Anthony Joshua vs. Jake Paul: Behind the scenes at the circus

“So you’re off to the circus,” said my dad after I’d told him I was flying to Miami to report on Jake Paul’s attempt to take on Anthony Joshua.

Those words stayed with me all week because my father is the most casual of boxing fans. He rarely knows when a fight is even taking place, but of course he knew what was happening at the Kaseya Center on December 19. 

As casual a fan my dad is, on this occasion it seemed he knew more than me, because I headed to Miami excited at the prospect of the fight, but a circus it was, and a reminder to what the sport has become.

It did not take long to realize that this was not a normal fight week. The first event on the schedule was the media workouts, doubling as a mini fight night, held on Wednesday in a nightclub attached to the fighter hotel. This is not me having a dig, either — I actually quite liked it. Fighters, amateur and professional, have boxed in clubs all over the world for years and it felt like a nod to that reality, whether an intentional nod or not.

But it was there that I first understood that we were not in Miami to ‘report’. We were there to film what we were permitted to see and share it with the world.

I am a journalist – one with actual qualifications, a dying breed in this sport – yet if we are being honest, BoxingScene would probably have been better off hiring a freelance cameraman for the week. That was the role we were expected to play. It seemed as though MVP had opened the doors to anyone with a mobile phone and a respectable social media following, ensuring that Jake Paul’s pad work reached as many timelines as possible.

It would be easy to pin this solely on MVP, but that would be unfair.

This approach is becoming increasingly common across boxing. Access is no longer measured by the quality of the questions being asked, but by how quickly content can be pushed out, and to how many people.

Reporting, it seemed, was secondary.

The press conference was up next — in theory, the perfect opportunity to ask sensible questions of fighters and promoters alike. I wanted to ask who was overseeing the drug testing for the main event. A fairly important question, given the number of fighters currently testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. In my view, it should be among the first things addressed at any press conference.

Instead, I found myself stuck behind a long line of “reporters” using their moment not to ask serious questions, but to cheer fighters, shout encouragement, and capture clips for their social media. There were so many doing it that the opportunity to ask anything meaningful passed without a single substantive question being raised.

I didn’t give up there.

At Thursday’s official weigh-in, Anthony Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn made himself available to the media. He was quickly surrounded, but I eventually managed to ask who was overseeing the drug testing for the fight. You could have heard a pin drop. Hearn explained that MVP had opted to use the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), rather than the more commonly used Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency (VADA).

Naturally, that prompted a follow-up. When I asked MVP frontman Nakisa Bidarian why USADA had been chosen over VADA, he did give me an explanation, but when I pressed for further detail on the decision, the mood shifted. “Why do we keep talking about VADA?” I was told, followed by, “No more questions on it.”

It was another reminder that we were not there to interrogate or clarify, but to document, to capture face-offs, soundbites and, in this case, Jake Paul shouting profanities as he weighed in for the bout.

Then came perhaps the biggest circus of all — the fight itself.

All week, I had no clue where Jake Paul was getting his confidence from. He seemed fearless, certain that this was his moment to knock out a former two-time heavyweight champion. But as the fight unfolded, it became clear that Paul had been pulling the wool over our eyes all along.

Every fall, every “WOW” shouted from the canvas felt premeditated, as though the fight existed as much for social media as for sport. Earlier in the week, he had even said, “My caption when I win on Instagram is going to be heavyweight champion of the world.”

On Friday, it was never about winning, it was about views and viral moments.

Even after the fight, in a hospital bed with a broken jaw, he was joking and making clips for social media. Meanwhile, MVP started uploading highlights of him making Joshua miss and landing clean shots, with captions like, “Nobody has made AJ miss like this before.”

Paul’s strategy was clear: survive, look good online, and generate content. But when it came to the actual fight, it seemed he had little left in the tank.

Joshua had said all week he would break Paul’s soul, and when Paul went down for the final time, he had enough presence of mind to shout “WOW” for effect on the floor, but not enough to climb to his feet in time to beat the count. “At the end you’re either there to quit or get knocked out, and in the end, it was a bit of both,” said Joshua post-fight, and he was bang on.

Paul certainly deserves credit for remaining conscious after Joshua’s right hand smashed into his jaw, however.

There are no prizes for merely taking part at the top level of sport, and frankly, there is no place for that kind of performance at any level. I didn’t box at an especially high level, and I have always been an advocate for backfoot boxing, but had I performed like Paul – spending more time rolling around on the floor than throwing punches – my coaches would have thrown me out of the gym. There is a saying in the UK: “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Paul learned that lesson the hard way last Friday night. A broken jaw is no joke, and he was lucky it was not much, much worse.

The week has been a reminder of what the sport I have followed and held close to my heart since a child has become.

Views and likes take president over proper journalism and a social media following is more important than talent. But Joshua, thankfully, reminded everyone that it doesn’t matter how many followers you have on Instagram — they can’t fight for you. You can’t buy talent, and if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk.

Spectacle sells, but the ring always delivers the truth.

Tom Ivers is an amateur boxer who has a master’s degree in sports journalism. He had his first bout in 2013, joined BoxingScene in 2024 and is now a key part of the UK and social media teams.