Jake Paul had a rough night in the ring on Friday against Anthony Joshua, suffering numerous knockdowns en route to a devastating 6th round KO that broke his jaw in two places.
Paul was never really in the fight. He got on his bike in the early rounds and clinched quickly whenever the methodical Joshua was able to walk him down. Those clinches quickly turned to quasi-takedowns, and after several warnings the referee started scoring them as knockdowns. Once that happened Paul couldn’t force a reset, and Joshua closed in for the kill (watch the finish here).
On paper, making it to the sixth round against Joshua is a moral victory for Paul. So is taking some of those punches, including the final right hand that ended the fight. It’s the same punch that flatlined Francis Ngannou, but Paul stayed conscious and made some funny faces, which is about as much as you could realistically ask from a fighter of his caliber against a unified champ and Olympic level boxer like Joshua.
Paul did ‘so well’ that a whole lot of people are still suggesting the fight was rigged or scripted. Despite “The Problem Child” threatening to sue anyone who calls his fights fake, a whole lot of UFC fighters did just that.
“Honest thoughts on the fight: I feel like AJ carried Jake Paul to the sixth round,” former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya said. “I know what my eyes see, and I understand fighting. But this is, I guess, the best result, or the most realistic result, I guess. But I know what my eyes were seeing in the early rounds and now we’re here. Oh well, everyone made money.”
“I feel like they had an agreement on which round Jake would go down in,” bantamweight contender Aiemann Zahabi tweeted. “I don’t understand how such an accomplished boxer like Joshua couldn’t cut off the ring earlier.”
Boxing journalists were also feeling the fix.
“The big problem I have with Paul vs. Joshua is that I’m not sure there wasn’t an agreement of letting it go rounds,” Associated Press contributor Matthew Aguilar wrote on X. “Very possible. So then that makes it fixed. At the least, it blurs the line between fake & real & that challenges the integrity of a sport that is already struggling.”
And of course there’s plenty of fight fans out there analyzing the fight like it’s Zapruder footage, capturing every moment Joshua seemed to hold back a punch. Even the most rabid of the ‘fight was fixed’ crowd had to admit the finish was legit, though.
“That knockout in the 6th round from Anthony Joshua is authentic,” commenter Elusive Raf admitted after four and a half minutes of proclaiming the fight was a work. “Because of the whiplash on the head and also the blood coming from the mouth after, coupled with the x-ray confirmation.”
Paul will be eating food through a straw for the next week or two, but don’t cry too much for him. That’s a small price to pay after he reportedly earned over $90 million for that fight.
