On Nov. 15, 2024, 27-year-old Youtuber, Podcaster and self proclaimed “professional boxer,” Jake Paul took on and defeated 58-year-old retired boxing legend, Mike Tyson. The fight was originally supposed to be on July 20, but it got postponed due to Tyson having a health complication on a flight to Los Angeles. Previous to this fight, Paul was 10-1 in his boxing career with seven knockouts. Tyson was 50-6, with a whopping 44 knockouts, meaning 78% of all his fights resulted in him knocking out his opponent.
The fight started at around 11:45 p.m. EST and broadcasted on Netflix across the globe.
“The bout shown on Netflix was the most-streamed global sporting event ever with 65 million live concurrent streams and 108 million total live viewers around the world, according to a Netflix release,” Consumer News and Business Channel stated. “The Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor fight before the Tyson-Paul match averaged 74 million live global viewers, the most-watched professional women’s sporting event ever in the U.S. with 47 million viewers.””
Tyson looked strong in the first and second round, throwing and landing a few punches. However, in the third round, Tyson was showing initial signs of fatigue, landing far fewer punches than Paul. The fourth and fifth rounds were very similar to the third , with Tyson looking fatigued and not competing like how he used to. When the camera zoomed into Tyson in his corner, he looked completely out of it. When the cameras zoomed into Paul, he had an abundance of energy and demonstrated exemplary skill against Tyson. The sixth round was especially difficult for Tyson. He was barely throwing any punches at all, while Paul was landing some significant body shots. Once again, Tyson looked defeated in his corner. The seventh and eighth rounds were also a breeze for Paul. With about 10 seconds left in the last round, Paul bowed down to Tyson in the ring, paying his respect to the boxing legend.
Overall Paul threw a total of 278 punches and landed 78, while Tyson threw only 97 punches and landed 18. This caused upset amongst viewers as they thought Paul challenging Tyson in the first place was unfair due to the extreme age gap. Not only the fans were mad but many other boxing and MMA fighters wanted to challenge Paul after the fight including Antonio Tarver, Andre Ward, Jake Shields, Arthur Beterbiev, Francis Ngannou and Ryan Garcia.
“I’ve been quiet for some time but I’ve been cooking on some plans before my actual return to the ring. Here is the plan before April: (an) exhibition in December in Japan against the guy who fought aging (Manny Pacquiao) and tried to knock him out. And then go after Jake for uncle Mike.” said Garcia on X.
