Coming off a divisive election, the highly anticipated fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul could have been the perfect opportunity to unite us once again.The event brought in young people who seem to worship anyone who can make videos on TikTok while also drawing in the older crowd who wanted to experience the nostalgia of watching the most dominant boxer of our time go to work. More than any recent fight, it had the chance of revitalizing boxing. But instead, it united the nation in agreement on one point: it was a complete bust on every level.The business side of the fight was the only success — and those numbers are huge. It is estimated that more than 60 million people watched the fight on Netflix with another 80,000 in attendance. It was Netflix’s largest live event ever, possibly setting them up for future events, and I do mean possibly. Paul is believed to have made $40 million from the fight while Tyson raked in around $20 million. While it’s impossible to call these numbers anything but a success, they certainly came at a cost.I wrote about boxing earlier this year, how putting football on streaming services might damage the sport the way payper view impacted boxing. While boxing has continued to make big money on pay-perview, the popularity of the sport has shrunk incredibly from its glory days. For most of the 20th century, boxing was second in popularity only to America’s favorite pastime: baseball. The heavyweight champion was once the most revered position in sports. I’m a huge sports guy, yet I honestly do not know who the heavyweight champ is today. That would be unheard of in the 1920s or 1930s.For all intents and purposes, Netflix might as well be a network. A recent survey showed that 61% of American households have Netflix which is the largest streaming service in the country. If Netflix was a network, the fight basically would be free.I’ll admit, I would not have paid for this fight, but once I saw it advertised on Netflix, I was not about to miss it. This was going to showcase the “sweet science” to a whole new level of viewers and maybe even attract more fans.According to Planet Sport, the previous most viewed fight was between Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao in 2015. These are two of the greatest fighters of all time, yet ...
