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Mike Tyson and Jake Paul Fight: An eventful Friday at the AT&T Center in Arlington Texas may not have hit a perfect ending, but legendary Mike Tyson and Youtuber-turned-fighter Jake Paul did enough to whip up a social media storm, and even bring down streaming giants Netflix during the evening.
While the 58-year-old Tyson, an unstoppable heavyweight force in his prime during the 1980s and 1990s, was brought to an unceremonious defeat by Paul, 31 years his junior, the passable fight did not serve up to the billing. Tyson landed 18 punches to a whopping 78 by Paul across eight two-minute rounds.
However, a pre-bout final face-off on Thursday that ended with Tyson slapping Paul and a display of bonhomie after the contest took the spotlight.
Paul hails G.O.A.T Tyson
After registering a unanimous decision victory over the former heavyweight world champion, Paul was effusive in his praise of Tyson, who entered the fight with a braced knee owing to an injury.
“First and foremost, Mike Tyson – it’s an honour to be able to fight him. He is the G.O.A.T (Greatest of all Time),” said Paul. “It was as tough and hard as I thought it would be.”
Tyson defers retirement question
Despite the injury concern in the lead-up to the contest, Tyson did not see an excuse on his part. “Yeah, but I can’t use that as an excuse. If I did, I wouldn’t be in here,” Tyson said. “I knew he was a good fighter. He was prepared, I came to fight. I didn’t prove nothing to anybody, only to myself. I’m not one of those guys that live to please the world. I’m just happy with what I can do.”
Even as his first sanctioned bout since 2005 ended in a defeat, Tyson refused to give up on a possible return to the future. “I don’t know. It depends on the situation,” he said.
Netflix crash
Netflix’s first attempt at handling a live sports event did not receive a passing grade across the globe, prompting widespread trolls and criticism on social media.
“This is the biggest event, over 120 million people on Netflix. We crashed the site, The biggest U.S. boxing gate, $20 million, in U.S. history, and everyone is next on the list,” Paul said after the fight.
If Netflix broadcasted NFL games… pic.twitter.com/jHC9zST3WT
— NFL Memes (@NFL_Memes) November 16, 2024
The fight experienced streaming problems according to many viewers on social media. Many viewers took to Twitter/X and Bluesky to express their frustrations with streaming and buffering problems before and during the fight. According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to the fight.
The Tyson-Paul clash was Netflix’s biggest live sports event to date, and an opportunity to make sure it can handle audience demand with the NFL and WWE on the horizon. It streamed globally to Netflix’s 280 million subscribers at no additional cost.
– With AP inputs
