Well, that was certainly a bizarre and honestly unsatisfying live boxing match that Netflix gave us tonight, bringing together Jake Paul and Mike Tyson to face off in front of an audience numbering more than 72,000 in the Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
But while Paul — who’s basically clickbait in the form of a human being — was declared the winner of the eight-round match, I think we can all agree who the true champion of the night was: It was the Netflix subscribers who stuck it out, who wanted to see a reasonably clear and stable feed of this insane event. An event, by the way, that brought out tons of celebs ranging from Charlize Theron to Shaq to a random Jonas brother visible in the crowd. I’m sure there were more famous faces than that, but the constantly freezing and stuttering feed made it feel at times like you were watching everything through a foggy, grease-stained window.
As for the fight itself, Paul obviously landed more punches than Tyson, securing his victory. But, in the end, it was Netflix that delivered a haymaker right to the solar plexus of all of our patience, making those of us who lasted through it all the true winners. In fact, the only thing that really kept me from losing it was trying to put myself in the shoes of the Netflix infrastructure team — because, c’mon, it’s not like they could have known millions of people were going to want to watch this fight. “Seriously @netflix should be embarrassed right now,” one user wrote on X, adding a GIF of a buffering screen. “As soon as people actually want to use their service, THIS IS WHAT WE GET.”
Added another user on X: “Me trying to understand how netflix a billion dollar company and still having buffering issues during the tyson fight.”
By the end, it felt like the only perfectly clear footage from the night that everyone was talking about came at the end of that interview when Tyson mooned us all. At one point tonight, Downdetector showed more than 97,000 reports of people having problems with Netflix. I saw someone online at one point joke that the Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out NES video game from back in 1987 had better image quality than what we got tonight from Netflix. And no lies were told.
