OLIVER HOLT: The Mike Tyson Jake Paul fight in Dallas at the AT&T Stadium on Friday is entertainment not sport

Let’s be honest about Mike Tyson’s ‘fight’ with Jake Paul in Dallas on Friday night — it has got about as much relevance to sport as an episode of The Great British Bake Off.

It’s the Party Hole at LIV Las Vegas, where the attraction is the dancing DJ, not the golf.

It’s a Demolition Derby at a state fair.

It’s Jesse Owens racing a horse. It’s Kanye West throwing the first pitch. All sport is entertainment, but not all entertainment is sport.

I would not argue that Tyson versus Paul is not entertainment because I would be there if I could and I will probably watch it on Netflix.

We’re all talking about it, after all. But it’s not sport. Not to me, anyway.

Tyson-Paul is a grift. It’s a barrel load of dollar bills dressed up in sport’s clothes to inveigle you. Its only worth is in its cultural significance because it is, sadly, a signpost to the direction sport is heading.

It is another signal of sport’s submission to money and the triumph of image over competition.

And even if it is hard to admit it sometimes, perhaps it is also a pointer to what a new Netflix generation of sports fans want.

It is a fight of eight two-minute rounds tailored to the age of the shrinking attention span. It’s a highlights package.

It’s bite-size, although Evander Holyfield might not appreciate that inference.

The “fight”, at the AT&T Stadium, is a sister to the idea that Cristiano Ronaldo is still one of the greatest players in the world because he is scoring goals and striking poses in the Saudi Pro League.

It is a brother to the notion that Inter Miami are one of the best 32 teams in the world because Lionel Messi plays for them and should qualify for next summer’s Club World Cup.

It’s a cousin to WWE, to Tiger and Rory’s TGL golf league, and to those horrendous celebrity soccer matches where

someone who calls himself IShowSpeed actually seems to think he is a player.

It’s sport gone wrong. It’s sport’s dystopia.

Tyson-Paul carries poignant elements of pathos and nostalgia and, in many observers, it provokes a feeling of disgust, but that is not enough to make it sport either.

Friendly football matches aren’t sport because the result doesn’t matter. It’s the same with those pre-season tours that Premier League clubs embark on every summer. They are not sport. They are commercial exercises to be endured for cash.

That is why American television executives are so keen to drag regular-season Premier League games to the States, because they’re real.

I’m not saying that it does not take courage to get in the ring with Mike Tyson. It takes courage to get in a ring with anyone, let alone the fighter who was once known as the Baddest Man on the Planet.

I got scared just asking him a question at a press conference. But I’m not sure Tyson-Paul is real.

It’s weird. It’s sad. It’s a circus. It will make a lot of people a lot of money and will generate an awful lot of hits on social media, but that doesn’t make it sport. It makes it a betrayal of sport.

It’s a show and it’s an extravaganza. It’s a red carpet. It’s a photo opportunity. It’s a marketing exercise. It’s a shouting match and a chance to posture and promote.

The evening will be a giant celebration of America’s new Donald Trump-Elon Musk-Joe Rogan manosphere.

It’s an offshoot of sport. It’s something grafted on to sport. It’s a leech latching on to a host and sucking for all it is worth.

I hope neither man is injured but, apart from that, I’m not sure I care about the result because it doesn’t matter.

Instinctively, I’d like Tyson to win, because he was once a great sportsman.

And if, at the age of 58, with a whole host of serious medical episodes behind him, he beats Paul, it will at least expose once and for all the emptiness of so-called sporting careers built on the shifting sands of modern celebrity.

Jake Paul first found fame by performing stunts and pranks.