The daughter of the late Muhammad Ali believes her father would have been ‘mortified’ to see what a 58-year-old Mike Tyson earned to lose to Jake Paul on Friday in Texas.
Although Tyson has declined to confirm any figure, USA Today previously reported he’d be getting something in the range of 20 million for fighting eight two-minute rounds. Paul, meanwhile, reportedly made $40 million to beat a marijuana salesman approaching his 60th birthday.
‘Boxers didn’t make money, like you know, Tyson’s making,’ Rasheda Ali Walsh told Fox News‘ Neil Cavuto. ‘And daddy would have been excited he made that kind of money.’
Well, he would have been excited to a point, she explained.
‘Daddy would have been mortified,’ she continued. ‘Because back then, boxers didn’t really make that much. They were fighting for their lives, and I think as my dad started to make boxing more entertaining, that’s when people came on board and how boxers started to, after my dad, make a lot of money.’
Ali’s biggest purse came at the end of his career when he took home $7.9 million for his defeat to Larry Holmes in 1980. Ali would fight only once more, losing in 1981 to Trevor Berbick, who would go on to be knocked out by a young Tyson five years later.
Although he was famously bad with money, Ali made a reported $57 million in purse money over his Hall-of-Fame career.
Since Friday’s fight, promoters revealed Tyson – Paul generated more than $17.8 million at the gate to become boxing’s biggest box-office success in the United States outside of Las Vegas.
What’s more, Tyson-Paul nearly doubled the previous record in Texas, when Mexico’s Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez defeated Britain’s Billy Joe Saunders at the same venue, AT&T Stadium, in 2021.
And outside of a 2016 UFC bout between Conor McGregor and Eddie Alvarez in New York, Friday’s fight card has registered the highest gate of any US combat sporting event outside of Las Vegas.
MVP, which is co-owned by Paul, revealed there were 70,000 attendees at the home of the Dallas Cowboys on Friday. In total, the venue has a capacity of 80,000.
Although more data is still expected to be released later this week, the event is believed to be a record night for Netflix. An average of 60 million households watch the main event live, with as many as 65 million watching at one time, according to MVP.
Additionally, Katie Taylor ‘s controversial win over Amanda Serrano had nearly 50 million households in its audience, MVP revealed.
The viewership numbers are even more impressive considering the technical issues that plagued Friday’s livestream.
