Last weekend we lived about 60 million households the live-streamed Netflix boxing match Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson. For eight rounds you could watch as 27-year-old Trump fan Jake Paul beat up 58-year-old ear-bitcher Mike Tyson, who hadn’t fought professionally in about 20 years.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the martial artist half his age won the boxing event, which shot to No. 1 on Netflix’s series charts, even outpacing the sci-fi fantasy hit Arcade. Just a few days later the fight is over not even in the top 10 anymore.
Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson became an embarrassment for Netflix
Neither Netflix subscribers nor sports fans were happy with the Paul vs. Tyson fight. On the one hand the streaming service’s technology collapsed during the live broadcastso many households only saw a still image of Mike Tyson’s butt while the app tried to buffer. On the other hand, both the sports world and the press considered the live event to be a questionable farce.
The Guardian, for example, headlined “Jake Paul thrashes Mike Tyson in contrived, uneven match as Grim Reaper calls time” and the New York Times said “Jake Paul vs. Tyson was a calorie-free gluttony of absurdity.” The German sports magazine Ran even wrote about a symbol “for the decline of boxing”. Ouch!
It almost sounds as if the Netflix duel had about as much content as the boxing that comedian Stefan Raab repeatedly does with professional athlete Regina Halmich.
This is the current Netflix top 10 series
Incidentally, Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson is only considered a “series” because there was already a three-part countdown documentary to the event and another boxing match.