As Jake Paul’s fight against Mike Tyson continued into the wee hours of the morning on Saturday morning, the internet was ablaze with accusations that the YouTuber turned boxer was pushing the fight forward.

Although Paul, 27, won Friday night’s big match at AT&T Stadium by unanimous decision, there was no shortage of rumors that he could have defeated the 58-year-old Iron Mike long before the bell rang in the eighth and final round.

“Paul carried Tyson for the last four rounds and almost didn’t want to knock him out,” Boston Herald sports columnist Bill Speros wrote of X. “Tyson basically stood there and took the punches.

“Glad he got his $20 million and his last chance,” Speros further opined, citing previous reporting from outlets like CBS News about Tyson’s payout for the fight. (CBS reports that Paul’s $40 million payout was double Tyson’s.)

Others shared his feelings.

“Jake Paul carries Mike Tyson through this fight,” Robert Griffin III, the NFL quarterback turned NFL analyst, wrote on X.

“He saw that he was hurting Mike with the 3 punches in a row in the 2nd round and completely took his foot off the gas. He could have ended it there and in every round since. Smart business move by Jake Paul. Gives all his sponsors more airtime.”

Paul admitted after the fight that he had gone easy on Tyson after seeing the former heavyweight champion tiring.

“Yes, certainly,” said Paul. “Definitely a little bit. I wanted to give the fans a show, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t need to be hurt.”

Some viewers felt that Paul’s reluctance was dooming the sport as a whole.

“Jake Paul carried Mike Tyson for eight rounds and knew that taking out Iron Mike would look really bad,” wrote one user on X. “Jake Paul is not serious about being a champion. He needs to step up his game or quit the novelty contests. The public no longer wants to ride the hype.”

(The crowd wanted and did: 70,000 fans attended in person at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; hundreds of thousands more watched via Netflix, despite painful buffering problems.)

For his part, Magic Johnson was disappointed to see how far one of the GOATs had fallen from boxing.

“Just sad. I cut it off because I couldn’t watch anymore. It’s sad to see Mike Tyson like this because I went to every Tyson fight. This fight tonight wasn’t great for boxing,” he said via X.

Dave Portnoy gave his two cents, adding, “Thanks to Jake Paul + Mike Tyson for pulling off one of the biggest cons of the century. I should have put 10 million on Jake. Not because he’s good, but because he fought an old man. I would say everyone involved should be ashamed, but I would take the money if I could.”