tyson fight? The answer is yes, though what questions that raises about our culture are still under investigation. His ’02 bout with Lennox Lewis is pay-per-view’s greatest success story, netting over $100 million dollars in revenue.
Perhaps more tellingly, his penultimate 2004 scrap with Danny Williams — a fight he lost in four rounds — netted an estimated 230,000 buys, long after Tyson’s decline was apparent to even the most casual of spectators.
Will PRIDE’s tactic work? To ponder that requires the belief that Tyson will ever even appear on one of their telecasts. They may have negotiated an appearance fee for Tyson, with the only aim being to garner some press. (Mission accomplished.)
Assuming he does fight under Queensbury rules on one of their cards, PRIDE should be wary of marketplace confusion, particularly in the way word of mouth typically mangles the base intention of the original message.
An example: a casual fight fan spots a PRIDE ad with Tyson’s scowling mug. In his haste, he may miss the disclaimer that Tyson will be boxing, not fighting MMA. He, in turn, tells a friend, proffering no elaboration. Pretty soon, a sizeable portion of your audience is going to expect to see Tyson on the floor, getting the blood supply cut off from his head. The residual disappointment might have an adverse effect on PRIDE’s future in the States.
There’s also the matter of licensing: Tyson’s was revoked in 1997 and has yet to be reinstated by the Nevada Commission. They upheld that decision in 2002, despite the meeting with Lewis promising to bring in millions of dollars to the state’s economy.
Due to the more relaxed standards of an “exhibition” bout, it may be a matter of procedure to get him sanctioned again. Then again, maybe not. This is, after all, the man who had Evander Holyfield’s ear as an appetizer.
But assuming he does fight on a PRIDE card, and people are cognizant that it’s a stand-up bout only, what then?
If Tyson expects to fight up to 10 “exhibitions” entering his 40s, it seems probable that he’s going to tackle, for lack of a better term, total palookas: the kind of animate punching bags that Rocky Balboa routinely socked en route to his date with Clubber Lang.
This is not to say that I wouldn’t find such a circus entertaining: Tank vs. Butterbean in a four-round bout would not be boring. Nor would Tyson tackling Tank Abbott, both men’s limited gas tanks salvaged by curtailed rounds. (Abbott has long boasted of wanting to take on Tyson.) Tyson vs. Bob Sapp (Pictures), assuming Sapp’s legal melee with K-1 can be resolved, would probably satiate the most prurient desires of any fight fan, which usually involve the need to see a large man crashing to the canvas.
PRIDE is doing the most logical thing they can to garner entry into this market, and all told, enlisting this country’s all-time pay-per-view attraction is hardly bad business. But Tyson’s name should always carry with it a measured amount of skepticism — ditto the raving hyperbole of Japanese fight promoters.
In collusion, that’s a more threatening combination than anything Tyson ever put together in the ring.
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