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Former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver and Hall of Famer Michael Irvin claims that Mike Tyson’s contract prevented him from throwing uppercuts at Jake Paul during their boxing match. Tyson lost to Paul by unanimous decision in a fight at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Friday, November 15
Michael Irvin, who played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1988 to 1999 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007, is certainly not the only person who watched the Tyson-Paul fight to suggest that perhaps the fight was fixed.
In Irvin’s case, the former NFL wide receiver seems to believe that there was language in Mike Tyson’s contract that stopped him from throwing uppercuts at Jake Paul.
“They had no intentions to really scrap at all. 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?” Irvin said on It Is What It Is.
“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.”
A couple of factors make Irvin’s claims perhaps more believable than the average doubter. Not only did Irvin largely come up at the same time as Tyson in the 1990s, but Irvin is a Dallas Cowboys legend, as the fight was held at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Cowboys, meaning he could’ve had conversations with people who knew the inner workings of the fight.
Videos like the one below are also going viral on social media. They seem to show Tyson not only pulling his punches but also deciding not to throw
Just incase anyone had doubts… pic.twitter.com/FCXmjg1dTD
— 🅿️®️🚫❌✌🏾 (@proxcee) November 19, 2024
