I dislike Jake Paul on a fundamental level. To quote legendary wordsmith André René Roussimoff, he is a big ugly goon and I want to squash his face. In much the same way Blood Meridian’s Judge Holden serves as a manifestation of man’s rapacious desire to dominate its surroundings, Paul is an avatar of the outrage industrial complex, where those seeking fame disdain the effort of cultivating craft and competence in favor of just being as huge a dick as possible.
Gotta admit, though, guy’s a damn good promoter.
Paul’s boxing career is a carefully managed facade, organic in the same way a seedless watermelon is. I’m sure he finds genuine enjoyment in being a professional boxer and does seem to be putting in the legwork to develop his skills, but the bluster and bravado hide a sober, Sabermetrics-esque formula designed to cash out as much as humanly possible before reality kicks in the door.
That said, the whole thing has the impression of a seedy deli that, while unquestionably a money laundering front, dishes out a mean Cubano.
Last Saturday’s fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr was a joke, sure, but the rest of the card featured quality matchmaking at multiple levels of talent. Paul isn’t just building a strong stable of established and developing talent, including the best women’s roster the sport has ever seen, he’s consistently putting those talents in well-matched fights instead of just parading them through a series of mismatches to maximize his ROI.
He’s not treating them as afterthoughts, either; he’s consistently let Amanda Serrano take the lead in promoting her ongoing rivalry with Katie Taylor and lets his Most Valuable Prospects shows stand entirely on the eponymous prospects’ shoulders.
Turki Alalshikh’s ventures are a sort of trickle-down entertainment; he does what he wants in service of his own desires, with public appeal a welcome but vestigial concern. Paul is more like the chunk of peanut butter you use to hide your dog’s medicine.
Do I want to see more fights like Paul vs Tyson and Paul vs Chavez? Of course not, though I’m not going to work myself up into a frenzy about how they impugn boxing’s honor as though said honor wasn’t buried a century ago in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Mojave. If that’s what it takes to drag the sport kicking and screaming back into the public eye, though, I can live with it.
Hero we deserve, hero we need and all that.
