Jake Paul immediately makes excuse for Mike Tyson fight performance amid fan outrage

Jake Paul insisted it was "hard to make it exciting" after fans voted with their feet during his controversial fight with Mike Tyson.

Paul defeated 58-year-old Tyson by unanimous decision in the former undisputed world heavyweight champion's first fight in 19 years. The eight-round fight, which took place at the AT&T Stadium in Texas and was streamed on Netflix, was scored 80-72, 79-73 and 79-73 in favour of the YouTuber-turned-boxer.

But while there were 70,000 fans in attendance at the home of the Dallas Cowboys to witness the bout at the start of the night, thousands left before the end of the main event, where Paul claimed a comfortable victory and Tyson struggled to move and showed little of the famous power that had made him such an in-ring demon during his pomp.

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Indeed, such was Tyson's inability to make a meaningful contest of it, Paul spent the final 10 seconds of the fight bowing and paying respect to Tyson.

But after the tough watch, and no doubt seeing the massive disappointed social media reaction, Paul insisted in his post-fight press conference that he had suffered an injury two days ago.

He said: "Two days ago I sprained my ankle, completely tore the ligament, anterior ligament and like snapped the other side of my foot. Was on crutches for four or five days and it just hindered the end of my training camp. I don't know how it didn't get leaked or anything. I missed about two weeks of sparring and that's why my cardio didn't really feel so good tonight."

Whether that's true or not, only Paul and his camp will know.

He also pointed the finger at Tyson for the bout being unexciting, saying: "I wanted to give the fans a show but I didn't want to hurt someone that didn't need to be hurt. There was a point where he (Tyson) was not engaging back, I could just tell his age was showing a little bit. That violence war thing... that went away as the rounds went on.

"People just love to hate me. I intentionally say things for people to hate. That's what I like to do. If people want to see more... give me a couple of months. I tried to give the best fight I possibly could. When someone's just surviving in the ring, it's hard to make it exciting. I don't care what people have to say. It is what it is."

Tyson's coach, Rafael Cordeiro, insisted in the post-fight media huddles that the Tyson team had gone into the fight believing that the old magic remained and that he could claim victory. He said: "We worked for seven months for this moment. I truly believed we had this victory before the fight. He never asked to give up. We are really proud of Mike, the way he trained for seven months, he put his life aside for training.

"He's the people's champ. He's inspired many people outside of the ring. The most important thing that Mike is going back home to his loved ones."

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