Jake Paul and Mike Tyson’s massive showdown was a bigger hit than the Super Bowl, according to the main event winner.
Boxing icon Tyson returned to the ring at the age of 58 to face social media star Paul, who was an active competitor 31 years his junior. The heavyweight duo went the distance in Dallas, and drew in considerably more viewers than expected – perhaps even to their detriment.
At times, viewers experienced lengthy outages, with Tyson’s team claiming that they “KO’d Netflix’ and Paul noting that they crashed the popular streaming platform. Most Valuable Promotions will release viewing figures next week, and they are expected to be astronomical.
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Jake Paul defeated Mike Tyson in dull, but historic heavyweight clash
Not one fight ended early on Friday night at the AT&T Stadium, with every single bout ending in a decision. Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano put on a barn burner in the co-main event, which arguably saved the sporting aspect of the show before Jake Paul and Mike Tyson ended up a damp squib.
Despite threats of a big knockout finish, it at times seemed that Paul was keeping the aged Tyson alive as he opted not to push for the closing blow throughout the eight rounds. ‘Iron Mike’ flew out of the traps early, and seemed to earn his cheeky rival’s respect with some big shots.
But it ultimately ended with Paul bowing to his opponent and declaring that he loves him as they finished out the final seconds. In the end, the scorecards read unanimously in Paul’s favor, with two judges only giving Tyson one round and another giving him the opening two.
After almost a year of build-up the bout didn’t quite live up to the hype. But it was saved by stunning undercard showings from Taylor and Serrano and Mario Barrios and Abel Ramos’ split draw earlier in the card.
Jake Paul claims Mike Tyson fight could have been more viewed than the Super Bowl
The event was such a monumental success on Netflix that it may have even become a problem for the promotion. Throughout the night, viewers worldwide complained of outages in their coverage while trying to watch the event.
But Paul heaped praise on the company’s engineering team for fixing the issue, and hailed a massively successful night. He even teased that the event could have been ‘bigger than the Super Bowl’, which reportedly did a collective 123million viewers across platforms earlier this year.
“Everyone is ecstatic,” Paul told Bloody Elbow at the post-fight press conference. “Shout out to them, amazing partners, amazing people, we couldn’t be happier with our partnership and how everything went.
“I think it was six times the numbers that I thought, but the numbers are still coming in so it might be more than that. But bigger than the Super Bowl? That’s a little teaser there. Netflix crashed, yeah, but shout out to the Netflix engineers we love you, they fixed it right away.
Paul’s MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian added that: “The plan is at some point next week to release the numbers. Let’s just say a lot more people watched than they watched Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather against Conor McGregor, a lot more.”
Paul had previously told Bloody Elbow that success for the promotion would have been toppling the NFL Wild Card game from January between eventual Super Bowl winners the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, which had set the live streaming record for a sporting event at 32.1million viewers.
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