Jake Paul and Mike Tyson have made it clear they are “best friends” despite fans thinking otherwise last year when they faced each other in the ring for the first time.
On Monday night (Jan. 20), the two boxers attended President Donald Trump’s Starlight Ball — one of three inaugural presidential balls typically attended by major donors.
An Instagram video from that evening showed Paul, 28, hoisting his former opponent Tyson, 58, onto his shoulders as a crowd cheered them on.
“Best friends,” Paul wrote in the caption.
The playful scene showed a very different relationship between the two men, who had previously exchanged a number of verbal blows ahead of their highly anticipated fight last November.
Countless fans flocked to the post’s comments section to call out Paul and Tyson for faking fans into believing they were enemies.
“They played us for millions,” one person wrote, while a second added: “We didn’t even pay but I feel like they still robbed us somehow.”
“Oh that fight was definitely rigged,” declared a third. “Everything was fake,” agreed another.
The controversial fight, originally billed as the ‘fight of the century’, ended in an anticlimax when Paul stood his ground in the final round and bowed to Tyson in the ring. The YouTuber was then declared the winner by a unanimous vote of the jury.
At the post-fight press conference, Paul was asked if he had taken his foot off the gas in the later rounds, and he said: “Yes, definitely, definitely a little bit. I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t need to be hurt.”
Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), later denied the claim that the fight was “rigged.”
MVP released a statement calling these claims “false and baseless” and saying their “broad dissemination” has been “undermined”[d] the integrity” of the event.
“MVP would like to set the record straight regarding the contractual agreements and the nature of the battle,” the statement said. “Fixing a professional boxing match is a federal crime in the United States of America. Paul vs Tyson was a professional match sanctioned by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations (TDLR).
“Both fighters performed to the best of their ability in good faith with the goal of winning the fight. There were absolutely no restrictions – contractual or otherwise – surrounding either fighter. Each boxer could use his full arsenal to win the fight. Any agreement to the contrary would violate TDLR’s boxing rules.”
Acknowledging that “trash talk and speculation are common in sport, and that athletes and promoters must tolerate nonsensical commentary, jokes and opinions,” it added: “But to suggest anything other than the full commitment of these fighters is not only naive , but also an insult to the work they put into their profession and into the sport itself.”
