“Which celebrities are here?” » asks a young man breathlessly as a woman at the gate of AT&T Stadium scans his ticket.

“All of them,” she said, laughing. “I was tired of counting.”

Somewhere in this brilliant coliseum of commerce and entertainment, celebrities mingle —Joe Jonas, Sugar Ray Leonard, Josh Duhamel, Shaq. They’re sitting ringside, they’re lining up in the lower level sanctuary of the Bank of America Field Club, they’re away from the hustle and bustle of normies lining up for a Miller Lite or a basket of nets chicken.

The Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight doesn’t start until 11 p.m., and in the hours leading up to it, the upper levels of the stadium are teeming with an armada of people eager to be part of what could be the biggest night in boxing, and what could be the most big boxing mess. “Four dollars for the ranch!” complains a woman in a shiny black dress, shaking her head as she searches for a free condiment counter.

“We’re just here for the story.”

The dress code is not a dress code: black hoodies and sneakers, sequin mini dresses and Barbarella stiletto boots, no answer is wrong. There are more children than expected. There are more women than expected. The only commonality seems to be the favorite athlete. “Tyson for victory,” reads an orange T-shirt handed out at one of the entrances. It’s reversible, and on the other side it says “Paul for victory”, but you wouldn’t know it by scanning the corridors. If this match was a public vote, it would be a landslide.

“We thought everyone would be for Jake Paul,” says Rachel Mandia, 22, sitting at a raised table near a concession stand with her friend Carley Summerall. “Dave Portnoy said he would win.” Apparently, social media star and pizza lover Portnoy has little influence with this crowd.

Neither woman is a sports expert. “Honestly, I’ve never watched a boxing match in my life,” Mandia says.

“We’re just here for the story,” Summerall says.

“Who is Ralph Macchio?”

A roar of excitement alerts me that celebrities are nearby. Spectators jostle like paparazzi along a clear walkway that leads from an elevator to the entrance to a VIP Netflix party on the ground floor. Evander Holyfield, stone-faced, rushes in like a cold wind, then Cedric the Artist jumps in, raising his glass. Every 10 minutes or so, another bold name: Comedy Central roaster Jeff Ross, former cowboy Jason Witten, Billy Zabka of Cobra Kai walk with Ralph Macchio.

“Who is Ralph Macchio?” asks the kid behind me.

“It’s the original Karate Kid!” I tell him, as if he’s never heard of the Beatles, and he shrugs. Fame is a subjective term. I felt the same way when he was excited about Daddy Yankee.

The fractured media landscape of the 21st century means that we are rarely looking in the same direction. The monoculture of my youth is dead, replaced by a thousand microcultures of Discord, Twitch and TikTok and probably 10 different apps I’ve never heard of, and maybe that’s why so many people are excited to come together in the same place. Because we finally have something we can all talk about, something we can all share. The fight is broadcast on Netflix (not very goodit turns out), but the tens of thousands of people who braved traffic and the shock of tickets and parking (and plane travel and hotels) have bragging rights about being there in person when the The story unfolds.

Charlize Theron appears as a human Barbie doll in a white blazer and leather mini skirt. She stops to sign a child’s T-shirt near the elevator. Then his father turns to me. “Angelina Jolie just signed her shirt.”

His son turns around to show him the shaky signature. “No, it says Charlize!”

“Bread and Circuses”

The Netflix party disperses and the crowd filters into the arena for the Amanda Serrano-Katie Taylor fight. Two men with $43 nosebleed seats watch on one of the common area’s countless TVs while they sip Shiner Bocks.

“It’s bread and circuses,” Ralph DeSena said with a laugh as he looked around at the chaos. He’s from New York, but he came to town for the Southern Methodist University football game against Boston College and thought he’d go see the Big Show. His tone is amused and dismayed. “There is no reason for all these people to be here watching a 58-year-old beat up a YouTuber.”

Except that’s not what happened.

“It’s really bad”

The arena crackles at 11 p.m. as the lights dim to signal the arrival of our gladiators. The image of Jake Paul on the screen causes a wave of boos. He heads to the ring, sitting next to his brother Logan in a green low rider, nodding his head in coolness. Miami Vice groove to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” cans of Celsius energy drink placed prominently in the front seat.

Then the legend appears and the crowd explodes. Everyone stands like it’s the Pledge of Allegiance. The cameras come out. The guy next to me is FaceTiming his brother, the guy in front of me is live streaming. We’re normal people, but for a brief time, we share a room with a legend.

The next eight rounds are difficult. So little happens that people start chanting “Ty-SON!” Ty-SON! ” as if, through sheer volume, they could force the man’s arm to take one of his famous debilitating blows. “This is really bad,” the guy next to me groaned. Another guy yells, “Come on, Mike, I’ll bet a lot of money on this!” »

Tyson lumbers around the ring like a wounded lion, while Paul hustles back and forth in his silver boxing shorts with the Monopoly money guy off to the side. As the sixth round becomes the seventh, there are no more chants, no more boos. In my section, it’s just silence.

“The dark fascination of boxing lies as much in failure and the courage to refrain from failure as in triumph,” Joyce Carol Oates once wrote.

Tyson seems to handle failure well, but the people in my section have a harder time.

“It was scripted!” » shouts Kevin Semexant, originally from Brooklyn, Tyson’s hometown. He shakes his head, burying his hands in his hair. “Tyson made Brooklyn look bad!” I didn’t come all this way to see Tyson lose like a bum.

Whether this was all just a gimmick will be the next mystery in this ongoing saga. Did Iron Mike play us pool? Or the ravages of time snooker Iron Mike? Boxing is a young man’s game. Were we fools – or was he?

“Look, I love Mike Tyson, I don’t care if he lies down in the ring,” says Pete Almaguer, who came from Fort Worth with his wife, as he heads toward the exit. “It brought young and old together. Common ground.

“Do you think it was scripted?” I ask.

He hesitates, smiles. “I think it was entertainment.”