Barstool boss Dave Portnoy is ready to ‘drop the hammer’ on betting for Jake Paul to beat Mike Tyson in their highly anticipated boxing match on Friday night.
Portnoy looked at the odds of Paul as a -200 favorite, or a two-thirds chance of winning, and is ready to bet an exorbitant amount on the 27-year-old. Tyson’s odds were set at +160.
Paul’s bout against Tyson, 58, has cornered a unique audience in the sports world, airing live on Netflix tonight, due to their difference in age and experience in combat sports.
‘The Mike Tyson after prison was a shell of himself,’ Portnoy said on X. ‘He wasn’t even a good fighter. He lost like his last four fights versus tomato cans. That Mike Tyson may not beat Jake Paul. Now, Mike Tyson, at (near) 60 years old, the guy shouldn’t even be in the ring.’
‘This is a reputation bet for me. Jake Paul minus-200 will be the best bet I see in my lifetime, could be wrong. That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel in my plums, in my guts, in my balls. I don’t even know how there’s a line on it. I don’t even know how I can bet it, but you can. I thought was a Netflix circus.’
Portnoy said he was a huge Mike Tyson fan during his dominant run during the 1980s and 1990s. The Barstool boss also bet for Paul to win the only fight he has ever lost to Tommy Fury.
‘Jake Paul takes it serious, and he’s fighting a senior citizen,’ Portnoy continued. ‘You can bet this fight… And I’ve never loved anything more in my life than Jake Paul minus-200. It should be minus-100,000.’
Portnoy has not publicly disclosed how much he is betting on Paul, but he has put down hundreds of thousands on sports bets he sounded less confident in than this one.
Tyson, 58, has not had a non-exhibition match since 2005, going to a draw with Roy Jones Jr. in 2020 in a bout that was scored by the WBC.
Yet, the last legacy of ‘Iron Mike’ relies heavily on the nostalgia of his dominant run during the 1980s and 1990s.
Paul’s rise as a boxer has come with an asterisk, with limited fights against people trained primarily in the sport. Of his 11 professional fights, only three have come against true boxers.
Tyson would be the fourth, with Fury being Paul’s only opponent in the same age and experience age.
