There have already been millions of words written about Jake Paul after Friday night.

There will certainly be millions more.

Many of those words will diminish his acumen as a boxer. Many more will question the competency of the 58-year-old husk of Mike Tyson he shared a ring with.

Both are valid takes on what occurred between 11 p.m. and midnight CT at AT&T Stadium.

But neither should debate a single inalienable fact about the self-aggrandizing "Problem Child" from Cleveland: The kid is a showman of the highest caliber.

And in an era where social media followers have transcended nearly everything to become mainstream currency, that matters a lot, if not more than anything.

It was surely Tyson's nostalgic aura – but every bit as much Paul's modern marketing – that put more than 70,000 behinds in seats on a chilly night in metro Dallas, making it the biggest crowd for which a long-docile "Baddest Man on the Planet" has ever performed.

So if the success of the event is determined by a bratty 27-year-old's prowess in convincing people to spend their money to see him get beaten up, it's unanimous.

He's positively the best heel in the game today, and maybe its best ever.

That's the good news.

But even the emergence of a modern-day Hollywood Hogan or Ric Flair doesn't detract from another truth gleaned from a night spent at "Jerry's World."

No matter how lucrative and viral the event might have been, it was something else, too:

Sad.

It took exactly two minutes – a truncated round length green lit by the Texas commission to ensure the fight stayed local – for music to fade, lasers to dim and even the most hopeful of Tyson's apologists to realize there's a reason why guys who haven't fought in nearly 20 years don't come back to get punched in the face by guys young enough to be their sons.

We knew he was old and slow.

We didn't know he was that old and that slow.

And once it became clear the vim and vigor whittled into tasty YouTube clips and the angry slap at a Thursday night staredown had been a tease for which there'd be no grand climax, the feel-good nostalgia turned into an uneasy shifting every time the grandfather stumbled or wobbled or nibbled on his glove.

From "please let him win" to "please don't let him die."

All that schmaltz. Gone in 120 seconds.

Then, across the final seven rounds, everyone began recalling what they'd already known.

Tyson has lived a harder life than nearly anyone his age. His body has broken down.

He hadn't won a fight since 2003 and lost his last two as a washed-up 38-year-old who no longer had the desire necessary to compete. And, for whatever else Paul is, he's an athletic guy with at least basic fundamental boxing skill. That's all that was needed to win, and win easily.

No lightning in a bottle. No reliving of 1980s childhoods on HBO. No last hurrah.

Paul knew it, too. Which is why he humanely eased off the gas and bowed to Tyson at the end, not risking the permanent blotch he'd have earned by savagely attacking a helpless elder.

Much of the crowd had left by then and the ones who remained booed the unanimous decision in the younger man's favor by rote, but it didn't stop the winner from getting back on brand with a requisite post-fight mention of Canelo Alvarez and a suggestion that the multi-division Mexican champion "knows he needs a payday, (and) he knows where the money man is at."

It's a ridiculous prospect perhaps rivaled in lunacy by some on social media Saturday morning suggesting Tyson held back to avoid hurting his foe and risking his paycheck.

Victory or not, Paul isn't skilled enough to beat anything resembling an active world-class fighter. And if people genuinely think Tyson was holding back to protect financial interests, they're not responsible enough to have devices. And come to think of it, they're exactly the sorts of rubes Jake will be calling when it comes time for the next one.