By: Sean Crose
There they stood face-to-face in public for the very first time. Needless to say Jake Paul looked, well, small compared to his opponent next month, former world heavyweight champion and current top heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua. Everyone knew that Joshua was the bigger of the two men. It just really struck home seeing the fighters standing before each other at their pre fight press conference on Friday. Joshua looked to be about half a foot taller than Joshua, who is no small man himself. Paul, however, exuded confidence, as always.
“I like to challenge myself,” he told the gathered media. Suffice to say the man really has challenged himself but good this time around. Give Paul credit. He knows how to market a fight and he’s not a half bad fighter either. And, as he made clear on Friday, he’s more or less been doing the seemingly impossible for a while now. Who after all ever could have imagined that a social media star could become perhaps the biggest name in boxing? And yet here we are. The truth can’t be denied. However, this doesn’t look good for Paul. It really doesn’t. Joshua is a world-class fighter who is bigger, faster and stronger than his American counterpart. It is, when all is said and done hard to see Paul pulling out the victory next month when he meets Joshua in the ring.
“He’s one of the best heavyweights ever,” Paul said of Joshua, “but I believe that fighting a smaller man is oftentimes harder as a heavyweight because of the speed difference and because of the foot speed, because of the angles, because of the head being off of the center.” The man has a point, by the way. One can see Jack Dempsey on YouTube pummeling the far taller Jess Willard for the heavyweight title way back in 1919. Dempsey however was a ranked contender and an extraordinarily skilled fighter. Paul is neither of those things.
And while it’s admittedly true that pretty much anything can happen in boxing, the chances of Paul pulling off the upset are really profound. Like Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas profound. Again, though, stranger things have happened. Against a focused, relaxed Joshua, who doesn’t overlook him, though, Paul may find himself really taking a beating this time around. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen. No one wants to see a fighter get truly hurt. It isn’t like Paul hasn’t asked for this fight to go down though. This is all his idea and he knows what he’s doing, or at least he should.
