The more I think about it, the less Friday night boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul on Netflix makes sense to me.

I understand that in boxing spectacle sells, and the match between the 58-year-old former undisputed heavyweight champion and a YouTuber 31 years younger who cosplays as a professional fighteris the ultimate spectacle. Does the aging Tyson — whose striking power was legendary — have enough left in the tank to take down Paul? Can Paul, Gen-Z’s fighting anti-hero, gain some credibility as a legitimate boxer by beating what’s left of Gen-X’s Baddest Man on the Planet?

Many people will likely tune in and watch it for free (or at least for no more than the cost of a Netflix subscription). But I think it says something depressing about our cultural moment and the elevation of spectacle over substance that so many people are eager to listen to.

Boxing fell away as an attraction for mainstream sports viewers a long time ago, and in this age of social media, viewers seem more excited to see a YouTuber fight a nearly 60-year-old former heavyweight champion than to see a real fight. between boxers relevant to the sport. This seems to me a symptom of our culture’s rejection of skill, qualifications, and experience as a prerequisite for standing—in any profession, from the President of the United States on down.

Paul’s emergence from a social media starwith only an amateur match before going ‘pro’ by fighting one ex hooper and old MMA starsis linked to this trend. But the public seems uninterested in whether any of the fighters will be in the ring. Fans depend on what is flashy, simplistic and easy to consume, not what is essential or perhaps requires a little more knowledge or discernment to appreciate.

It’s likely that most people streaming tonight’s fight won’t even care about upcoming matches like next month’s card with Gervonta “Tank” Davis — one of the sport’s brightest young stars — defending this WBA lightweight title against challenger Lamont Roachor the upcoming rematch between two current heavyweight stars, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Furywhere three belts are on the line. In both cases, the matches are more compelling, the fighters more skilled and closer to their prime than Paul and Tyson.

But those fights aren’t nearly as easy to sell.

It’s not that I don’t understand the entertainment value. Fight fans, or at least those whom boxing enthusiasts deride as “casuals,” have spent the decades since Tyson’s reign as champion chasing a special peak. With each passing year, the public has become less enthusiastic about matches between the sport’s elite technicians and more inclined to watch fights only when the main event promises to look something like Apollo Creed vs. The Ivan Drago exhibition in “Rocky IV.” The fictional match is similar to the Tyson-Paul fight in a way. The combatants in that 1985 film had no business being in the ring facing each other. Creed, an ex-overhill champion strutted into the ring to face a younger, stronger, fitter whom he had no chance of beating. And the world watched, not to see if a title changed hands and not really to see if Creed had a little bit left. They just tuned in for the show.

Of course, in that movie, Creed dies in the ring.

Don’t expect such a dramatic result in tonight’s battle. Sure, Tyson may lose to Paul, but he won’t be brutalized – if only because Paul doesn’t have the skills of any of the boxers Iron Mike faced in the 1980s and ’90s. That is to say nothing of the skills that Tyson displayed like him blew through the heavyweight division and routinely knocked out his opponents in the first round—and sometimes the first few seconds. Despite Paul’s claim, “I think I could beat Mike Tyson during any phase of any part of his career,” he wouldn’t have belonged in the same ring as Tyson in his prime, and we might see tonight that he doesn’t even belong in the ring with him now.

And it’s hard to imagine Tyson stepping into the ring if not for the reported $20 million purse he’s expected to receive. He even told us as much in 2005, after he finished on his stool during what was billed as a comeback fight against journeyman Kevin McBride. He said he wanted to stop fighting because his heart was no longer in it, saying, “I’m just struggling to take care of my billsin principle.”

“I’m not going to disrespect the sport anymore by losing to this caliber of fighter“, Tyson said at the time, “but I was in dire need of taking care of my life.”

And that’s the frustrating part: We know this fight is a joke, but we refuse to look away. For the sake of entertainment, we’ll ignore Paul’s boxing incompetence compared to Tyson’s and Tyson’s advanced age, and we’ll pretend this is okay.