Fans blast Netflix after Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul fight crashes
If Netflix wants to continue in live sport, the streaming giant has a lot of work ahead, judging by the reaction to Mike Tyson’s fight.
Love it or hate it, 58-year-old Mike Tyson’s return to the ring against Jake Paul was the biggest fight in the world this year.
And it seems Netflix just wasn’t ready.
Jake Paul came to the ring first after his introduction, followed by the American boxing legend.
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But right when Tyson was making his slow walk to the ring, the screen suddenly froze and then crashed.
For this writer, desperately trying to refresh, there was just a small message in the top left corner of the screen that said “envoy overload”.
For thousands of others around the world, there were buffering issues throughout the event as Netflix continued its cagey foray into live sports.
After Paul did as most expected and comfortably won the fight, even he mentioned the Netflix issues in his post-fight interview, in a move that may not have thrilled the event hosts.
“This is the biggest event, over 120 million people on Netflix, we crashed the site,” he said.
“The biggest US boxing gate, $20 million, US history, everyone is next on the list (to fight).”
It continued a difficult night for the streaming giant, with both Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and boxing legend Evander Holyfield suffering technical failures during the incredibly long build-up to the main event.
The Sun reported around 12,000-plus and counting were struggling to watch the fights in the United States alone and many took to X to vent their frustrations.
One said: “Netflix doesn’t fix this buffering issue, this will go down as one of the biggest fails in all of tv/streaming history.”
Another added: “What is going on with Netflix?”
A third commented: “Looks like Netflix tapped out before Jake Paul or Mike Tyson could.
“Guess the servers weren’t ready to go 12 rounds tonight!”
And a fourth replied: “This Netflix broadcast is an incredible ad for Amazon Prime.”
Streaming giant Ninja tweeted: “Netflix live servers couldn’t even handle a love is blind live reunion tour, let’s trust Netflix to handle Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson!”
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In the fight itself, Tyson barely threw a punch as his ageing body couldn’t keep up with his hopes of a dream knockout.
At the end of the eight-round fight, over shortened two-minute rounds, Paul was credited with 978 punches thrown to Tyson’s 278, landing 78 to just 18 for the Hall of Famer.
– with The Sun