Mike Tyson wasn’t taking his fight with Jake Paul to add to his stats — neither the 44 knockouts nor the 50-6 record.
This wasn’t just about the $20 million payout either, though the lump sum is likely the most he’d ever earned for one fight.
Instead, Tyson, 58 and at least a decade past his prime, was squaring off against an internet sensation half his age, he said, so his children could see what he once was — could get a glimpse of one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport.
A fighter, Tyson knows, was before his children’s time.
Tyson has seven children ranging from age 13 to 34 with four different mothers.
He also had a daughter who tragically died at the age of 4.
Appearing on his podcast “The Pivot,” Ryan Clark recalled on Friday being struck by one thing from a recent interview with the legendary boxer.
Clark, an ESPN NFL analyst and a former NFL safety, referenced Tyson saying before Friday night’s fight at AT&T Stadium that “to my kids, I’m nobody, but on this night they’ll find out I’m very special.”
“I think it made me sad and also made me happy for him in a way,” Clark said. “… He’s thinking about this opportunity that Jake Paul and Most Valuable Productions are pretty much just giving him to say, ‘Hey man, watch how all of these people feel about me. Because that’s why we’re going to watch. That’s why we’re going to show up.”
Tyson was the undisputed world champion from 1987-90.
He won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, including 12 in the first round.
He had become, at 21 years old, the youngest boxer to ever win a heavyweight title and, later, the first to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles.
Catch up on The Post’s coverage of the Paul vs Tyson fight
promoter Don King Walks by his side. CORBIS/Bettmann
Before his unanimous decision loss to Paul on Friday, a contest in which many felt Tyson was carried by his opponent, Iron Mike’s last sanctioned contest was in 2005.
“For some of us, Mike Tyson represents something special,” Good Morning Football host Kyle Brandt wrote on X ahead of Friday’s fight. “In the 80s I wasn’t afraid of Freddy [Krueger] or Jason [Voorhees]. I was terrified of Mike Tyson. But it was fun. I loved it.”
On Friday, 77,000-plus crammed into AT&T Stadium.
Millions more watched Tyson through a sometimes buffering Netflix broadcast and via Antonio Brown’s unsanctioned X live stream.
He could neither duck nor dodge father time.
But Friday night wasn’t for them.
“The way that our kids believe we are somebody is not by what we do,” Clark said. “It’s about how present we are, it’s about how available we are, it’s about how we show [up] in their lives every day.”