The World’s oldest boxer, Steve Ward, has expressed serious concerns about Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul.
Ward fought until he was 64 years old, so he has a unique insight on the crossover clash that pits Tyson, who will be 58 come fight night, against a man 31 years his junior.
In his final ever fight, Ward bowed out from the sport on a high as he dispatched Adrian Parlogea, 50, inside a round, four days shy of his 65th birthday.
The Nottingham puncher is backing Tyson to do the same against Paul on July 20 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
However, he has reservations about whether Tyson will be allowed to unleash his full force on ‘The Problem Child’.
“Personally, I think that Mike Tyson could go straight out there and knock him out within a minute, just cream him altogether,” Ward told talkSPORT.com
“But are they going to allow that? Or is there something nasty going off in the background that says ‘You don’t knock him out, Mike? Well, it’s all to be seen.'”
If Tyson does ‘hold back on the reins’, as Ward puts it, then he is concerned ‘Iron Mike’ will lose the respect of the boxing fraternity.
“For me personally, I wish the fight had never been made because if it is like that, and Mike holds back on the reins, it only looks bad for one person, Mike Tyson,” he continued.
“I wouldn’t like him to go out there losing his respect and I really think if he’s held back that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
“So it’s a shameful thing. I wish it had never got off the ground.”
Ward retired from professional boxing in 1987 after injuring his foot in an industrial accident but made a miraculous return to the ring 23 years later to defeat Gregg Scott-Briggs.
He knows from personal experience how hard it is to pick the sport back up again after a lengthy layoff and sympathises with the ‘agony’ Tyson will be putting himself through to get into fighting shape.
“It is awkward. First of all, you’ve got to want to really do it,” he added.
“You’ve got to have the will to do it. You can’t half do this. You play football, you play tennis, you don’t play boxing.
“So that’s one place in that ring, the loneliest place on the earth, where you can get badly hurt if you’re not up to the mark.
“So to pick it up, you’ve really got to want to do it and you’ve got to know what it all entails. It’s agony.
“Going through the training is agony. When I did mine (boxing comeback) I was going up to 10 hours, 12 hours a day training because you could be caught cold.
“That guy in that opposite corner wants to nail you. You know what it’s like, and you’re not prepared to let him do that.
“So I can just imagine Mike’s had a hard job on, he’s had to get back on form. From what I’ve seen his fast combinations are looking the business.
“But a fast combination can be seen quickly and then you can go a little bit duff. I hope he isn’t, I hope he really is training himself to that magnificent peak. Once again, I want him to do Paul.”