Jakes Paul vs Anthony Joshua is really happening.
This Friday, millions will tune into Netflix for the most ludicrous boxing match since last November, when Paul dragged a 58-year-old Mike Tyson out of retirement and around the ring for eight torturous rounds.
On Friday night in Miami, the odds will be stacked against Paul. If the fight is legit, he gets brutally knocked out. If.
You may be fully attuned to Paul vs Joshua. You may be blissfully unaware of its existence. Either way, please enjoy our breakdown of the event, the fighters, and the very weird journey to get here.
Explain our protagonists…
Jake Paul is a YouTuber who took up professional boxing in 2020. He has repeatedly insisted he will become a world champion, despite fighting 13 times in nearly six years, mainly against people who aren’t actually boxers. He’s 28 and his most serious opponent remains Tommy Fury (Tyson’s little brother), another boxer who's primarily a social media influencer. Paul lost on points.
Anthony Joshua is an Olympic gold medalist and two-time unified world heavyweight champion. His knockout power and movie-star looks made the 36-year-old one of the biggest stars in Britain, although Stateside he’s best known for a shock loss to the rotund Andy Ruiz in 2019. (Imagine Hercules getting floored by the kid from Up.) He’s never been quite the same fighter since but his box office appeal ensures more big nights lie ahead, assuming he gets through Paul.
This sounds like a weird match up…
It’s an incredibly weird match up. But thus Paul’s career: past opponents have included a fellow YouTuber, a basketball player, and a 58-year-old. Of course that 58-year-old was Mike Tyson and his fight with Paul, also on Netflix, peaked at 65m viewers, making it one of the most watched sporting events ever.
Paul is a questionable pugilist but a genius promoter. He’s guaranteed a gargantuan payout whatever the result on Friday, but for the first time in the ring, he’s a massive underdog.
A month after Joshua knocked out Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley, Paul released It's Everyday Bro, a diss track about his ex-girlfriend which became the 17th most disliked video in YouTube history
Wasn't Paul meant to be fighting some other guy?
That would be lightweight champion Gervonta Davis in a widely derided exhibition that was cancelled after Davis's ex-girlfriend filed a civil lawsuit against him on charges of battering and kidnapping. Were lacklustre ticket sales and Davis's palpable uninterest also a factor? Who can say but Davis's June arrest on domestic violence allegations didn't stop the exhibition from being made.
Anyway, the Davis exhibition was canned, rumours swirled and the Joshua fight was announced for December 19 to an incredulous public. The incredulity can be explained in one word: size. Davis is 5ft 5in and weighed 133.8lbs for his most recent fight. Joshua is 6ft 6in and weighed 252.5lbs for his most recent fight. The 6ft 1in Paul has done a modern day Gulliver: travelling from Lilliput to Brobdingnag in a matter of weeks.
Is this another exhibition or a real fight?
A real fight, apparently. Eight three-minute rounds, 10oz gloves, the result counting on the record. Except if that result is anything other than a Joshua KO then it almost certainty isn’t a real fight.
Can we have a brief comparison of their respective careers?
Sure. When Joshua was winning the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics, a 15-year-old Paul was a year away from posting his first Vine.
On 9 April 2016, Joshua knocked out Charles Martin to claim the IBF world title – almost exactly two months after the release of YouTube web comedy Dance Camp, starring Paul as an antagonistic dancer named Lance.
On 29 April 2017, Joshua knocked out Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley Stadium. A month later, Paul released It's Everyday Bro, a diss track about his ex-girlfriend which became the 17th most disliked video in YouTube history.
Paul made his amateur boxing debut against fellow YouTuber Deji Olatunji [brother of eternal Paul rival KSI] on 25 August 2018. He won by fifth round stoppage. On 22 September 2018, Joshua stopped Alexander Povetkin to retain his three heavyweight belts.
The English language contains approximately half a million words and no combination of any of them could adequately quantify the absurdity of Jake Paul fighting Anthony Joshua in a sanctioned boxing match a few years ago. So what happened?
Joshua suffered one of the great upsets against Ruiz, reclaimed his belts but not his former aura, then lost the belts definitively to Ukrainian wizard Oleksandr Usyk. He rebuilt his confidence, notably destroying former UFC champion Francis Ngannou in two rounds, but was himself knocked out by Dubois last September. He hasn’t fought since.
In the same time period, Paul carefully levelled up his opposition, albeit never entering the ring as a serious underdog. Earlier this year, he outpointed a 39-year-old former world champion, Julio César Chávez Jr – an achievement that becomes less impressive when you discover Chávez Jr was a middleweight world champion, back in 2012, and barely a year removed from rehab.
Credit where it’s due, Paul has done a genuinely impressive job in elevating himself from punchline to player. It’s easy to forget but plenty of people picked Nate Robinson, Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley to beat him. Can he shock the world now? Absolutely not.
Why has Joshua taken the fight?
Money, of course. He’s getting paid an estimated £70m for what should be one of the easiest nights of his career. I won’t say the easiest – unlike his earliest opponents, Paul is coming to win and the potential for humiliation adds a certain edge – but the risk-reward ratio is staggeringly titled towards the latter.
Essentially, Joshua is being paid a fortune to don a clown costume and cross an empty highway. There’s a miniscule chance of being unexpectedly road-killed but only if he closes his eyes or decides to take a nap on the tarmac.
Like Bart with Ralph Wiggum’s heart, there will be no shortage of people eager to pinpoint the exact second where Jake Paul’s consciousness leaves his body
It sounds a little demeaning…
It is. Fighting Paul may be the logical decision but it still diminishes Joshua's credibility. How does the quote go? Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
I've made this point already but it can't be overstressed: imagine telling the undefeated, unified heavyweight champion Joshua of 2018 that his 33rd opponent would be the annoying kid from Bizaardvark.
Adding an extra layer of irony, the 2019 rematch between Logan Paul and KSI, aka the moment influencer boxing went electric, was given a sheen of credibility by its promoter – Eddie Hearn, Joshua’s guy for his entire career. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
And Paul’s motivations?
Harder to parse. Money, of course, but he doesn’t need the money, it will surely make minimal difference to his daily existence: a very large number on a screen may sprout an extra decimal place. Do the financial remunerations really offset the near inevitability of getting brutally knocked out in front of millions of people?
Throughout fight week, a parade of grizzled former fighters will assure us that, whatever happens in the ring, Jake Paul has earned our respect. That may be true in the boxing world; the social media ecosystem which Paul inhabits will prove less magnanimous should he be temporarily dispatched to the shadow realm.
There will be memes. There will be mockery. Strangely monikered young men with TikTok followings the size of Minnesota will howl with laughter as Paul hits the canvas on an endless loop. Like Bart with Ralph Wiggum’s heart, there will be no shortage of people eager to pinpoint the exact second where Jake Paul’s consciousness leaves his body.
It’s all very odd. Paul normally prefers smaller opponents who aren’t renowned punchers; the gargantuan Joshua is a KO machine. Paul likes MMA guys, preferably retired; Joshua fought for the IBF world title last year. After carefully avoiding all but the most callow professional boxers, Paul is fighting one of the most dangerous boxers on the planet. It’s equivalent to capturing a few salamanders in the garden and deciding to slay a dragon.
Extremely wealthy individuals often become detached from reality. Maybe enough people have blown enough smoke up Jake Paul’s ass that he really believes he can breathe fire
The big question – is the fight fixed?
Rumours abound Paul’s fights have a predetermined outcome; Piers Morgan described his boxing career as “boring staged bullshit” before hastily backtracking under threat of legal action. It’s true that César Chávez Jr barely threw a punch in a shutout UD loss but that description could apply to several Chávez Jr fights, including his risible 2016 title bout with Canelo Alvarez.
Paul is a big, athletic dude with undeniable dedication and near-infinite resources, a smart matchmaker who’s so far titled the odds in his favour. There’s no great mystery to his ability to grind out decision wins and the occasional KO over aged, unmotivated or inexperienced opponents.
Besides, while there’s clearly an amount of money that gets Joshua in the ring with Paul – approximately £70m – I doubt there’s an amount that convinces Joshua to lose. It would be a legacy-destroying humiliation, an instant reconfiguration from British sporting icon to global punchline that would terminate any hope of another world title, a lucrative British blockbuster with Tyson Fury, and possibly several brand deals. His pride would be obliterated; his pocket would also suffer in the long run.
A decision win is still a terrible look, especially as most viewers would assume Joshua carried Paul and therefore participated in a fixed fight. He can let Paul survive a round, three at most. He can’t be discomforted, let alone rocked. Paul isn’t good enough to threaten Joshua but he probably is good enough for Joshua to take him seriously, considering the potentially cataclysmic consequences if he doesn’t.
So Paul genuinely believes he can win?
Seems so. At the very least, he must believe he can compete. He’s enlisted some serious sparring partners, including Joshua’s countryman Lawrence Okolie who gave Paul a black eye.
Look, there’s a storied history of extremely wealthy individuals becoming increasingly detached from reality and their limitations within it. Maybe enough people have blown enough smoke up Jake Paul’s ass that he really believes he can breathe fire.
What constitutes a ‘win’ for Paul?
Survive the first round? If he reaches the second half of the fight – aka round five – then he’s surpassed most people’s expectations. If he somehow hears the final ball, he’s basically a 21st-century Rocky – if instead of a loveable blue-collar worker, Rocky was an obnoxious multi-millionaire social media influencer obsessed with tattoos and attention. So a 21st-century Rocky. We get the heroes we deserve.
What if Paul actually wins?
He won’t. But if Paul somehow knocks out Joshua, he’ll immediately become the biggest star in a sport he may have inadvertently destroyed. How can Terence Crawford be taken seriously when he might conceivably lose to PewDiePie? How can a superfight such as Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao ever occur when we know those bozos are ducking MrBeast?
Realistically, if Paul wins then most people will assume it’s a fix, Joshua will never fight again and Tyson Fury might literally explode from schadenfreude. So every cloud. Paul isn’t going to win.
And when Joshua wins?
Joshua and Paul’s next fights could both involve a Fury brother. Joshua in a domestic grudge match against Tyson, now half a decade overdue; Jake running it back with Tommy. To be frank, trying to predict Paul’s next boxing opponent is a mug’s game: it could be anyone from Canelo Alvarez to Bugs Bunny.
What time does the fight start?
A tricky question when it comes to boxing. The fight takes place in Miami and ring walks are cautiously estimated for 3.30am, UK time. Do not be surprised if you're waiting until five.
On the bright side, the cricket should still be ongoing – fingers crossed – so you can watch Joe Root and Harry Brook bat England to victory in the third test to pass the time.
Will I feel dirty for watching?
Far less dirty than the Mike Tyson fight, or indeed if you were one of six people planning their evening around the Davis exhibition. There’s a chance we’ll be treated to Joshua jabbing his way to an easy decision win, which would be humiliating for everyone involved, but I think that’s unlikely for the reasons stated above.
More plausible? A round or two of mutual inactivity followed a Joshua stoppage that’s more efficient than brutal. Unless either guy gets overexcited, at which point a Jake Paul-shaped smear will decorate the ring canvas.
Such a thing may or may not be worth your Friday evening but look on the bright side – at least it’s not on pay-per-view.
Watch Jake Paul vs Anthony Joshua on Netflix this Friday
