It was Fight Night in Arlington, Texas. Seventy thousand fans gathered at AT&T Stadium for a night of professional boxing. The main event would see former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson return to the ring for his first sanctioned fight in nineteen years. He would face YouTuber-turned prizefighter Jake Paul.
It was a big night for Netflix as well. The subscription-based streaming service would carry the uber-hyped fight live. This was the streaming service's first such live sporting event and a preview of Christmas Day when it will stream two NFL games.
It did not go well.
Well, that's not good.
Many of the complaints about a Netflix outage on social media were centered on the eight-round heavyweight boxing match between Mr. Tyson, a former heavyweight world champion, and Mr. Paul, a YouTuber. The livestream for that fight began at 10 p.m. Eastern time, before the fight started.
David Portnoy of Barstool Sports perfectly summarized the Netflix streaming experience.
The official cause of the disruptions has not been released, and Netflix has not exactly built confidence in its ability to live-stream sporting events.
Netflix was not ready and delivered an inferior watching experience to their subscribers.
If what they showed last night is going to be the quality of 'Netflix Sports' then who wants it?
As for the boxing, Paul defeated Tyson in a relatively unexciting unanimous decision. For his part, Tyson went the distance, even though his 58-year-old legs may have betrayed him. He proved he could still throw and take a punch. In fact, he took 78 punches over 8 rounds and was still standing at the end. The man really is 'Iron Mike'.
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Tyson and Paul were more of a spectacle than a boxing match, but it was the fight between Undisputed Lightweight Champ Katie Taylor and challenger Amanda Serrano that stole the show.
Both fighters went at each other hard throughout the bout. Serrano suffered a nasty cut above her right eye early in the fight as the result of a head butt from Taylor. Bleeding from the wound would frustrate Serrano at times during the bout and the fight was stopped for a short time in the 6th round to allow the ring-side doctor to assess the wound.
Taylor would go on to successfully defend her title in a controversial unanimous decision. Both fighters were cut and swollen after the fight. Regardless of the decision this was by far the best fight of the evening.
What a great fight! It's a shame no one could watch it.
It's worth a try. Whatever they need to do, they better work quickly, NFL fans will not be very forgiving.
Christmas is coming.
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