There’s one obvious answer for the dreaded question – why are you fighting Jake Paul – that everybody would have accepted from Anthony Joshua: money. Aside from Tyson Fury, Paul is surely the most lucrative opponent out there for “AJ,” and exceeds even Fury in global starpower. Joshua wasn’t headed directly into a megafight anyway, given his recent elbow surgery and long layoff following a shattering knockout loss to Daniel Dubois – imagine how much better the money for this fight looks than it would have for, say, Guido Vianello. A Jake Paul fight makes all the sense in the world for Joshua.
As Joshua tells it, this fight is also a way to eventually shine a light on lesser-known fighters. Asked for his non-financial motivations in a reporting scrum published on YouTube by FightHype, after a gonzo press conference, Joshua proffered a cogent breakdown of boxing’s inherent injustices.
“So, you’ve got ability, and you’ve got marketability,” Joshua said, reaching out left and right hands for visual effect. “Now, unfortunately, how it goes is that you could have the two best fighters with the best ability, but they don’t have the marketability. So they won’t be able to showcase their talents to the world because broadcasters won’t be interested and fans won’t be interested.”
Lest you think Joshua is talking about Jake Paul, he’s not – he’s talking about opponents he might be able to give a platform to after he’s fought Jake Paul.
“What we need to do is bring the marketability aspect into the ability realm,” Joshua said. “What I’ve always tried to focus on is bringing eyes onto the sport…so I looked at [Paul] and said, ‘wow, this is a great opportunity to showcase myself to the whole world.” In the event of a spectacular win, “all that market then comes over to me, and I can focus on other fighters that have pure ability that need this promotion I bring to the table.”
Before we begin nitpicking this statement, Joshua has walked the walk in this respect. He took an obvious banana-skin fight in Oleksandr Usyk in 2021 when Joshua had the far higher profile, then a rematch. The prestige and star power Usyk earned from those two wins was instrumental in him becoming a plausible opponent for his true ring partner, Tyson Fury, and he owes Joshua enough thanks for the platform that he has said he would fight the Brit for a third time. He also packed Wembley to the gills ahead of the disaster against Dubois, which raised Dubois’ stock in time for Usyk to chop it down again.
Still, even after four defeats, Joshua remains one of the biggest stars in the sport, and the notion that scooping up Jake Paul’s fans is an altruistic gesture towards boxers he is yet to fight is laughable. If his real motivation were to give underexposed fighters the fame they seek, he would be more than capable of making a bout with any of them right now. Without the “Jake Paul bump,” Joshua’s fame would still command life-changing audiences and paydays for these boxers.
That’s not to say Joshua won’t use his star power for good again in the future, but this Jake Paul fight simply isn’t and doesn’t need to be anything more than the most lucrative of all soft touches.
As for this fight, Joshua made clear what he thought of Paul’s ability when asked how he thinks the canceled bout between the YouTuber and Gervonta Davis, a man 70-odd pounders lighter than Paul, would have gone: “I think Gervonta would have struggled in some aspects, but I think he would’ve got the victory.”
