The most watched global “sports” event this weekend is the final episode of Netflix’s Countdown, a “reality” boxing series climaxing with the “bout” between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in Dallas on Saturday AEDT.

No more shout quotes, but you get the drift. The contest – almost real, almost a sport – is not made-for-TV so much as made-as-TV. Netflix has taken its successful sports documentary genre (Drive to Survive, The Last Dance, etc) a step further by extending into streamed coverage of a live event.

Just like real sport, the final episode will deliver Paul and Tyson tens of millions of dollars, Netflix a few zeroes more, and eyeballs as far as eyeballs can see. A commercial success, Countdown is riding a rethink of how to “do” sports. This model is being described as the future of sports coverage.

Leave aside the stupidity of the spectacle. A 58-year-old fighting a 27-year-old belongs in the shadiest corner of sideshow alley, if not criminal courts. Leave aside boxing’s acceleration towards extinction, even on its own terms. Neither contestant is a boxer in any meaningful sense. Paul does have a world ranking in the cruiserweight division: he’s No.93. His real profession is YouTubing, in which he has 20.7 million followers.

Leave aside the sad and often criminal tale of Tyson’s life. He’s not a boxer any more. But he is not the only aged man with a history of violence against women to be top of the American pops.

Leave aside all the horrible wrongness, all........

© Brisbane Times