An episode of "The Simpsons" shows a poster for Mike Tyson versus Secretariat, the famous racehorse. Dubbed "Slaughter in the Water," the fight was pitched as being held in international waters.
"Once you get 12 miles out, there's no laws at all."
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That joke joined another long-running "Simpsons" gag, which has Drederick Tatum, a Tyson doppelganger, doing various sad, ex-boxer things like handing out flyers in a casino and going to jail for pushing his mother down the stairs.
Tatum also made a brief boxing comeback, pummeling Homer Simpson in a fight, and opened a high-end cannabis company, something the real-life Tyson also did. It's a long-running clever parody that Tyson seems to have embraced because the 58-year-old former boxer is coming back to take on 27-year-old Jake Paul.
That's a fight that seems like a parody, but it's very real and it will air on Netflix (NFLX) on Nov. 15. It's not a pay-per-view. You simply need a Netflix account anywhere in the world to watch the fight.
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Netflix has created a spectacle
Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions will bring Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson to the 80,000-seat-capacity AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, on Nov. 15.
"Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson marks Jake Paul’s most-anticipated fight to date and his second fight of 2024 following back-to-back sensational knockouts against professional boxers and Golden Glove winners Ryan Bourland March 2 and Andre August in December 2023," Netflix said in a news release.
"Paul has shown tremendous growth as a boxer on his path to becoming a world champion, but now will take on one of the best and most dangerous boxers of all time in Mike Tyson."
The promotion around the fight sort of ignores the age difference and trades off who Tyson was in the late 1980s. People will be watching this fight not because it's a great sporting event. Rather, it's a spectacle that most viewers hope will turn into a train wreck.
They watch it because it's a variation of the old celebrity boxing shows where Screech would take on Greg Brady, and people would watch it with a mix of nostalgia and morbid curiosity.
In this case, people want to see Paul get his head knocked off, but that's not super likely given the mobility of the nearly 60-year-old Tyson.
Can you watch the fight on a cruise ship?
Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald fielded a question about the fight, but he got things a little wrong.
"No, unfortunately because it’s pay-per-view we do not have the rights to show this," he wrote. "And, also we don’t have the broadcast ability either. The other reason is the fight is going to last about 20 seconds so this probably no point us paying the millions of dollars we would have to show it across the fleet."
The fight is indeed not a pay-per-view, but Carnival does not have the right to air the fight. That's also true of Royal Caribbean and every other cruise line.
There's no reason a cruise line could not make a deal to air the fight, but the bandwidth it would need to stream a live event may not be practical. Cruise lines receive the television stations they pay for over satellite.
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While cruise ships are not part of the plan, Netflix and MVP do, however, expect Tyson versus Paul to "be the most-watched boxing event in modern boxing history.”
MVP Founder Nakisa Bidarian shared his high expectations for the fight.
"Partnering with Netflix for this deal presents an unparalleled opportunity to bring Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson to the world on an unprecedented scale and we look forward to delivering this incredible clash of two of sports biggest names," he said.
"Six generations of boxing fans will have a stake in the outcome and will be able to watch an antihero, Jake Paul, put it all on the line against the baddest man on the planet, Mike Tyson."
While neither cruise line will be showing the fight, nothing stops Netflix subscribers from streaming it on board. While some streaming services are blocked in certain parts of the world, the Tyson/Paul fight won't be because Netflix has global rights to it.
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