Mike Tyson on upcoming Jake Paul bout: ‘I want to see what I’m really made out of’

Mike Tyson intends to roll back the clock when he steps into the ring with Jake Paul in less than two months time.

Tyson, the former world heavyweight champion who has been absent from the professional game for almost two decades, will do battle with boxing upstart Paul inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Friday, November 15th live on Netflix.

Many have questioned the motivations for Tyson to strap on his 10oz gloves one more time at the age of 58 — and especially after a minor health scare prompted the postponement of the fight this past summer.

But with his business empire expanding, most notably recently into the cannabis trade, Tyson says that his motivation for the fight ins’t financial, but rather a move designed to see if he still has the fortitude to prosper in the boxing ring.

“I could be waiting on a check every day from cannabis. That’s bullsh*t for me. I’m a man, I want to go out there and I want to expose myself to risk. Sometimes I want to see who I really am,” Tyson indicated recently, per Bloody Elbow.

“I want to see what I’m really made out of. I want to perform in front of the world. To me, that’s all I ever knew how to do since I was 14. This fight is not going to change my life financially enough. This is just what I want to do,” he added.

Tyson’s rich history in the boxing ring cannot be denied. In 1986, at the age of just 20, he defeated Trevor Berbick to become the youngest heavyweight champion in history and over the course of the next ten years he would be defeated just once — against James ‘Buster’ Douglas in Japan in a bout still regarded as being the biggest upset the sport has ever seen.

Tyson’s form would dip as he reached his thirties and after a four-plus year absence from the ring due to his incarceration. Between 1996 and his final bout (to date) in the summer of 2005, Tyson would go 5-5 along with two no-contests.

If he defeats Paul on November 15, it will be his first victory in the ring since a first-round knockout of Clifford Etienne in February 2003.