Can We Finally End the “Jake Paul Is a Boxer” Foolishness?
Jake Paul, and those who continue to support his career as a professional boxer, should now have collectively concluded what most of us already knew.
It’s time to finally end the “Jake Paul is a boxer” foolishness.
On Friday night, Paul faced his first true legitimate challenge when he took on former Heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua in a fight that should never have been sanctioned.
As expected, Paul was eventually KOed by Joshua in the sixth round after previously being knocked down three times.
Some are giving Paul his props for hanging around in the fight, demonstrating his heart against a former champion who outweighed him by roughly 30 pounds and for actually landing a few punches.
Please stop.
Please stop legitimizing what he supposedly did Friday night. And dammit, please stop legitimizing Paul as a professional boxer.
Paul circled around the ring for most of the fight in a 22×22 ring that was slightly larger than the standard 20×20 ring size.
He also threw, according to Compubox, a whopping 56 total punches while only landing 16 (28.6%); that means, per round, he threw a measly 9 punches and landed a little under 3 of them. Joshua, who understood when to punch and when to mercifully end Paul’s night, threw 146 punches and landed 48 (32.9%, 24 and 8, respectively).
And no, he didn’t win a round against Joshua.
Paul’s rise in the sport came by beating over-the-hill MMA fighters in a sport that they don’t compete in; for the uninformed, MMA and boxing, while having some similarities, are completely different sports.
The boxers Paul selected to fight were Tommy Fury, who he lost to, an uninterested Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and a lethargic, past-his-prime Mike Tyson.
Despite owning a glaringly deficient boxing resume, some continued to give him props and compliment him for his dedication to boxing, his improvement and the fact that he was bringing attention to the sport.
“Say what you will about Paul, he has power,” tweeted Ariel Helwani after Paul’s “fight” against an out of shape Ben Askren in 2021. “He has fundamentals. There’s no debating this.”
Oh, there’s much debating to that Ariel, and undeserving compliments like his became fodder that fueled Paul’s pursuit of boxing.