Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua throws caution to the wind
Jake Paul is set to face the much larger Anthony Joshua, of Great Britain, on Dec. 19. Experts say the bout is a glaring mismatch of size and experience.
Social media influencer turned professional boxer Jake Paul might be in over his head — literally.
After a planned November exhibition match with professional boxer Gervonta “Tank” Davis was called off, Paul is now set to face the much larger Anthony Joshua on Dec. 19. The fight, which is officially sanctioned by the Florida Athletic Commission, is scheduled for eight rounds.
Paul’s bout with Davis was set for Nov. 14, but Most Valuable Promotions called it off just days after Davis’ ex-girlfriend Courtney Rossel filed a civil suit alleging assault, kidnapping and emotional abuse.
Much of the pre-match chatter focused on the size difference between Davis, who is 5 feet, five inches tall and typically fights at around 130 pounds, and Paul, who is 6 feet, 1 inch and has fought as a cruiserweight around 200 pounds. Ahead of the Paul-Joshua bout, talk about the disparity between the fighters’ sizes is again making headlines, as the rules stipulate that Joshua, who is 6 feet, 6 inches, can weigh no more than 245 pounds at the final weigh-in.
But matchmaking is more than just managing the hype of star-studded fights, and experts say that these celebrity-driven spectacles come with real health risks, especially when the sport’s usual guardrails are stretched or ignored.
“Boxing is inherently dangerous, especially for brain health, and such a substantial mismatch in experience, size and weight is certainly risky from the perspective of the less experienced and smaller competitor,” said Art Kramer, the founder and former director of Northeastern University’s Center for Cognitive and Brain Health.
The sport adheres to weight classes to keep bouts fair and safe, preventing fighters with major size and power differences from facing each other, said Kramer, a former amateur boxer who fought as a welterweight. Though boxing has no single governing body, most sanctioning organizations and athletic commissions still enforce these weight divisions because they’re vital for fighter safety and fair competition, he said.
Paul is currently 12-1-0, with the vast majority of his victories coming against opponents cherry-picked from various athletic disciplines, including MMA fighters and wrestlers and an ex-basketball player.
Kramer said that while Paul has scored some notable victories in his professional boxing career, “Joshua is much more experienced and much bigger — both in terms of height and weight.”
That means the dangers he faces are far more pronounced, said Gian Corrado, head team physician for Northeastern athletics and director of emergency sports medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Corrado said there is a significant body of scientific research linking weight and size disparities in combat sports to greater impact forces, higher brain strain and long-term injury, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
“You don’t need a randomized controlled trial to prove this point,” Corrado said. “We’re talking about basic physics here. It’s like what happens when an SUV crashes into a compact car.”
The fight will be streamed on Netflix, which is promoting it as “a career-defining pro heavyweight fight.” Still, questions have swirled around Paul’s legitimacy as a professional boxer after recent bouts with a then 58-year-old Mike Tyson, several retired mixed martial artists and Nate Robinson, a former basketball player.
Dan Lebowitz, executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said the Paul-Davis fight had “a calculated appearance of fairness,” given Paul’s height and weight advantage, and several adjustments to the competitors’ gloves that would have protected Davis from Paul’s punching power.
The Paul-Davis bout, Lebowitz said, “was more in keeping with the celebrity fight genre” that has generated tens of millions of dollars in gate receipts and pay-per-view sales in recent years, and which Paul “has ceremoniously taken to new heights.”
“Even though the rules of the Joshua fight have been adjusted, this time to push the narrative of Paul’s status as a legitimate fighter, the fight, at its core, still has that circus buzz to it,” Lebowitz said, adding that part of the storyline is that there are many fans who believe “and perhaps hope that Paul will receive a long overdue comeuppance at the hands of Joshua.”
In essence, “a real fight has come to the circus,” he said.
The incentives for fighters like Davis and Joshua are clear. According to Sports Illustrated, Joshua could pocket as much as $30 million to fight Paul. Paul has generated large payouts for his fights, leveraging his massive online following and headline-grabbing matchups to drive revenue. His bout with Tyson was the most-streamed sporting event, drawing more than 108 million live global viewers, according to Netflix.
But the “crossover” craze comes at a cost.
“These mismatches — and Paul-Joshua is a big one — only introduce opportunities for more serious injury,” Kramer said.
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Indeed, celebrity boxing has helped jolt the sport at a time when traditional boxing has struggled with declining viewership, fragmentation and lack of sponsor interest.
And Paul’s own carefully crafted storyline, coupled with his marketing savvy, has brought renewed interest to the sport — even as it dispenses with “weight classes, standard fight requirements and safety concerns,” Lebowitz said.
“In that sense, perhaps he deserves respect for mastering the art of marketing in a space where marketing itself is the one and only product,” he said.
In the lead-up to the fight, Paul insisted that he was more than up to the task of fighting Joshua, dismissing questions about the size disparity with the usual mix of swagger and abandon.
“I believe that fighting a smaller man is oftentimes harder as a heavyweight because of the speed difference,” Paul said during a press conference with Joshua. “I just have to avoid that one shot for eight rounds, and I believe that I can do that.”
Joshua had taken a 12-month hiatus prior to accepting the Paul fight, citing a need to slow down, trim his team and rest. He had elbow surgery in the interim.
“This will be my first prep and fight in December,” he said.
Joshua said he was training with fellow heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk and his team ahead of December’s bout. Joshua is currently 28-4, with 25 knockouts.
