The Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing event, which took place last Friday night (Nov. 15, 2024) at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, made sports history with over 108 million live global viewers on Netflix, which may or may not include the streamers around the world who got stuck with frozen, blacked out, or otherwise “unwatchable” feeds.
More on that streaming debacle right here.
In response to the “legendary problems” encountered on fight night, Florida man Ronald “Blue” Denton filed a class-action lawsuit against Netflix, citing breach of contract and unfair, deceptive actions. The complaint cited “no access, streaming glitches, and buffering issues,” for nearly a million frustrated fight fans, including Denton.
TMZ Sports first reported the lawsuit on Tuesday.
In addition to the streaming issues, fans were left feeling “conned” by the eight-round headliner; which at times, resembled a glorified sparring match. Paul, 27, was able to juke and jive his way to a decision against the 58 year-old Tyson. Sadly, the headlining snoozefest overshadowed an incredible championship co-main event.
The conspiracy theorists were out in force by the next morning.
“They had no intentions to really scrap at all,” three-time Super Bowl champion Michael Irvin said on It Is What It Is podcast. “If you look through that, I didn’t see one patented uppercut by Mike Tyson. What if Mike Tyson hit him with an uppercut? Then I heard some people talking about they put that in the contract. He couldn’t body and then uppercut. Like, how can you put that in a fight contract?”
On the plus side, blacked out viewers missed this.
“You got all these people out here, and he couldn’t body him and do that patented uppercut,” Irvin continued. “All of that is Mike Tyson is not Mike Tyson anyway, and now you taking away Mike Tyson’s best gift, which was that uppercut. Man, that’s a big lie to me. That’s like making me play a game without running a slant route in the deep end or the deep out. You do what you do best. If they take that away you not that dude anymore, and they took that away.”
Netflix declined to comment when contacted by NBC 5 Chicago.