Not sure if this is the most courageous act Paul has done, or the most foolish, but the answer is yes. It’s all those things.
Honestly, you’d expect there to be a little more buzz for Friday night, given the set up.
Jake Paul, who has feasted on a steady diet of off-center beatables for the length of his boxing career, is facing off with the kind of fighter everyone has been demanding he face since he began. Anthony Joshua is 6-foot-6. He hits like a heavyweight because that’s what he is. He weighs 250 pounds. If you saw his destruction of Francis Ngannou, you know he’s the kind of boxer who cleanses people of their delusions. He’s elite by boxing’s standards, not on the freakshow curve Jake Paul is used to. There isn’t any kind of wink or nudge in play with AJ, and when he says, “if I can kill you, I’ll kill you,” it’s a clear message that he’s not messing around.
For the longest time, people have dared Paul — boxing’s greatest interloper — to fight someone his own age. His own weight. His own sport. Somebody who doesn’t carry an asterisk to the ring, as the 57-year-old Mike Tyson did, or the scars from a recent hip replacement surgery, as Ben Askren did. Somebody who has been in boxing longer than he has, which Tyron Woodley and Anderson Silva hadn’t. Somebody not shot or linked to drug cartels, like Julio César Chávez Jr.
When Paul faced off with Gervonta Davis, the Big Boxing Brand who was originally scheduled to be his next opponent, “Tank” looked like he needed at least six more years of growth before he’d ever fit into his clothes. If that weren’t bad enough, Davis’ powerful indifference became that of the public at large, which is never a good sign for a fight.
Yet each time Paul faces off with Joshua, as he did once again on Wednesday in Miami, the scribes begin penning his obituary. Chael Sonnen calls it the “biggest mismatch in sport in my lifetime.” If anything, the spirit of bullydom switched hosts. If you were worried about Mike Tyson getting hurt fighting a young, powerful puncher, this time the worry is that the masquerade had gone too far. Listen, Jake, when we said fight a real boxer, we didn’t mean a heavyweight who can send your head into the mezzanine.
What is he doing? When you look at Paul’s trajectory, it’s been one of gradual and at times comical escalation, a careful management of risk. Going from Askren to Woodley was going from a collegiate wrestler with no striking to a collegiate wrestler with decent striking, was a subtle level-up. Neither were boxers. Then to Anderson Silva, who was 47, yes, but at least better striker. The loss to Tommy Fury was a sad affair, and nobody thinks about the Nate Diaz match, as it underwhelmed so drastically.
The line between a publicity stunt and a fair, competitive fight has been a hard one to navigate through Paul’s run in the boxing ring.
And really, the boxers Paul beat most recently — the elder Tyson and Chavez Jr. — only made the cries for him to fight a relevant boxer of this era all the louder. But to fight Joshua? Just because you were in a pinch to fulfill a Netflix date after Tank was ousted for criminal behavior? This is the other end of the extreme.
Not sure if this is the most courageous act he’s done, or the most foolish, but the answer is yes. It’s all those things.
The spectacle alone is enough for alarm. Paul, the self-professed “face of boxing,” comes eye level with Joshua’s gold necklace when they face off. If Paul sees himself as David taking on Goliath, that’s the new wrinkle, yet he still feels more like the cloven-hooved Pan. He held his belly out toward Joshua to give the visual the appropriate absurdity, yet seeing him standing there lampooning in front of such a specimen I had to think — how does he intend to beat Joshua?
Does he intend to? Does he believe he can? Or is this a kind of boxing finale that only an influencer-turned-mogul can appreciate? The great Final Act?
So much of the Jake Paul experience has felt like a detour into the wicked imagination. Nobody asked for it, yet the curiosity keeps us coming back. It’s true that he has brought eyeballs onto the sport of boxing, though purists might believe for all the wrong reasons, and that he has done more good than harm. He has advocated for women’s boxing unlike anyone else and made Amanda Serrano into a star. He has openly butted heads with the UFC’s Dana White, which from an MMA perspective can’t help but be a welcome thing. He has made himself relevant in a sport where relevance is hard to come by.
Some like him, many can’t stand him. He’s a nuisance that everyone wants a part of.
For anyone who wants to see Paul get his ass handed to him, tune in Friday night, free with your Netflix subscription. Never has an outcome felt so certain. Joshua is far bigger, more powerful, vastly more skilled, and more seasoned. That this fight got sanctioned at all is a high wonder, yet that’s one of Paul’s specialties, presenting the kind of must-see competitive imbalance that will stop the gawker in his tracks. And with Paul this time being the one with the impossible task, take a good look.
Because this one? This one feels a little like Paul is Bodhi in the original “Point Break,” paddling out against the towering wave during the elusive 50-year-storm, to catch one last ride before the whole thing comes crashing down.
Category: General Sports
