Last month, Netflix broke streaming records with its first major foray into live sports for the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match. On the back of this event, Netflix officially announced that Tyson will be the subject of a new docuseries on the platform.
While the Tyson-Paul broadcast did have its fair share of issues, it also showed what kind of an audience the platform can bring in for a live sports broadcast. Of course, this is important given the two NFL Christmas Day games on Netflix later this month, and WWE’s Monday Night Raw coming to the platform following the new year.
It also showed that there is still plenty of interest around Mike Tyson. As a result, Netflix released a statement on Tuesday announcing its new docuseries about both Tyson’s boxing career and his controversies outside the ring.
Tyson, who will be featured in interviews throughout the docuseries, offered a statement on the matter, detailing how he believes sharing his story “through a reflective lens of growth and maturity” will be a “challenging yet welcome journey.”
“Having an opportunity to share my story through the reflective lens of my growth and maturity in a multi-part documentary on Netflix will be a challenging journey, yet a very welcoming one,” said Tyson in a Netflix’s press release on the new docuseries. “Most people are too scared to look at their lives objectively, wanting to paint themselves as the hero of their own story. But if we are truly objective, we know we can never be the hero in our own story. We have to be able to face the man in the mirror, taking the good with the bad to give a full account of our contributions in this life. Netflix is the perfect platform to tell my story because of their global reach.”
According to Netflix, the docuseries will consist of three hour-long episodes involving Tyson and “his confidants and colleagues” around boxing.
Again, it’s unclear whether this docuseries was in the works before the Tyson-Paul match. Perhaps it was even used to sell Tyson on the idea of fighting Paul in the first place at 58 years of age.
Regardless, given how much buzz the bout ended up getting, Netflix is surely hoping this docuseries gets a similar amount of attention.
[Netflix]