There was plenty of criticism surrounding Friday’s much-hyped Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing event streaming on Netflix, but it had nothing to do with the boxers in the ring.
Issues with video streaming quality, pixelation, stuttering and even outright crashes lit up social media well before the main event, as undercard fighters slugged it out.
Tracking website downdetector.com showed a surge of reports of problems with Netflix’s website beginning just before 9 pm ET. They climbed to more than 88,700 reports around 10:30 pm
The fight between boxing legend Tyson and YouTuber-turned-boxer Paul had been estimated to begin around 11 pm, but undercard fighters were still competing.
Users on X shared gifs of highly pixelated videos, or images of wires and comments suggesting that the streaming company’s IT department must be in for a rough night.
Some even dusted off the old “connecting” screen from the internet’s America Online days to make a joke about the problems.
The hashtags #NetflixFight, #buffering and #netflixcrash trended on the social media platform.
Netflix had no immediate comment, a spokesperson said in response to an emailed inquiry.
Tyson, now 58, is the former heavyweight champion and one of boxing’s biggest names. Paul, 27, gained fame as a social media star before he began training and boxing.
The event at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, was supposed to take place on July 20 but was postponed until Friday after Tyson suffered an ulcer flare-up in May that limited his training for a time.