I remember that like yesterday, because I was in Memphis, Tennessee the entire time during the build up..It wasn't staged but here are some factors that lead to the obvious flop by Clifford..

1) Tyson was acting very strange during the promotion, he wanted to cancel then said he wanted to fight, then canceled again because he went out and got a fucking tattoo on his face, then said nevermind okay i'll do it

2)Cliff responded by saying that tyson didn't want to fight and the constant off and on behavior was hurting his preparation so he then backed out.

3) People started saying that he was to earn a million for the fight and he was stupid for backing out..

4)Just days before the fight, ESPN reported that Cliff made phone call back home to his wife during which she some how convinced him to go through with it..Many, including the ESPN anchor speculated that she said something in the area of "Man you'd better not blow the hugest purse of your career are you stupid or something like that"

5)On the night of the fight people in the arena where saying that if they were cliff, because of tyson's antics they'd just go down off the first solid punch, stay down, then take the money..which is exactly what he did....I don't think he was hurt at all, yeah it was a good punch but he immediately got up after the count, even told tyson to stop bullshitting so much....

So, not staged but definitely not a 100% performance..