Jake Paul admits conscious decision not to hit Mike Tyson with knockout punch

Jake Paul says he made the conscious decision not to knock boxing legend Mike Tyson out during their blockbuster bout on Saturday afternoon (AEDT).

A 58-year-old Tyson stepped back into the ring for the first time in 19 years to fight Paul, a 27-year-old YouTuber and social media influencer-turned fighter.

Paul shocked almost no one when he dominated the fight to claim a unanimous decision in front of more than 70,000 at AT&T Stadium, with over 60 million households tuning in.

Tyson showed life early in the fight but struggled to fire a shot as it wore on.

The older man looked ripe for the picking but Paul held back from delivering the knockout blow, instead even bowing towards his opponent in the final 10 seconds of the contest in a show of respect.

Speaking after the fight, Paul said he didn’t want to do any more damage to Tyson.

Asked specifically if he held punches back due to Tyson’s tiring condition, Paul said: “Yeah, definitely. Definitely a bit.

“I wanted to give the fans a show but I didn’t want to hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt.”

The underwhelming spectacle sparked a vexed response from the crowd, who were somewhat disappointed at the competitiveness of the fight, but didn’t want to boo a champion.

Former WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew said Paul deserves credit for reading the room well enough to resist going for the knockout.

“I don’t like this stupid idiot kid but I will say this. He stopped beating on Mike there and showed him some respect and dignity by letting him survive,” Bellew said.

“He didn’t go for the KO there, he stepped off him and let him be.

“Mike we all adore you, king, your (sic) a super hero to all of us from the proper fight business!”

Meantime, Netflix’s first attempt at handling a live sports event was less than ideal, with the coverage experiencing common streaming problems.

Many vented their frustrations with streaming and buffering problems before and during the fight.

According to the website Down Detector, nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming leading up to the fight.

The bout was Netflix’s biggest live sports event to date, and an opportunity to make sure it can handle audience demand with the NFL and WWE on the horizon. It was available to stream globally to Netflix’s 280 million subscribers at no additional cost.

Netflix will broadcast two NFL games on Christmas Day and will begin streaming WWE Raw on January 6.