By Dan Ambrose: According to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, there is a chance that 44-year-old Mike Tyson (50-6, 44 KO’s) could stage a comeback to fight 47-year-old Evander Holyfield. This is a fight, if it were to take place, which may no longer be the money generator that it once was. By waiting so long to make a comeback, the interest in seeing Tyson fight likely won’t be anywhere near it was.
And a fight against the 47-year-old Holyfield could end up doing little better than the recent bout between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., both over 40 now and not what they once were. Tyson hasn’t fought in five years since being stopped by Kevin McBride in the 6th round. At the time of his retirement, Tyson had lost three out of his last four fights and appeared to have only enough stamina to fight hard for two rounds before tiring out and taking punishment.
Obviously, you would expect Tyson to be even worse now five years later than he was back then. Putting Tyson in with the near 50-year-old Holyfield would give Tyson a much better chance of success compared to if he was put in with a top contender, but Holyfield has remained active more or less during the last few years and he probably has more than enough left to stop Tyson.
You would have to assume that a third match between Tyson and Holyfield would be a pay-per-view event rather than something that would be shown on regular HBO or Showtime. But that’s not exactly an appealing option to pay watch to two older fighters that are no relevant. It might bring in more money than the Jones-Hopkins bout, but you have to figure that it probably wouldn’t generate a lot of PPV buys unless there’s a lot a casual fans that would like to see Tyson and Holyfield fight for nostalgia purposes.
Tyson has lost a great deal of weight recently, and that’s something that has people wondering whether Tyson is getting ready to fight again. I suppose you can’t blame him if he does because if someone is willing to set this fight up and convince him that he can get a good payday out of it, then I can understand him wanting to come back for that. I think it’s a fight that would almost surely disappoint, though, because Tyson couldn’t make it past the 6th round in his last two fights.
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