A young journalist lobs Mike Tyson a softball — and gets a reality check
Not known for sugarcoating his comments in the media, Mike Tyson showed Wednesday that he will answer a question however he sees fit. If that means getting very, very bleak while tossing in a couple of f-bombs, so be it.
Even if the interviewer happens to be a 14-year-old girl.
That was the case when Tyson offered his thoughts to Jazlyn “Jazzy” Guerra during a promotional event for his fight against Jake Paul on Friday. After asking Tyson about his longtime fondness for pigeons, the lessons he learned from enduring childhood adversity, his definition of happiness and his thoughts on Paul, Jazzy lobbed the boxer what would normally be a softball. What type of legacy does he want to leave?
“I don’t know. I don’t believe in the word ‘legacy.’ I just think that’s another word for ego,” replied the 58-year-old ex-heavyweight champion. “Legacy … means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through.
“I’m going to die, and it’s going to be over,” Tyson continued, turning to his young interviewer. “Who cares about legacy after that? What a big ego. So I’m going to die - I want people to think that I’m this, I’m great? No, we’re nothing. We are dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”
Showing her precocious polish, honed over scores of celebrity interviews, Jazzy scarcely missed a beat before thanking Tyson for responding with “something that I have not heard before.” But he wasn’t done.
“Can you really imagine somebody saying, ‘I want my legacy to be this or that’? You’re dead,” Tyson said. “You really want them to think about you? What’s the audacity to think, ‘I want people to think about me when I’m gone’? Who the f— cares about me when I’m gone? My kids, maybe, my grandkids. But who the f— cares.”
“True, and again, thank you so much for sharing that,” said Jazzy before quickly moving on to a gift she had for Tyson.
The interaction, shared Thursday on Jazzy’s social media feeds - including on TikTok, where she has 1.5 million followers - quickly went viral. A number of commenters said they were taken aback by Tyson’s response to the legacy question - as was Jazzy herself, she acknowledged Thursday.
“I was pretty surprised, because I wasn’t expecting that answer,” Jazzy said when reached by phone from Texas, where the fight will be held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. “But at the same time, everyone has different views when it comes to legacies and what they want to leave behind after they pass. So, either way, I respect his opinion and his view.
“As long as he answered the question the way that he felt he needed to answer,” she added, “that’s all that mattered.”
Asked if she has had occasion to reflect on Tyson’s discourse on the meaning of existence, Jazzy replied, “In the moment, I was kind of thinking, ‘Oh, he has a pretty good point,’ because when we’re dead, when we pass on, you never really know what’s going to happen. You never know what the legacy is going to be, so I guess that is something I kind of thought about, but only in the moment. Nothing I’ve really thought about afterward.”
A Brooklyn native, as is Tyson, Jazzy has been conducting interviews since 2019, when she was 9 years old. Her father said he lost count of the total but was certain the number passed 250. Regarding the way Tyson’s comments went viral, Jazzy stated matter-of-factly that she has had “countless videos go viral before,” pointing to interviews with hip-hop luminaries such as Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar. She also noted that, in July, she posed questions to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Jazzy had already interviewed “Uncle Mike” in August, and her father said that while Tyson had refused most media requests ahead of the Paul fight, he agreed to speak with her because of their “rapport.” She has also interviewed Paul on multiple occasions, and her father said they were invited to Texas by the fight promotion company owned by Paul.
At a news conference Wednesday, Tyson gave terse responses. “I’ve said everything I had to say,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to fighting.”
While Tyson spoke at relative length to Jazzy, the tone of his answer to the legacy question led one Instagram commenter to write, “Mike still hates interviewers.”
“No he loves doing interviews with me,” Jazzy responded online. “He is just locked in for the fight.”
It’s the first sanctioned fight for Tyson (50-6) since 2005, when he quit in the midst of a bout against journeyman Kevin McBride. He has since engaged in a few exhibition fights, most recently a matchup with another aging boxing star, Roy Jones Jr., in 2020.
Tyson is reportedly set to make $20 million for fighting the 27-year-old Paul (10-1), who has said he’ll earn $40 million. As part of their agreement for sanctioning the fight, Texas authorities mandated that the bout consist of eight two-minute rounds - making it a shorter match - and that the contestants use heavy gloves to reduce their punching power.
“I just really want to see a good fight,” said Jazzy, when asked for a prediction. “They’re both really nice people, and I know they both hit really hard. So, hey, if we get a KO, we get a KO.”
Related Content
The 10 best works of historical fiction in 2024
‘Welcome back’ to an ‘existential threat’
Trump allies push to punish Jack Smith in first test of retribution vow
Solve the daily Crossword
