Against Everyone’s Expectations, John Mulaney Actually Fought Three Kids

We finally know exactly who would win in a fight between John Mulaney and three 14-year-old boys. Now it’s time for 100 men and one gorilla to step into the ring.

At the beginning of the first season of Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, the stand-up superstar and anarchist late-night host issued a challenge to the families among his viewership based on a viral Twitter thread: Send out your finest three 14-year-old boys, and Mulaney would fight them live on stream in the season finale. Leading up to tonight’s closing episode of Everybody's Live, fans were convinced that Mulaney had some kind of cheeky rug-pull planned, and that he wouldn’t actually try to physically best a few minors and possibly end his illustrious career in disgrace.

Up until the very moment when the fighters met in the ring, it seemed like Mulaney was going to find a way to avoid violence, but as soon as the bell sounded, the trio of teens descended on Mulaney and reminded the high-waisted man why he feared their demographic in the first place.

Even during tonight’s finale of Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, fans were sure that the host would weasel his way out of the competition. When Mulaney pulled a fake buffering prank on the audience in mockery of Netflix’s performance issues during Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson, one fan John Mulaney's subreddit predicted, “Lol so it’s definitely gonna buffer again right as the first punch is thrown and then come back to John covered in blood.”

But, no, come the episode’s close, Richard Kind and the rest of the Everybody's Live team crowded around the boxing ring as an actual referee stepped out to explain the rules of the scrap to its combatants. No fake buffering ring, no editing tricks, and, weirdly, no gloves, just one tall child and three actual kids ready to rumble until one of them tapped out. However, while the fact that the fight actually happened came as a surprise, the result was anything but — the kids made quick work of Mulaney, forcing him to concede after 30 seconds of sweaty, uncoordinated wrestling.

Now, as anyone who watched the “fight” live can attest, Mulaney’s main objective was clearly to avoid injuring any one of the underaged competitors whom he had been introducing periodically throughout the first season of Everybody's Live. While Mulaney has never been known as a physical specimen, at six feet tall, he could have at least clocked one of the kids with his gangly long arms, if he was willing to risk massive scandal and a possible lawsuit just to say he beat up a bunch of teenagers.

But in the end, Mulaney is a man of his word, even if the final product was less exciting than watching pigeons fight over a fast food wrapper — so it was about on-par for a Netflix fight.