LAS COLINAS, Texas — What year is it?

No, there is no time machine. No fountain of youth.

No secret elixir that will bring him back to his best years.

But in the penultimate month of 2024, Mike Tyson is still at the center of major events.

“I’m just ready to fight,” Tyson said Wednesday. “I said everything I had to say. There’s nothing else to say. I’m just looking forward to fighting. … The (number of) people speaks for itself.”

However, now that he is 58 years old, he does not carry this promotion himself, far from it.

This time he has a dance partner who connects him to the next generation of fans in Jake Paul.

The 27-year-old YouTuber turned boxer has a huge following and a knack for drawing audiences.

His ability to connect with younger followers on social media has created significant intrigue in his career, both positive and, more often, negative.

It has accelerated his boxing career exponentially, giving him lucrative paydays and access to massive platforms that almost no other fighter could achieve at this stage of his career.

Together, Tyson and Paul have created an event where almost no one knows what to expect.

The two held their final press conference Wednesday at the Toyota Music Center, ahead of their highly anticipated fight Friday night at AT&T Stadium – home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

The fight will be streamed live on Netflix, free to subscribers without pay-per-view, making it the first-ever boxing fight to be streamed by the company.

Both are in line for huge earnings, with Paul expected to earn around $40 million and Tyson around $20 million.

Paul has predicted that 20 million people will tune in, but Netflix doesn’t even need to get close to that figure to make history.

Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao attracted 4.6 million viewers in 2015, the most watched boxing match ever. Nakisa Bidarian, who co-founded Most Valuable Promotions with Paul, claimed they are heading towards 65,000 fans in attendance.

“I’m blessed to be in the position I’m in and to get a lot of criticism,” Paul said. ‘That just means I’m doing something right. No one has had a boxing career like mine. It will be studied and assessed, but I rose to the top in four years because I took risks.”

Tyson (50-6-2, 44 KOs), one of the greatest legends – and villains – in sports history, has not fought professionally since his loss to Kevin McBride in 2005, although he did fight Roy Jones Jr. fought in an exhibition 2020.

Tyson suffered an infected stomach ulcer during a flight in May, causing the fight to be postponed from July 20 to Friday.

There isn’t much precedent for 58-year-olds coming off infected sores, getting in the ring and getting beaten, to say the least.

Paul (10-1, 7 KOs) has fought fellow influencers, MMA fighters turned boxers, athletes from other sports and low-level professional boxers.

To make this fight even more unique, although it is an officially sanctioned heavyweight fight that will rely on both fighters’ records, there will be eight (instead of ten rounds, which is typical for non-title fights) two-minute rounds instead of the three-minute rounds that are standard in boxing.

Also, both fighters will wear larger 14-ounce gloves instead of the 10-ounce gloves that are standard for heavyweights to reduce the impact of punches.

It all raises so many questions that need to be answered soon.

Does Tyson actually have anything left?

Is it safe for him?

Can Paul actually box, or has his entire career been just a gimmick for money?

Is this something that can help boxing and provide a new medium to watch live sports, or something unique designed to shock viewers into watching?

Should this be taken seriously despite the different rules?

Everyone’s guess is as good as anyone else’s. That mystery drives the enormous interest in this battle.

“I’m not going to lose,” Tyson said in a rare moment of animation. “Did you hear what I said?”

Hundreds of fans entered the Toyota Music Center on Wednesday. The booze flowed through the seats, the smell of marijuana wafted through the room and the screams of the crowd constantly interrupted the fighters on stage.

Tyson barely spoke in complete sentences and never mustered more than a few words at a time, even when questioned again and again by host Ariel Helwani.

Paul railed at reporters with expletives, cursing the undercard fighters who predicted he would lose and challenging them all to bet against him.

The circus has begun.

“Someone is being put to sleep,” Paul said. ‘It’s going to be a war and we’re both tough fighters. It doesn’t last the full sixteen minutes.”