Even those who have been critical of Jake Paul’s boxing career are willing to give him his flowers for taking a big risk in fighting former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on Netflix on Dec. 19 in Miami.
Among those is Mike Coppinger, the boxing insider for Ring Magazine and cohost of Inside the Ring on DAZN.
“It’s really an incredible leap in opposition,” Coppinger told Front Office Sports. He said that while it’s normal for “essentially a novice boxer” like Paul to fight “easy opposition” on the way up, Paul had been doing it in high-profile events.
“The difference is that Jake Paul was doing it in pay-per-view main events,” Coppinger said. “So, to me, it felt like a few fights ago, he needed to kind of start fighting real opposition and stop with the former UFC fighters or exhibitions like against 58-year-old Mike Tyson. That wasn’t called an exhibition, but it might as well have been.”
Paul had been slated to fight Gervonta Davis, who weighs just 135–140 pounds, before Davis was accused of domestic violence in a civil lawsuit filed by his former girlfriend. Joshua weighs about 100 pounds more—and he has about 100 million reasons to take this fight seriously.
“My understanding is that Joshua has a two-fight deal that’s backed by the Saudis next year,” said Chris Mannix, a boxing reporter for Sports Illustrated and DAZN. One of these bouts would be a mega-fight against Tyson Fury. “I don’t know the exact terms, but given what he’s been paid in the past, that’s probably something that’s going to approach nine figures,” Mannix continued.
If Joshua has a lackluster showing against Paul, who has become one of the top draws in boxing but is not regarded as one of the greatest fighters, the intrigue for that mega-fight is out the door.
Joshua walloped former UFC fighter Francis Ngannou in a second-round knockout last year.
“He’s a massive puncher,” Coppinger said of Joshua. “So there’s real danger here for Jake Paul. And the conventional wisdom is that he’s going to get knocked out, and probably violently, early on.”
In the latest odds on FanDuel, Paul is +680 while Joshua is -1200—and Joshua is -475 to win by knockout.
“I think the danger is that a guy that’s never been hit by someone like this gets Francis Ngannou’d in the first or second round and is never the same,” Mannix said.
So what’s the upside for Paul in even taking this fight?
“There’s a massive inherent risk for Jake Paul. So that’s why I’ve been giving him a lot of credit—I think you need to be consistent if you’re gonna be critical of the opposition,” Coppinger said. “I think Jake Paul might be looking at this as, Well, Joshua was knocked out last year in five rounds by Daniel Dubois. He’s been knocked out by Andy Ruiz. He doesn’t have the best chin, if there’s any real flaw in his game. Jake Paul could definitely punch, even for his level. I think he could punch. It’s a heavyweight fight. Anything can happen, but certainly it would be a massive shock if Joshua didn’t knock him out.”
Mannix argued that Paul doesn’t even necessarily need to win the fight to come out ahead.
“The potential reward for losing, if this makes sense, the right way to Anthony Joshua is bigger than the potential reward [on if he had ended up fighting] Canelo [Álvarez],” Mannix said. “Imagine what happens if this fight gets to the fourth or fifth round—all of a sudden Jake Paul has ‘won.’ Anything that happens after that doesn’t matter. He got to the fourth or fifth round with the former unified heavyweight champion of the world. All the pressure going into this fight is on Anthony Joshua; he has got to blow through Jake Paul the same way he did Ngannou. Every round that goes by, Anthony Joshua’s stock goes down and Jake Paul’s stock goes up.”
