Mike Tyson’s once-dominant career was already spiraling toward its disappointing end when YouTube launched in February 2005.
Just four months later, the "Baddest Man on the Planet," who terrorized the heavyweight division in the late 1980s, was crumpled in the corner, defeated by Irishman Kevin McBride in Washington, D.C.
Tyson’s sad final chapter, marred by numerous controversies both in and out of the ring, overshadowed his brutal early victories, casting doubt on his reputation as one of the most fearsome and relentless world champions in boxing history.
So it’s hardly surprising that Tyson professes himself entirely unconcerned by criticism of his decision to end his 19-year hiatus from the ring and return at the age of 58 to face YouTuber Jake Paul in Arlington, Texas, on Friday night.
"What do I care about my legacy?" Tyson said in a wide-ranging interview with Interview magazine this week. "I never knew what a legacy was, and people started throwing that word around so loosely. A legacy sounds like ego to me. I’m going to be dead soon. Who cares what somebody is going to think about me when I’m dead?"
Given the nature of Friday’s upcoming spectacle, it is perhaps telling that Tyson would speak so candidly to a magazine founded in 1969 by Andy Warhol, who supposedly once opined that "everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."
From the day Tyson first emerged from the slums of Brownsville to leave Trevor Berbick senseless and become the youngest world heavyweight champion in history at 20 in 1986, Tyson has endured countless moments in the spotlight.
Friday’s bout, which will be contested over eight two-minute rounds with 14-ounce gloves instead of the usual 10-ounce gloves, is merely the latest chapter, a reminder of how Tyson has fought against the odds to reach a place of relative calm in late middle age.
Since picking himself up off the canvas against McBride, Tyson has proved more willing to embrace celebrity, turning his best-selling autobiography Undisputed Truth into a one-man stage show and making cameo appearances as a pantomime version of himself in professional wrestling.
Mike Tyson, once on a path of self-destruction, including serving time for a rape conviction and losing his $400 million fortune, now claims to have found spiritual enlightenment through smoking toad venom, a practice he believes brought him closer to God.
Fans whose parents were barely out of their teens the last time he laced up a pair of boxing gloves will form the majority of the expected multimillion-dollar TV audience, and it says a lot that Paul – who was born five months before Tyson’s "Bite Fight" loss to Evander Holyfield in 1997 – has chosen him as the ultimate reality TV foe.
"You’ve got a YouTuber with 70 million fans," Tyson added. "No champion has that many fans. And I’m the greatest fighter since the beginning of life, so what does that make?
"That makes an explosion of excitement. And that’s what life is about – making the biggest impact before you die."