They’re calling the fight “Judgment Day.” I suppose that’s the perfect tagline for a fight that’s coming along at a time when the sport of boxing is staring into an apocalyptic future and when the only way this can end is with all of boxing lowering itself into a vat of molten steel.

Yes, boxing is at a low point. Some would say the apocalypse is not awaiting in the future but rather has already arrived in the present.

On paper, Joshua-Paul represents the final chapter of boxing’s most unserious era, its conclusion allowing us to wipe clean the hard drive and return to the factory settings.

Before I go any further, I must acknowledge: There’s no guarantee a hard reset will help.

I’m reminded of “The Process,” a conscious decision by the folks running my hometown basketball team, the Philadelphia 76ers, to stop drifting along in the middle of the pack with no hope of winning a championship and instead bottom out, accumulate high draft picks and gradually assemble a talent-stocked roster.

The team nailed the bottoming out part. Crushed it. And it nailed the high draft picks part, too.

But you draft enough of the wrong guys, you suffer enough devastating injuries, you make enough ill-advised trades, you sign enough burdensome contracts, and you wake up 12 years into “The Process” middle of the pack again, rebuilding again.

So even if Joshua-Paul does precisely what it’s supposed to do, other things still need to fall into place and boxing’s power brokers still need to cooperate.

But that’s a chance I’m willing to take. Because trudging along on the current path isn’t working. A sport where the best fights pretty much only get made when a regime with unlimited cash accrued outside boxing decides to treat boxing as a vehicle for laundering that cash at a loss – that’s not a sustainable business model. That’s Band-Aids and gunshot wounds.

And, sure, the Band-Aids for gunshot wounds approach may feel in the moment like it’s better than gunshot wounds without Band-Aids.

But long-term, it is not. And the time has come to let boxing bleed out.

That’s where the Joshua-Paul fight comes in.

We all know how this fight will go. DraftKings makes Joshua a -1400 favorite, and that’s with the odds taking into account the “public money” that will come in on Paul. Realistically, if you understand boxing and aren’t swayed by celebrity, Joshua is, what, 98% percent likely to prevail? Maybe more like 99%?

Joshua is -500 to win by KO, TKO or DQ. That’s one of the best bargains you’ll ever see in sports betting. If you’re willing to lay $500 to win $100, it’s the easiest $100 you’ll ever make, a 20% return on investment for a sure thing.

If this fight is on the up and up, if Joshua has no ulterior motives tied to carrying Paul, there isn’t a conceivable scenario where this goes more than two rounds.

“AJ” has every advantage. He’s five inches taller and about 50 pounds heavier. He’s been boxing for 18 years to Paul’s five. He’s tangled with Hall of Fame heavyweights like Oleksandr Usyk and Wladimir Klitschko, whereas Paul has tangled with a YouTuber, a former NBA player, faded MMA fighters, club-level cruiserweights, a semi-retired son of a boxing legend, and a 58-year-old.

These are two entirely different leagues. This is Rudy Ruettiger trying to tackle Barry Sanders.

Or here’s a better comp: This is Anthony Joshua boxing against Francis Ngannou – if Ngannou was a cruiserweight without any world-class combat sports experience.

Joshua devastated Ngannou when they met 20 months ago. He knocked him down three times and finished him off after five minutes and 38 seconds of action.

A repeat of Joshua-Ngannou is the best-case scenario for Paul. If AJ is serious about this and not looking to put on a show for the crowd, not looking to let Paul go a few rounds before ending matters, this shouldn’t go two minutes, never mind two rounds.

And, no, you’re not going to create any new boxing fans with a “Joshua KO1 Paul” result. But that’s not the point. This fight is not designed as an advertisement for what boxing could be. This fight is, sadly, a symbol of what boxing has become.

And it is, hopefully, that rock bottom end point that results in the sport waking up face down in a gutter, ashamed of the decisions it’s made, vowing to get sober.

Add in the probability that this fight will not move the needle for Netflix in the manner Paul vs. Mike Tyson did, and everyone has all the motivation they need to reboot everything.

There were, after all, reports that Paul’s previously planned fight, a November curiosity (if we’re being euphemistic) against Gervonta “Tank” Davis, was not selling tickets as hoped nor generating buzz as intended.

And at least that was a fight where you could make a case for a competitive contest.

Joshua-Paul appeals on exactly three possible levels. It appeals if you like a total freak show. It appeals if you’re more into celebrity than sport. And it appeals if you just want to see Jake Paul get his ass thoroughly kicked already.

The fight is taking place at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, home of the NBA’s Heat, which seats 19,600 for basketball, so theoretically a little over 20,000 for boxing. They barely have a month to promote it, and if ticket sales go anything like they appeared to be going for Paul-Davis – with prices getting slashed due to low demand before the fight was canceled – that’s just one more factor in favor of boxing hitting the reset button.

I will now pause and show Jake Paul some respect. It takes balls to agree to this fight, regardless of the size of the paycheck.

I also don’t blame Joshua for doing it, nor his promoter Matchroom Boxing, nor Netflix. Sure, they’re all failing to protect the sanctity of boxing, but … it’s 2025. There is no sanctity to be found anywhere in our society, and certainly not in boxing.

So, here’s what happens on December 19.

The fight attracts attention and ratings, but not nearly on the level of Paul-Tyson, reminding all involved that this cynical approach to the sport is offering diminishing returns.

And Joshua obliterates Paul, absolutely pulverizes him, hurts him with every right hand that lands and erases him just as he erased Ngannou.

I’m not wishing for him to leave Paul physically unable to fight again – though we must acknowledge that is a far greater possibility here than it is in most boxing matches, and it’s always a possibility in boxing. But certainly that’s not the scenario I’m rooting for. The much-preferred scenario sees Paul vanquished with ease but able to get to his feet afterward and conduct a coherent post-fight interview.

And if that’s the sort of fight we get, it concludes the story of Jake Paul, attention-getting professional boxer. Perhaps he fights on, but no longer accompanied by spin that it’s heading somewhere or means something.

Boxing has always had its oddities. It’s always had a low barrier to entry. There were always unserious people trying to do unserious things on the fringes of the sport.

But in the time of Jake Paul, those unserious things went from the fringes to the center. He made the sideshow bigger at times than the main show.

Joshua can end that. He will end that if that’s what he’s motivated to do. And that will force a reset in boxing, allowing everyone to get back to focusing on real fights, on the best fighting the best, and maybe even on trying to promote the sport in a profitable, sustainable way, where stars and champions are built through merit.

A boy can dream.

I started this column with an early ’90s movie reference. Let’s finish it with a late ’90s music reference: Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

Jake Paul brought some fun to boxing, but it’s closing time for him and his interloper experiment.

Let whatever comes next begin on December 20. Whatever that may be, it can’t be worse than what immediately preceded it.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.