Netflix Hit with $50 Million Class-Action Lawsuit Over Paul vs. Tyson Streaming Struggles

Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson was a massive success for Netflix, bringing in more than 108 million live viewers around the world. Unfortunately, a lot of those viewers weren’t actually able to watch the fight as it unfolded.

According to the website Downdetector, 500,000 complaints were lodged from people having streaming issues on Netflix long before Tyson and Paul were scheduled to make their walks for one of the most anticipated boxing matches of the last decade.

Adding insult to injury was Netflix’s social media channels which completely ignored the issues half a million people were experiencing.

Understandably frustrated, a Florida man named Ronald ‘Blue’ Denton filed a breach of contract lawsuit in Hillsborough County on Monday. TMZ was the first to report the lawsuit.

“60 million Americans were hyped to see ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’ versus Youtuber-turner-prizefighter Jake Paul. What they saw was ‘The Baddest Streaming on Planet,’” reads the lawsuit.

The class-action suit is seeking more than $50 million, saying Netflix failed to deliver on the services it promised.

“Netflix customers experienced massive streaming issues and should have known better because it’s happened before. They were woefully ill-prepared,” the suit states (h/t FOX 5).

Netflix isn’t the only one catching heat following Paul vs. tyson

Of course, those who were able to watch the fight were left infuriated for a completely different reason.

Paul vs. Tyson failed to deliver the fireworks that both fighters had promised in the weeks leading up to their scrap. Instead of giving everyone a highlight-reel knockout, or even a spirited back-and-forth contest, the fight just sort of plodded along for eight rounds.

“They had no intentions to really scrap at all,” three-time Super Bowl champion Michael Irvin said on the It Is What It Is podcast. “If you look through that, I didn’t see one patented uppercut by Mike Tyson. What if Mike Tyson hit him with an uppercut? Then I heard some people talking about they put that in the contract. He couldn’t body and then uppercut. Like, how can you put that in a fight contract?

“You got all these people out here, and he couldn’t body him and do that patented uppercut. All of that is Mike Tyson is not Mike Tyson anyway, and now you taking away Mike Tyson’s best gift, which was that uppercut. Man, that’s a big lie to me. That’s like making me play a game without running a slant route in the deep end or the deep out. You do what you do best. If they take that away you not that dude anymore, and they took that away.”

Perhaps fight fans were better served by not being able to watch Paul vs. Tyson. Sadly, many of those same viewers also missed the epic rematch between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano in the evening’s co-main event.