The referee brought the fighters together near the end of the fourth round to remind them that, in his words, fans ain’t pay to see this crap. Once Joshua knocked off some of the ring rust from a 15-month layoff and Jake Paul decided to try and fight, the fight played out as most expected it would.
After a fight like this, more questions arise than answers. Why would Jake Paul take this fight? Perhaps Paul was delusional enough to think that beating a 58-year-old Mike Tyson made him the new Baddest Man on the Planet. Maybe after pivoting from his cancelled fight against Gervonta Davis, Paul saw this as an opportunity for the ultimate cash-out fight. Of course, trying to psychoanalyze Jake Paul is a fool’s errand, so it is hard to know.
As Mark Krieger outlined, it was a disgrace that this fight got sanctioned by the Florida State Athletic Commission at all. While Jake Paul may be a multi-hyphenate in the modern sense of the word, Anthony Joshua is a boxer, and a damn good one. Joshua is an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time former world heavyweight champion. Even nearing the end of his career at the age of 36, Joshua is more than formidable.
Given how absurd this fight was on every level, who would have thought that Jake Paul could be competitive? Well, as of Friday afternoon, Paul, a 7-1 underdog, had attracted 82% of the bets and 90% of the money that had been wagered at DraftKings on the winner of Friday’s sanctioned fight in Miami, Florida. People can do whatever they want with their money, but figuratively setting it on fire cannot be the best move.
Jake Paul is the ethos of this generation. Brash, self-made, guided by clicks and cash. People love him, and people hate him. His persona is similar to Floyd Mayweather Jr. after he turned heel, to borrow a professional wrestling term, and morphed from being “Pretty Boy” Floyd to “Money” Mayweather.
Mayweather very successfully exploited boxing’s financial structure to make as much money as he possibly could, much like Jake Paul is doing. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that; while it rubs people the wrong way, that feeds into people paying attention to your fights. The difference is that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not only a supremely gifted athlete, but he trained his entire life to be a boxer.
When Jake Paul took on other social media influencers, Nate Robinson, and washed-up MMA fighters, it was a sideshow act. Which is fine, people are entitled to consume whatever content they want.
Similar to circuses, the height of boxing’s popularity occurred about a century ago. In the present day, with social media and dwindling attention spans, Jake Paul taking these fights was a good thing for boxing. If you get people to look at the sideshow, they might be interested in the bigger acts.
Somehow, we got from there to here, with Jake Paul choosing to try to tame a lion and take on Anthony Joshua. Snake charming is entertaining, but it does not prepare you to become a lion tamer. You can talk a big game and proclaim that you will pull off a Biblical-level upset, but once the bell rings, all of that talk goes out the window. People call the boxing ring a chamber of truth because when two competitors square off, people can see with their own eyes what is what. No filters, no frills. As the saying goes, you don’t play boxing.
Jahmal Harvey vs. Kevin Cervantes was the opening bout on Netflix. This super featherweight bout was completely one-sided, with Harvey scoring a knockdown in round 1 and dominating from there. Harvey landed 185 punches to 37 for Cervantes. Thankfully, it was only a six-round bout.
The next bout was 50-year-old Anderson Silva taking on 43-year-old Tyron Woodley. During the preflight introductions, Woodley looked like he was wondering why he had agreed to this bout on three weeks’ notice. These two never fought in MMA, which would have at least made sense, but here they were going through the motions. Other than being out of their element, the other thing these two had in common was losing to Jake Paul. Silva scored a TKO at 1:33 in the second round after landing a right uppercut through the nonexistent guard of Woodley.
After the fight, Silva called out former UFC foe Chris Weidman for a boxing match. Woodley just wanted to fight someone with a full training camp to prepare for it, which is understandable.
The last fight before the main event was Alycia Baumgardner defending her unified super featherweight championship against Leila Beaudoin. This fight was the only matchup on the televised card that was a full-length fight, with both women agreeing to fight twelve three-minute rounds. Baumgardner slowly broke Beaudoin down, first mentally and then physically. The champion scored a knockdown at 2:59 of round seven. Beaudoin looked like she would not make it all twelve rounds, but she hung in there and showed some heart in the last two rounds. Two judges scored the fight 117-110, and the other scored it 118-109 for Baumgardner.
In the new year, Anthony Joshua seems poised to finally fight Tyson Fury in a British superfight that has been bandied about for nearly a decade. As for Jake Paul, maybe he should pick up a new hobby. Why not skateboarding?
