“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” - Henry David Thoreau
On November 15, 2024 an unlikely matchup surfaced in the boxing world. From the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas a sold out arena anxiously awaited the matchup with YouTuber turned boxer, Jake Paul and a 58 year old, Mike Tyson, the former undisputed champion. Was it a gimmick? Was it WWE entertainment in the form of a fight? Was it staged and theatrical or was it a potential inspiration to all who tuned in?
108 million people tuned in to the Tyson-Paul fight online. From a sports media standpoint that type of viewership is only rivaled by the Super Bowl. The 2016 NBA finals in game 7 recorded 31 million viewers. An NCAA football national championship game will land 25 million viewers. There was something about the Tyson-Paul fight that drew us all in. Was it merely great marketing and promotion? Barnum & Bailey like attraction? Or is there a deeper spectacle we’re all looking for under the surface.
If we look closely enough I think we will see that the Tyson-Paul fight was about purpose more than it was a staged theatrical affair. The mass of people needed to pass the time on an early winter Friday night.
Let’s take a closer look at Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul from the standpoint of purpose.
The Tale of The Tape: “The Baddest Man On The Planet”
There was a time when Mike Tyson was arguably the greatest athlete in the world. The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world from 1987-1990. At the peak of the boxing world in 1990, Tyson held all three major boxing federation titles at the same time. In his first 19 professional boxing fights, Tyson won all 19 by knockout and 12 in the first round.
He was the youngest boxer to ever win a heavyweight title. His boxing career was can’t miss tv with pay-per view fights routinely earning $40 million a fight. When he entered the ring, his purpose was apparent to all. He was a vicious fighter. On a mission.
Outside of the ring, Tyson was living a different life rhythm. Loaded with a troubled past where he barely knew his father, Tyson was raised getting in trouble on the streets. By the age of 13 he had been arrested 38 times. His mother died when he was just 16 years old, leaving him in the adoptive care of Cus D’Amato, his boxing trainer.
By 1990 while at the peak of his boxing career, Tyson was adrift. His professional life appeared to be flourishing, but his personal life was in extreme disarray. Eventually, his life caught up to his performance. Heading into a February fight with underdog Buster Douglas, reports of Tyson’s training were that he was not in peak form, going through the motions in the midst of personal chaos. He suffered his first loss, by knockout to Douglas and forfeited the heavyweight championship of the world.
Two years later, convicted on rape charges Mike Tyson was sent to prison. He would spend the next three years entirely void of his boxing purpose. In 1995 he would return to the ring and his first fight back would gross $96 million. He was swept back up into the thralls of fame and fortune.
For the duration of Tyson’s career would fund an extravagant lifestyle. Expensive houses, cars, and even exotic pet tigers. Frequently he would spend money on parties, travel, women and gifts.
Somehow fame, success and fortune could not satisfy a life of purpose.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
The Tale of The Tape: “The Problem Child”
When Mike Tyson was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, Jake Paul wasn’t even born yet.
Born in 1997 in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio. Jake Paul and his brother became internet personalities and two of the first success stories of Youtube.
9 years after Mike Tyson’s career ended, Jake Paul rose to fame first by posting content on Youtube. His platform became a hub for controversial content, pranks, and his own hip hop music. Over time the compounding nature of his material allowed him to amass over 20 million subscribers to the channel.
The success of his platform earned him acting opportunities on the Disney Channel. A short time later he was booted from Disney as reports continued to surface that his extravagant living was disruptive to neighbors surrounding his Los Angeles home. This transition would just be the beginning of a series of ongoing disruptions from Jake Paul and his media companies.
His platforms were soaring with views, but Jake Paul was in and out of trouble. In 2020, the FBI raided his Calabasas, California mansion investigating his involvement in an Arizona Mall raid he filmed for content. In 2021, he was accused by multiple women of sexual assault and every chance he could he engaged in conflict and controversy as a way of building his online personal brand.
Despite a highly successful personal online brand, millions of viewers and a net worth north of $10 million (and counting), Jake Paul found himself successful, famous, self-sufficient and living a life of quiet desperation.
Purposeless living creates quiet desperation.
The Value of Training
Somewhere along the way, these two men drifted into purposeless living. It’s easy to do. In fact, one could probably argue the default direction of modern living is away from purpose and toward desperation.
For Iron Mike, the many years since his dominant boxing career have been filled with some making money here and there, staying out of trouble, but still in the thralls of wandering through life.
“What’s my purpose?”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
Jake Paul, echoed a similar sentiment while reflecting on his life before boxing.
“Basically, life hit me in the face, and it was like, ‘Who are you? What have you been doing the past couple of years?’ " he said. "It led to drinking and drugs and Los Angeles and going to parties and just that whole entire world. I got sucked up into it really quickly.”
It is a fundamental human experience to question the purpose and meaning of our lives. Some cope with this uncertainty well, others drift. It’s a common hypothesis that material success will answer our deepest longings and questions about purpose, but in the case of Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, it did not.
So what was it that dislodged these two fighters out of quiet desperation? What was it that gave, even for a moment in the middle of the story of their lives, a purpose they could lean into? The truth is, it was training for something.
Training brings purpose to our days.
In our How To Flourish personal leadership framework we define training as “Any activity involving intentional effort done in order to achieve a purpose.”
For both Jake Paul and Mike Tyson it seems it wasn’t until they truly engaged with intentional effort toward a purpose that they began to truly live.
For the general public the intrigue of this matchup became real not at the press conferences and promotional events. The intrigue was born out of videos of the fighters training. There’s something mesmerizing about seeing someone train for something. The slow, steady progress and development. Our eyes and ears look for clues of progress and when we see a YouTuber hit the bag and “look the part” we begin to wonder what truly is the max capacity for his boxing capabilities. In the same token, when we see a 58 year old Mike Tyson move and dance around the training ring, looking like an older version of his prime but still showing up as a possible formidable fighter we begin to be intrigued.
It’s ironic how our interconnected, social media society is playing out. We see videos on our social media feeds of other people training. Other people hitting the bag, lifting the weights, getting into the cold plunge, leaving the sauna. We watched multi-episode documentaries of these fighters in the lead-up to this fight. We love behind the scenes episodes of people out there actually doing things.
The question becomes are we consuming this content to be entertained or inspired?
Is the social media feed a tactic to engage with our quiet desperation? Is it entertainment to get our minds off of the desperation we’re living with? Or is it a vehicle to inspire action? A vehicle to inspire us to a level in which we commit to training for something.
The answer to our quiet desperation is ultimately in finding and pursuing our purpose. Something Jake Paul is doing whether we find him repulsive or not. Something Mike Tyson did, even when he looked like an old man in a young man’s game back in November.
What do you make of this Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight? Now months later, the rest of our society has moved on. We ravaged the entertainment value of the event back in November, and moved on to other entertainment options. The endless cycle and hamster wheel rolls on. The entertainment options abound.
If we’re not careful we’ll spend our whole lives entertained but never inspired.
Finding Your Purpose
There’s a Japanese concept that hones in on finding your life’s purpose. They call it - Ikigai. Which means “A reason for being.” or “A reason to live.”
Ikigai encourages people to discover what is important to people and live a life full of joy and fulfillment. There’s even been a few studies that indicate finding your Ikigai can lead to a longer life.
They say your Ikigai is at the intersection of four key things.
What you love
What you are good at
What you can be paid for
What the world needs
I love the breakdown of this concept because all four areas are important realities and must be accounted for. There’s many things we love but can’t be paid for. I love playing golf, but will never make a living playing golf. It’s not great advice to a college kid to “Just go do what you love.” That may work out well when you’re 20 but if you support a family there’s other important factors beyond “what you love.”
As we begin a New Year, maybe it’s not a new resolution you need. More push ups or less calories or whatever. I’m not trying to talk you out of your discipline or change. But, maybe it would benefit the new year (and future years) to stop and begin to consider what might be your Ikigai.
I’m convinced what we were watching in November of 2024 wasn’t just a Barnum and Bailey spectacle of entertainment, it was two men with similar stories of purposeless quiet desperation engaged in their Ikigai - and it was beautiful to witness.
Jake Paul had this to say about boxing or his Ikigai, “It’s purpose, it’s routine, health, community, all things I needed. Since 2020 it’s been boxing, number one and everything else comes after. I never really liked YouTube to begin with. I was just good at it.”
“I never really liked YouTube, I was just good at it.”
That’s not Ikigai.
That doesn’t check off the four boxes.
What you love
What you are good at
What you can be paid for
What the world needs
Over indexing on what you’re good at is not the solution for quiet desperation. It may actually just produce more of it.
Neglecting what you can be paid for may just lead to more “starving artists” out there.
Suppressing what you love in order to make a living may support a nice lifestyle, but you may waste your best years to enjoy a little bit of leisure later in life.
It’s the intersection of all these that is your Ikigai.
A few weeks ago, Mike Tyson spoke about life after the fight in November.
“That fight was such a big ascent - we were up so high, we were excited. The fight’s over, boom. Wow, I'm kind of depressed a little bit. We got to get back to living. We were training for it for nine months.”
Runners call this the “post race blues.” You train for a marathon for months. Day in and day out. Pounding the pavement. Logging the miles. You run the race, it’s over. Now what?
This is what happens when we lose our purpose. The structure of our days can go away. It’s nice to have a break here and there but an extended period of this - we lose the daily purpose.
I’m convinced that Mike Tyson and Jake Paul showcased to us all the power of living with purpose - even for nine months. Or a few years. Purpose to our days. A reason for being. A reason to get up in the morning. Clearly defined objectives we’re chasing.
These things will not just fall in our lap. We must declare them. We must determine them.
“I’m living for _______ .”
“I’m pursuing _______.”
“I’m training for __________ .”
Stay The Course,
