Not even in the wake of losing his originally scheduled opponent did the thought of a postponement cross the mind of Jake Paul.
That was not the phone call he planned to make to the several fighters appearing on this weekend’s Showtime Pay-Per-View event.
“The show must go on,” Paul told BoxingScene.com and other reporters ahead of his makeshift rematch with Tyron Woodley this Saturday at AMALIE Arena in Tampa. “I had a responsibility to my fans to put on this show. I wanted to fight three times this year. And every fighter on the undercard, imagine the other fighters on the undercard getting the call saying the show is canceled. A lot of fighters live paycheck to paycheck fighting. They need this in their lives.
“I had to step up to the plate. I didn’t care who they threw me in the ring with.”
It became a serious discussion when Paul (4-0, 3KOs) was in need of a formidable foe after England’s Tommy Fury (7-0, 4KOs) withdrew from their December 18 grudge match due to illness and injury. The content creator and current cruiserweight prospect didn’t waste any time considering a new date, instructing his team to find any worth fighter who was available to accept the opportunity on barely two weeks’ notice.
The search was brief, as Woodley (0-1 as a boxer) was long eager to avenge his split decision loss to Paul from this past August 29 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio. A deal was immediately struck, preserving the seven-fight show that also includes record-setting seven-division titlist Amanda Serrano (41-1-1, 30KOs) and a novelty fight between NBA superstar Deron Williams and legendary NFL running back Frank Gore.
At no point did Paul—who turned pro last January—ever consider waiting until 2022 to revisit plans for this show.,
“Not on my part,” insisted Paul. “There was the business side of it. Showtime and Nakisa (Bidarian, Paul’s high-powered adviser) were weighing all the options. I was llke, ‘Yo we need to do this fight. Throw anyone in there.’ The way I looked at it, if we move it to January or move it to February, Tommy’s gonna find an excuse then to not do this fight. So, fuck this guy, onto the next one.
“The story has been people making excuses every which way about my fights. I sort of don’t care what people say whether the respect is there. The bottom line is that I gotta go in there and knock this guy out and I plan on doing so. We’ll see what happens afterwards but I really don’t care less. Nobody has wrote my checks. The haters have never paid my bills. The show must go on. I’ll fight anybody… anyone, anytime, anyplace. I say it, the key is I mean it. The shit I say, I mean.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox