54-year-old former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is set to take part in an exhibition bout on Saturday against 51-year-old former pound-for-pound king Roy Jones Jr, which is the kind of annoying talk of the boxing world at the moment.
But Tyson, who hasn’t had a real fight in the ring since 2005, says he’d be open to doing exhibition fights with today’s top heavyweights, including Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, and Deontay Wilder, with the idea to raise money to help those in need.
“I think they’re brilliant, man, I think they’re brilliant fighters. They could do so much for society and have exhibitions, and take the money from exhibitions, because they’re big crowd pleasers,” he told Steve Bunce.
How to Watch Tyson vs Jones
Date: Saturday, Nov. 28 | Start Time: 9:00 pm ET
Location: Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA
TV: PPV ($49.99) | Stream: FITE TV PPV ($49.99)
Live Online Coverage: BadLeftHook.com
“They could help so many people — the homeless, the drug infected. There’s just so many people out there that we can do so much for, and that wouldn’t even be a tenth of their charitable heart to do something like that. Matter of fact, fight exhibitions with me. All of our charity, or most of our charity would go to people who really desperately need it. We can help people.”
We’ll see how the 54-year-old Tyson does on Saturday against the 51-year-old Jones before we really speculate much further. But if things go well, if the show is a financial success, if the desire remains after it’s over, and the paying public aren’t pissed off in the end, yeah, this could become a more regular occurrence. Likely not with guys like Fury or Joshua or Wilder involved, but then I suppose you never know.