Antonio Brown: Man of the people.
That’s 7.6 million people, at least.
As buffering issues threw Netflix’s viewers of the Paul-Tyson fight into fury, the boxing world was placated by an X livestream from an unlikely hero from AT&T Stadium.
“CTESPN only place with the fight live,” Brown posted to X shortly before 11 p.m. on Friday evening.
His post, which included a link to his livestream, picked up Herculean traction — the kind of traction that, on Netflix, was leading to abysmal quality and, at points, the total loss of signal for viewers.
The former wide receiver of the Steelers and Buccaneers, posted up in a suite at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas — home of the Dallas Cowboys — trained his smartphone on the venue’s massive video screen for a significant portion of the bout, at least the first six rounds.
Brown’s feed was still available as early as Saturday morning, according to Awful Announcing. It appears to have been taken down since.
All in all, Brown’s stream of the fight, which Paul won by unanimous decision after eight rounds of deteriorating quality and questionable authenticity, garnered over 7.6 million live viewers on X, according to a post by Brown.
“We BROKE a record tonight,” Brown wrote in a subsequent post. “You can’t trust other platforms. Shoutout @elonmusk”
AB’s loyal followers were grateful for his services.
“Jake Paul is boxing Mike Tyson and Antonio Brown’s broadcast is more trustworthy than Netflix,” one X user wrote. “2024 is wild.”
“What a failure by Netflix. Every time the platform tries to do a marquee live event, it crashes … If steaming [sic] services want to be taken seriously in the live event landscape, nights like this can’t happen,” another opined.
“Netflix is running like 2003 dial up,” a third wrote.
America can only hope Antonio Brown is on call again for Netflix’s NFL on Christmas Day doubleheader.