Florida Man Sues Netflix Over Glitchy Mike Tyson Fight With Jake Paul

Many people were disappointed in the recent boxing match between legendary fighter Mike Tyson and douchey YouTuber-turned-so-called-boxer Jake Paul. The fight, which took place at the AT&T stadium in Arlington, Texas on November 15th, was livestreamed by Netflix, which had ceaselessly promoted the event in the weeks leading up to it. Unfortunately, when the event actually happened, Netflix appeared unprepared to host it, as the night was plagued by countless reports of lagginess and outages for thousands of users.

Well, one guy isn’t taking it any longer. Variety notes that a lawsuit filed in Florida state court accuses the streaming giant of having forced an “unwatchable” spectacle upon the American people. The lawsuit further claims that “boxing fans, along with the average Americans wanting to see a legend in what would most likely be his last fight, were faced with legendary problems, including: no access, streaming glitches and buffering issues.”

The suit, which was filed by a man named Ronald “Blue” Denton, accuses the streaming platform of breach of contract and unfair, deceptive actions.

It’s true that widespread outages were reported at the height of Netflix’s sporting event. Downdetector showed that, during the fight, there were over 90,000 reports of issues with the streaming service.

Gizmodo reached out to Netflix for comment.

Aside from the streaming issues, the internet found much to whine about when it came to the fight. Many people complained that the event was boring. Others said they felt it may have been staged. Really, though, I think much of the viewer discontent can be boiled down to one simple fact: Mike Tyson—a boxer who, in his prime, enjoyed a formidable KO ratio and was known to demolish opponents with consciousness-extinguishing punches—lost to a showboating douche that most of us consider to be the very definition of “punchable.” For many viewers, I believe this was a development that was more than they could bear.

One X user expressed his distress in this way: “You need not feel bad about watching what ended up being a depressing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. After all, people were simply watching with the collective hope in the small chance they’d get to see a YouTuber executed. And that’s beautiful.”

It’s not exactly surprising that Tyson lost. After all, Tyson is 58-years-old and Paul, at 27, is some three decades younger than him. Still, I think viewers expected Tyson to somehow triumph over the obvious disadvantages he faced and lay down a decisive wallop. After the fight, many people joked that Paul seemed to have displayed no qualms about beating a senior citizen. A meme circulated X, claiming that Paul planned to fight Jimmy Carter next.