The influencer boxing phenomenon that paved the way for Anthony Joshua’s improbable fight against Jake Paul on Friday can be traced back to an unglamorous warehouse in Newhaven in 2017. Theo Baker and Joe Weller, two popular British YouTubers in their early twenties, had originally only planned to fight as a comedy sketch with giant inflatable gloves. When the interest built among their millions of teenage subscribers and they decided to box properly at a local gym, they still regarded it as a joke with a confected fallout adding to the drama.
There was no crowd in attendance, just a commentator that could barely contain his laughter at the lacklustre quality, but the footage posted on YouTube has been watched more than seven million times to date. “We didn’t even stream it. It was just a video on Joe’s channel. It was purely made for entertainment,” Baker says. “We were almost taking the piss out of ourselves, and we needed like ten-minute pauses between each round because we were that tired. It was so bad. I’d just come back from holiday. I’d never boxed in my life. We had no idea what it was going to turn into.”
Although Paul has since transformed himself into an actual professional boxer, the influencer sphere that sparked his career is now a nine-figure industry in its own right. Misfits, the promotional company co-founded by KSI, has a broadcast contract with DAZN and its shows spanning the UK, the US and the Middle East can draw greater audiences than traditional cards put on by the likes of Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren.
Paul, left, claimed a points victory from his bout with a 58-year-old Tyson in Arlington, Texas, last year
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The overall level of skill is still poor, but a generation of YouTubers who largely garnered fame by recording themselves playing video games were drawn into the circus. More recently, as that original cast has moved on, it has invited a significant amount of scrutiny too, with safety concerns and notably more unsavoury characters, such as Andrew Tate, who is set to headline a Misfits show in Dubai on Saturday.
“I think back in 2017 our audience would have been 13 to 18-year-olds, but we’ve seen a big shift. The people who’ve grown up watching us are still engaged, so the current audience is probably 18 to 30. I know mine is,” says Baker, whose content is predominantly football-based and never boxed again. “Some people want the exposure and some people think of it as a quick buck, and that’s fair enough, but some genuinely love it.”
It was KSI, the UK’s most popular YouTuber with a combined social media following of more than 100 million, who transformed influencer boxing into a commercial behemoth when he challenged Weller to a fight the following year. This time, it was staged at the Copper Box, a 7,500-seat venue in east London. Broadcast live on both of their YouTube channels, it became the second-most streamed event in the platform’s history, behind only Felix Baumgartner’s jump from space in 2012. “That had Red Bull and $30million of advertising behind it. This had nothing. It was just two guys and their channels and it really took the world by storm,” says Liam Chivers, who managed both KSI and Weller at the time.
Influencer boxing can be traced back to a bout between Weller, in the orange shorts, and Baker that suddenly attracted the interest of their respective You Tube following
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The Paul brothers, who had amassed a similar following in the US, took notice of it, too. When KSI fought Logan Paul in Manchester in 2018, the pair streamed it on YouTube at a pay-per-view price of £8. It generated more than £12million and the major broadcasters and sponsors that had treated influencer boxing with caution decided they could no longer afford to ignore it. The rematch in Los Angeles in November 2019 was streamed on DAZN and brought in about 800,000 new monthly subscribers worldwide. It also sold about 200,000 pay-per-views in the UK, despite being aired at 4am. To retain that fan base, who had little interest in regular boxing, DAZN rushed to put on more influencer fights.
Jake Paul, who had already fought KSI’s younger brother, Deji, earned $4million to box another British YouTuber, AnEsonGib, in Miami in 2020. Then, post-Covid, DAZN signed a five-year deal with Misfits. The Sauerland brothers, Kalle and Nisse, who have promoted the likes of Oleksandr Usyk and Chris Eubank Jr across three decades in boxing, were drafted in to oversee the ship.
“The first time I’d heard of it was the first KSI-Logan Paul fight. My kids asked me if I was involved. I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’. I was doing Usyk in Moscow for the undisputed [cruiserweight title] at the time. But if you’re in the space of creating content around boxing, you cannot ignore the fact that younger audiences aren’t captivated by what it is doing,” Kalle Sauerland says. “We can, as purists, say, ‘You’re starting them off with Sunday League football, I want them to follow Manchester United’, but at least they are consuming it.”
KSI’s fight against Tommy Fury, Tyson’s brother, in Manchester in 2023 was a pay-per-view sensation
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“I met with KSI in lockdown and thought, ‘Why is a guy who’s making millions of dollars without getting punched in the nose obsessed with it?’ We all have friends who go down the pub on a Friday and think they’re Muhammad Ali, but he was such a screwed-on guy. He said it was a space where people can settle their online beefs. That gave it more from a longevity angle. We started messing around with formats. Roll on the first event at the O2 [arena in London in 2022] and it sold out within minutes. It started at 6pm but the police said we had to push back 15 minutes because there was a rush from the kids outside trying to get into their seats. It was like a combination of boxing and WWE, but nobody was leaving their seats. It was a different culture, a lot of families, and they were having Pepsi and popcorn like they were actually at the theatre.”
That event brought in about 650,000 pay-per-view buys, and KSI’s fight against Tommy Fury, the former Love Island star and Tyson Fury’s brother, in October 2023 reportedly sold well over a million more. But KSI has not fought since losing that night and Jake Paul had sought to separate himself from that scene altogether. After defeating AnEsonGib, the 28-year-old relocated to Puerto Rico and has not fought another influencer, instead facing a collection of former athletes, MMA fighters, and veteran boxers — not least a 58-year-old Mike Tyson on Netflix last year. “Jake Paul wasn’t liked in the same way [as KSI], so he’s been very clever. He’s basically rattled all the cages he can with people that have attention and combined interest and demographic to create these spectacles which benefit himself,” Chivers says. “He’s ridden off those coattails brilliantly into his own lane where it looks like he’s taking it completely seriously as a professional boxer.”
However, in the absence of KSI and the Paul brothers — Logan is now a WWE wrestler — the interest in influencer boxing has dipped and taken darker turns. Tate, the former kickboxer and self-proclaimed misogynist who faces a civil trial over allegations he subjected four women to physical or sexual abuse, is now Misfits’ star attraction — DAZN will not broadcast Tate’s fight and Kalle Sauerland distanced himself from promotional involvement in the show. Tate has denied wrongdoing.
Other divisive influencers, who tend now to stream their lives on less-regulated platforms than YouTube, preach a copycat brand of toxic masculinity, while OnlyFans models are also being used to sustain interest. Harrison Sullivan, who goes by HsTikkyTokky online, spat at and punched a fan amid a post-fight brawl after his Misfits debut. The 24-year-old received a suspended prison sentence last month for crashing a McLaren supercar before spending a year on the run from police. Rivals to Misfits such as Kingpyn Boxing and Brand Risk have also courted controversies, which have included a fighter flashing in the ring on a live broadcast and the firing of gunshots outside an event.
Andrew Tate, right, the self-proclaimed misogynist, headlines a Misfits show in Dubai at the weekend
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Safety concerns have also been an issue, with the Professional Boxing Association suspending Misfits’ licence “due to clear violations of the PBA’s rules and regulation, bringing boxing into disrepute and in the interest of boxer safety” in 2024. However, such is the Wild West nature of professional boxing in Britain, which has no overarching governing body, that sanction has little meaningful impact as promoters can simply align themselves with another organisation. Kalle Sauerland insists that Misfits has invested heavily in fighter safety and use protocols on par with top-level boxing in Britain, along with removing fighters whose behaviour has crossed the line.
It is a weird, warped, and yet popular and profitable world. Paul might no longer be part of it, but his fight with Joshua is certainly a product of it and will be one of the most-streamed sporting events in history, with the pair standing to earn more than $50million (£37.4million) each. “Live on Netflix. Who would have thought that eight years ago?” Baker says with a laugh. “From then, this has all snowballed into something absolutely bonkers, and it’s worth hundreds of millions of pounds. I do every now and again wake up and think, ‘Oh, has Jake Paul texted me yet?’ I’m waiting for the pay cheque to come.”