The seemingly disappointing match up between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson this evening left much to be desired. Let’s take a step back from the age difference for a second to focus on the fan demographics. The two camps consisted of the Jake Paul people and the Tyson true believers, and it remains to see which group was more disappointed. As it became evident as the second round concluded, Tyson was FAR too old to be doing what he was doing. Granted Logan Paul did far from punching him out, (as ‘Mike Tyson’s Punchout’ had done to Paul in the Netflix docuseries leading to the bout) but never the less the victory was evident.
Tyson was never going to win, it just didn’t become obvious until the fight actually started. The concept of ANY 58 year old fighting any 27 year old is asinine. It seems that most fans were blinded by the camera lights to see it coming until it had punched us all in the face. Paul was either was still so unskilled, OR had too much respect for Tyson to go for a knock out, and Tyson was just too far past his prime for fans to realize the ‘baddest man on the planet’ had an expiration date.
Paul got paid $40 million, twice as much as Tyson’s $20 million for this fight, and it was another massive leap forward for Logan Paul’s online media empire. Hopefully some of that budget went to fix Netflix’s live streaming issues. In multiple households at a few crucial pre-climax points, service became spotty and needed to be reset. According to Downdetector, the number of users indicating problems was 85,021 by 10:35 p.m. ET (0335 GMT Saturday). Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from various sources. Downdetector reported that the outage primarily impacted users in major metropolitan areas, including New York, Seattle and Los Angeles, with scattered reports from other regions.
Evander Holyfield was able to dodge questions about Tyson’s ear bite ONLY due to the fact that his commentary mic and headset weren’t working as intended, and he ironically had to continuously tap on his bitten ear to try to hear what was being said before he was fed questions vocally. Let’s also just do what we can to briefly cover what wasn’t covered by briefs, (or anything else). After a swift interview with his son, Iron Mike Tyson turned around with his belt on, and not much else. Tyson showing his bare ass will UNDOUBTEDLY go down in pop-culture history as the next biggest wardrobe malfunction past Janet Jackson’s nip slip. But that’s as much attention that we’ll bring to it, you could imagine the rest if there’s anything else to be left to imagination.
Logan on the other hand also pushed Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano in the event, which ended up being the realest and most interesting fight of the night. The decision was difficult to predict with both fighters running out of steam after both stumbling to stay standing, and Taylor rubbing her hair into Serrano’s massive gash above one eye for the latter part of the bout. All that being said, the fight itself was the most professional part of the evening all together. Butts were shown, while others were humped (in the very first match). Eyes were cut open while others were clenched shut during the headlining fight.
The lead up Netflix special on Paul vs. Tyson (with sprinklings of Taylor vs. Serrano) before the fight wound up being a massive blast for Netflix. The event was also the first live event for Netflix, and the actual streaming audience (at point of writing) has yet to be disclosed. Which will undoubtedly be the springboard for more live events. The business end of this was overshadowed by the spectacle, which was dwarfed by the excitement of the match up and covered by the brilliant promotion. But as soon as the second round of the match was over, everyone remembered Jake Paul has no idea how to play a Nintendo… or Mike Tyson’s video game. So he for sure was not fighting Mike anywhere close to his prime. All in all, this was a very lucrative experiment for Netflix, and it will be interesting what these results hold for the future of the streaming service.
