It wasn’t a bizarre fever dream — Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson actually happened.
The colossal AT&T Stadium-hosted spectacle garnered the attention of the combat sports world this past Saturday night. Paul, 27, has had no issues early into his professional boxing career getting fans interested in seeing him suffer a potential knockout loss, however the YouTube sensation took his venture to new heights when he and his promotion entity, Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), pulled legendary boxing icon Tyson out of a 19-year absence from the pro boxing ranks.
Unfortunately for Tyson, the result didn’t go in his favor — he lost a tepid unanimous decision after eight rounds of Paul touching him up in the squared circle. MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian had a front-row seat to the action in Arlington, Texas, and thought his event’s main event played out as expected.
As has been commonplace throughout Paul’s boxing career (11-1), a Tyson clash also attracted “rigged” accusations. One, in particular, came from NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, which irked Bidarian.
The former Dallas Cowboy alluded to a rumor about Tyson’s contract, which, according to Irvin, allegedly stated that Tyson wasn’t allowed to throw uppercuts. That specific claim was obviously unfounded, considering that Tyson did throw uppercuts in the match. But regardless, Bidarian did not appreciate seeing the legitimacy of his promotion’s event questioned by such a national figure.
“I’m concerned that there’s a CTE problem there for Michael Irvin,” Bidarian said Wednesday on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “How would you see the contract, to begin with, that Mike Tyson couldn’t throw an uppercut? It’s just beyond lunacy and the realm of reality of life.
“This was a regulated professional bout by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. And we were partners with Netflix, the biggest media company in the world, who’s a public company. For anyone to suggest that this was in any way a rigged fight, they’re either dumb or they’re looking for attention.”
Again, this isn’t the first time a Paul match has been accused of having a script. Whether it was his knockouts of Tyron Woodley and Ben Askren, or unanimous decisions over Anderson Silva and Nate Diaz, watching an influencer defeat notable combat figures has been a hard pill to swallow for some fans.
The more people watch, the more they can capitalize on it in their own silly ways, which is exactly what Bidarian sees Irvin’s claims as.
“I get it. Putting out posts, ‘Oh, proof it was rigged,’ that gets you good engagement,” Bidarian said.
“People say outlandish things to bring awareness to themselves, but it’s a sad state of society that that’s where people want to spend their time.”
Between a record-breaking $18.1 million gate and record-breaking peak of 65 million viewers, Paul vs. Tyson did what it hoped to do by capturing the imaginations of people around the globe. The event opened up combat sports — and boxing specifically — to a whole new audience, however one thing that needs to be sorted out if MVP and Netflix partner again is the live viewing experience.
Streaming issues came in rapid abundance on Friday night, with complaints aplenty flooding through social media feeds. From buffers to required refreshes, Paul vs. Tyson was too much for Netflix to handle.
While such issues obviously aren’t ideal, Bidarian noted they would’ve represented a much more dire problem if the event was sold to customers as a pay-per-view.
Still, in a way, there’s a positive spin to put on everything.
“I think first and foremost, we broke the internet,” Bidarian said. “We did something that has never been done before. The record for streaming in the U.S. was 23 million concurrent, right? We blew past that. So Netflix has shown that it has an ability to do things that no other media platform has done before.
“Secondly, Netflix is always advancing the boundaries of content consumption. They’ve been doing that for many years and this was another example of that. They did a better job than any media partner that I’ve ever seen in promoting this event. Both in their own channels and in terms of third-party marketing spent. It was a tremendous execution of bringing attention, eyeballs, and awareness to one specific live event, and they deserve all the credit in the world. And the biggest credit that anyone can get as a public company is how their stock price acts after such a monumental moment for their company.
“As you will see, it’s been discussed by many financial analysts, their stock is up meaningfully since last Friday night, so investors loved what they saw.”
