MIke Tyson’s return to professional boxing after nearly two decades generated significant public attention ahead of Friday night’s comeback fight against YouTuber boxer Jake Paul, but the reviews were not kind.
The 58-year-old former heavyweight champion’s lamentable performance in a dull unanimous decision defeat drew disappointment and condemnation as boos descended from the crowd of more than 72,000 spectators at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, about 20 miles west of Dallas.
“Just sad,” wrote NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson. “I cut it off because I couldn’t watch anymore. It’s sad to see Mike Tyson like this because I went to every Tyson fight. This fight tonight wasn’t great for boxing.
Tyson landed just 18 punches in the eight two-minute rounds, including just six in the last five sessions, compared to his opponent’s 78 punches landed. Wearing a compression sleeve on his right knee, he appeared completely exhausted after the first round, with his freedom of movement visibly hampered, allowing the 27-year-old Paul to score at will with outside punches.
“I love Mike Tyson, but [commentators are] giving him too much credit,” wrote four-weight boxing champion Terence Crawford. “He looked like crap, to train so long and only throw 97 punches, the whole fight is crazy. I’m just glad he didn’t get hurt there.”
The 31-year age gap between the fighters was thought to be the largest in history, surpassing the 24 years that separated Archie Moore and Mike DiBiase when they met as light heavyweights in 1963. And Tyson looked every bit the part of a man reaching 60. with a history of health problems and a 7,097-day layoff as he worked his way through eight dreary rounds, the mind willing but the body in complete revolt.
“I’m mad at myself for staying awake for this,” wrote JJ Watt, former NFL star and minority investor in Burnley FC. “I know better.”
Audible cheers could be heard inside the $1.2 billion (£951 million) home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys during the later rounds as Paul softened his punches, sensing Tyson’s fatigue and vulnerability and sparing him the humiliation of a knockout that seemed ripe for victory. pick.
Paul said: “I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t need to be hurt.”
The criticism wasn’t limited to the dismal main event. The seven-fight card marked Netflix’s third foray into live sports following last year’s The Netflix Cupa golf pro-am with F1 drivers, and March’s The Netflix slama tennis exhibition between Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal in Las Vegas. But Paul and Tyson’s enormous popularity, across varying age demographics, helped attract a huge global audience that overwhelmed the company’s servers, resulting in thousands of viewer complaints about buffering issues and screen freezes.
The technical issues began during the co-feature bout, which saw Katie Taylor win a controversial 10-round unanimous decision over Amanda Serrano in a highly anticipated rematch of their 2022 classic. The crowd-pleasing scrap was a stark contrast to the rigorous main event, but not for the nearly 100,000 users who reported network issues from the middle rounds, the website said. Down detector.
These issues would continue into Tyson’s fight with Paul, driving many viewers to X and Bluesky to vent their frustrations, where #NetflixCrash was one of the trending topics.
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“Hey Netflix, have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting the router?” an X user wrote .
By many metrics, the event, promoted by Paul’s three-year-old Most Valuable Promotions company, was a roaring success. The nearly $18 million (£14.3 million) live gate shattered the record for the largest US boxing gate outside Las Vegas and almost doubled the previous Texas value for a boxing or MMA (mixed martial arts) event of $ 9 million for Canelo Álvarez’s fight with Billy Joe Saunders in 2021.
“This is the greatest event,” Paul later boasted. “More than 120 million people on Netflix. We crashed the site.”
But it was a tough showing for the streamer, whose live sports ambitions are central to his plans to grow his nascent advertising business. Netflix will air two NFL games over Christmas and will begin streaming World Wrestling Entertainment’s Raw franchise in January as part of a 10-year, $5 billion deal signed this year.