Mike Tyson caught making wild Shohei Ohtani comment at ESPYS

Mike Tyson may have known where he was when he appeared at the 2026 ESPYS, but he didn’t appear to know who Shohei Ohtani is.

Tyson teamed up with one of his greatest boxing rivals in Jake Paul, along with DJ Khaled to present the award for best single-game performance at the ESPYS Wednesday night. The nominees featured Bam Adebayo scoring 83 points, Tyce Armstrong hitting three grand slams, Hannah Hidalgo grabbing 16 steals to go with 44 points, and Shohei Ohtani striking out 10 batters while slugging three homers to clinch a World Series appearance for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Ohtani was the winner, as announced by Tyson. Unfortunately, just as he skipped out on the MLB All-Star Game, Ohtani couldn’t be at the ESPYS to accept the award, which Paul revealed to the crowd. And as the play-off music began signaling it was time for the trio to exit the stage, Tyson could be heard asking Paul a bizarre question.

“Shohei’s a guy?”

Mike Tyson awarded Shohei Ohtani the ESPY for best single-game performance, but had one very important question afterwards pic.twitter.com/sdDZFW0dwS

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) July 16, 2026

“Shohei’s a guy?” Tyson appeared to ask, making some wonder whether he just misidentified the biggest baseball star in the world.

Tyson made the comment off mic, but he was close enough for it to get picked up by the broadcast, appearing to reveal he has no idea who Shohei Ohtani is.

There is a chance Tyson said, “Shohei’s the guy” or “Shohei’s a god.” But the overwhelming sentiment seems to be everyone believing Tyson was just learning who Ohtani was in real time at the ESPYS. And if someone was going miss the last decade or so of Ohtani taking over the baseball world, it’s probably fitting that Tyson is the guy.