Mike Tyson is reportedly back in the gym. The Daily Express ran the story Thursday, and AOL carried it, under a headline saying the former heavyweight champion is “back in training” at 60, two years after his loss to Jake Paul. The headline is all that’s available. It names no gym, no trainer, no opponent and no stated purpose. So for now this is a report about a 60-year-old man working out, and it should be read that way.
The Paul fight is still the thing attached to Tyson’s name in the present tense. Their November 2024 bout drew 125 million Live+1 viewers globally, according to figures in an MVP release published by MMA Weekly, and it went down as a win for Paul. That result was one stop on a six-fight winning streak that also included Julio Cesar Chávez Jr., Nate Diaz and Mike Perry. The fight had been pushed back once already. When Tyson postponed the original date, Darren Till volunteered to step in, as Essentially Sports recalled this week.
That history matters because Paul’s calendar just filled in. He announced Thursday that he’ll headline an MVP event in Dubai on Dec. 24, his first fight since Anthony Joshua broke his jaw in December 2025. That loss snapped the streak, dropped him to 12-2 and required multiple surgeries, per MMA Fighting. No opponent has been named. MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian told Jack Figg of The Sun that Till is “certainly one of the names that we’ve been speaking to,” and the collapsed Tommy Fury rematch has left that slot open. Paul’s own release ended with “somebody’s getting knocked out.” Tyson’s name appears nowhere in any of it, and I’m not going to put it there.
Tyson’s actual fight-week plans are more scenic. On Friday he’s set to be cageside at DF Uncaged inside the Roman Theatre in Amman, Jordan, a venue almost 2,000 years old, according to Bloody Elbow. Javier Mendez, the longtime AKA coach behind Khabib Nurmagomedov and Daniel Cormier, is putting the show together. Hasbulla and Ronaldinho are expected there too, and TUF 23 winner Andrew Sanchez fights Mikhail Rogozin on the card. Meanwhile the internet did its own nostalgia work. FIGHTFLIX posted old footage of Tyson’s unanimous decision win over Mitch Green, the former Brooklyn gang leader who went by Blood, and the head movement is still absurd all these years later.
My take: a man in his 60s training hard is good news, and nobody should be building a comeback fight out of a headline with no details under it. Tyson has always been a gym rat at heart, and the gym is a fine place for a legend to spend his mornings. Sanchez put the pull better than anyone in his Bloody Elbow interview, laughing that “I’ve retired, like, three times and you get pulled back in.” He’s 38. Tyson is 60. Friday night in Amman, the legend will be in a seat by the cage, and that’s the right seat.
