I used to get paid to watch fights. Okay, not exactly. I used to get paid to write about big fights. Including previews. I used to write about what to expect and what the fighters’ chances were, so I studied their old fights in advance. Sometimes I would watch fighters’ careers in their entirety, for no reason at all — for fun and to better understand my favorite fighters. On my phone at three in the morning at Burger King, on the Konstantin Korotkov boat sailing down the Volga, in someone else’s apartment with a great view of the crematorium and the Botkin Hospital. I used to get paid to watch fights. Okay, not exactly. I used to get paid to write about big fights. Including previews. I used to write about what to expect and what the fighters’ chances were, so I studied their old fights in advance. Sometimes I would watch fighters’ careers in their entirety, for no reason at all — for fun and to better understand my favorite fighters. From a phone at three in the morning in a Burger King, on the Konstantin Korotkov boat sailing along the Volga, in someone else’s apartment, with a great view — of the crematorium and the Botkin Hospital. I used to get paid to watch fights. Okay, not exactly. I got paid to write about big fights. Including previews. I wrote about what awaited the viewer and what the fighters’ chances were, so I studied their old fights in advance. Sometimes I watched fighters’ careers in their entirety for no reason — for fun and to better understand my favorite fighters. From a phone at three in the morning in a Burger King, on the Konstantin Korotkov boat sailing along the Volga, in someone else’s apartment, with a great view — of the crematorium and the Botkin Hospital.

There is a big difference between "watching all the significant fights" and "watching all the fights" of an athlete. Brodsky had good reason to tell his young colleagues that one poet, not necessarily the greatest, should be read in full and known to the last word and typo. When you have a complete picture in front of you, new cause-and-effect relationships open up, you can see talent in development or decline better.

My list of careers I've watched in their entirety turned out to be strange. And to be honest, there are more MMA fighters here than boxers. Because the fights themselves are shorter, plus there was a point when I'd already watched quite a lot of boxing and was trying to figure out what MMA was. That's why, among other things, I watched the entire careers of Rashad Evans, Jon Jones, Fedor and Alexander Emelianenko, Anderson Silva, Conor McGregor. The boxing selection turned out to be more modest - Mike Tyson, Deontay Wilder and Alexander Povetkin. I haven't seen Floyd's very early fights or Muhammad Ali's late fights. I have gaps in Roy Jones and Tyson Fury. But soon I'll finish watching - and enjoy - all of Naoya "The Monster" Inoue's fights. Knockout artists have an advantage in this game.

Every boxing fan should run this marathon - watch all the fights of at least one athlete. And I have the perfect candidate for this.

It's trite, but it's Mike "Iron" Tyson.It's trite, but it's Mike "Iron" Tyson.It's trite, but it's Mike "Iron" Tyson.

]First, time. Mike has a lot of short fights and 44 knockouts in 58 fights. He's not Floyd with his frequent victories on points or Roberto Duran with 119 fights. Plus, Mike's career decline doesn't feel like a long, dreary hopelessness, like Roy Jones'. And only one of his fights was irreparably boring. Even if you watch the exits and post-fight interviews, everything should fit into 15-16 hours, like a season and a half of The Sopranos. What's more important is that Mike's career is dramatic, multifaceted, and divided into three periods.

The first (1985-1991) is a triumph of boxing as an art and aesthetics. The small heavyweight slips, swinging the pendulum, under the blows of the big guys to knock them down with cunning and polished combinations. Chic, shine, beauty. A David at his best, who makes Goliaths fall like bowling pins. Mike's first defeat stands out here - to James "Buster" Douglas, the biggest upset in boxing history. Before the fight, bookmakers even had odds of 42 to 1, but... before the fight, Douglas had experienced the death of his beloved mother, a serious illness of his girlfriend and had caught the flu himself, so he decided that he would not be afraid of the terrible Tyson and became a boxing genius for an hour.

The second period (1995-1997) - an extremely angry, but still athletic Tyson immediately after prison. The highlight of the program is the dilogy with Evander Holyfield. Their first fight became a classic of smart but dirty boxing, the second - a meme about Holyfield's bitten off ear. By the way, that very piece of ear was picked up from the canvas, handed to Evander in the locker room, taken to the hospital, but still eventually lost. There is an urban legend that it was sold to an underground collector and is still floating in a jar of formalin. The fight itself is worth watching to decide for yourself why Mike did it.

The third period (1999-2005) was a triumph of boxing absurdity. His accomplices regularly passed him a rubber penis with clean urine for drug tests. Julius Francis sold advertising on the soles of his boxing shoes, knowing in advance that he would be knocked out. Mike hit the referee, and after the victory he said the famous "Lennox Lewis, I will rip your heart out and eat your children." Andrzej Golota (whom Mike himself was scared to death of - big, crazy, looking like a leper because of the bumps on his back from steroids) shamefully runs away from the ring and the crowd throws fruit, coins, cups and pours energy drinks on him. Tyson broke Francois Botha's arm, and a week before the fight with Etienne he got a tattoo on his face. Anything but boring and always unpredictable.

I think now is a good time for a Tyson fight marathon. Because on the night of November 16, Mike returns to the ring for a fight with blogger and boxer Jake Paul. The fight resembles pop MMA and a media scam, but officially it is professional, although the rounds are two minutes long, and the age difference between the participants is several decades. Mike is 58. Jake, who is 9-1 in boxing and already quite an athlete, is 27 years old. How much they will, um, try to knock each other out is an open question.

The announcement of the fight was spread in the media even before it became clear what rules it would follow. But the perception of the danger of what was happening was affected by the postponement of the fight from summer to autumn due to Tyson's aggravated ulcer. Then doubts arose once again. Is Iron Mike still a knockout artist who throws his hands out for reels at lightning speed or is he a pensioner who suddenly starts feeling dizzy on a plane? Nevertheless, there is more excitement and intrigue here than before the meeting between Logan Paul (Jake's older brother) and Floyd Mayweather. What if they do fight and someone falls? - the main motivator for the mass audience to tune in to the live broadcast.

We'll hardly understand how real the fight will be until both of them are in the ring. And maybe we won't understand even after that.

However, everything looks pretty optimistic and cool for now. It's not like Muhammad Ali fought in the Bahamas in his last fight, where there was only one pair of gloves for the entire card, and a cow bell was used instead of a gong. Mike is participating in the first boxing event from Netflix, which will take place at the large AT&T stadium in Texas. 70 thousand people have gathered for boxing here, and Dana White has been wanting to organize a UFC tournament here for 10 years, but it hasn't worked out.

The fact that the fight may not be a fight fits in perfectly with modern trends with blogger fights, hybrid rules and viral content. And Tyson has always been a man of fashion and the entertainment industry. He came up with a style that is ingenious in its simplicity, with black shorts and boxing shoes on bare feet. He was the first young black star to start buying limousines, which were considered cars for grandfathers, and customizing them for himself - with Gucci-style upholstery, refrigerators, a fax machine and a jacuzzi. Now Mike has his own podcast, and those same videos on social networks, where he beats the air with multi-punch combinations, are still selling well.

And anyway, how many stars do you know who debuted in the 80s and are still going strong? Given that boxing is more dangerous for your health than music, movies or books. And it doesn't look like Tyson is returning to the ring for a living. No matter how this fight goes, the whole situation looks like another victory for Mike - as a brand and a popular culture hero.