Last Friday’s boxing match between Jake Paul and former two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua ended in the sixth round with Paul needing surgery to correct a broken jaw.
While the fight-ending sequence was real, former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling saw some things during the fight that has him questioning the validity of the contest.
“Jake Paul, he does a good job taking on Anthony Joshua. I’m going to say that good job was that he was ballsy enough to get in there, to take the risk to fight a guy bigger than him for once. He was going to fight Gervonta Davis for crying out loud. Everybody else he’s fought has been noticeably smaller than him, significantly smaller, so I give him some grace in that,” Sterling said on his YouTube channel.
“But my direct thing when I was watching this is where are the lines? Because it felt like you got this Olympic level, high caliber level boxer, world class boxer in Anthony Joshua who looks like he’s playing with his food and people are sitting there eating it up like, ‘Oh, Jake’s doing a really good job. He’s moving his feet. He’s staying away.’ And I’m just like, you’re telling me this guy forgot how to cut the ring off,” Sterling continued.
“The way I feel, there’s just no way a guy of his caliber, of Anthony Joshua’s level of caliber of boxing, all the experience he has fighting all these other world class guys. We’ve seen how he fights them. And then Jake Paul comes in there, who just relatively started boxing. He’s pretty skilled for a guy at his level, how long he’s even in boxing, but not heavyweight level, not fighting a guy who is as well decorated as Anthony Joshua.
“The fact that he was even able to get to that round, what was it, round sixth? You can say it’s impressive, but I also feel the other side of me that has seen Anthony Joshua fight makes me wonder was there a bet on let’s just carry Jake Paul to X amount of rounds, make him look good. We want to entertain and maybe there’s a lot of people putting money on it going past three or four rounds, or something like this. I’ve got to speculate and wonder.”
Related: Former UFC champion: Jake Paul’s performance was ‘inspiring’
Stelring’s not the only former UFC champion that believes Joshua carried Paul to the sixth round. Former two-time middleweight titleholder Israel Adesanya made the same accusation.
“I give him respect. He got his jaw broken. You can’t fake that. But that’s what should have possibly happened in the first round. And that is my point,” Sterling said. “There are levels to boxing. And no disrespect to Jake Paul. Again, entertainer, great for the sport in terms of being eyeballs, but that ahold not have gone that long.
“There were points where Jake was turning his head like he was rolling with the punch and it looked like? Everyone I was watching with was kind of like up in arms, like, ‘This fight is trash.’ I’m like, yeah. It’s a spectacle. It’s not an actual fight. Because in real like, I just don’t think Jake Paul would get out of, I’ll give him two rounds at the most,” continued Sterling. “I don’t want to say rigged. I want to say there was an agreement is where I’m at.”
