To Fight Hub<\/a>, Hearn had earlier suggested his estimation of the American \u201cwould go through the roof\u201d if he were to sign a contract \u201cto fight Anthony Joshua.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd here\u2019s why: \u201cGervonta would have had a lot of success against Jake Paul, though his size might be a problem. But, if Jake Paul were to take the fight with ‘AJ,’ he\u2019d have to carry his balls in a wheelbarrow to the ring-walk, because ‘AJ’ wouldn’t mess around in there,\u201d said Hearn, before adding the inevitable. \u201cIt would be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
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And it would be huge \u2014 not just for Paul, who gains legitimacy the moment “AJ” signs, but for Joshua too. It provides a wrong he\u2019s not been able to right for more than six years.<\/p>\n
Joshua\u2019s only fight on an American canvas came in 2019 when he was supposed to face Jarrell Miller before multiple failed drug tests forced Matchroom to bring in Andy Ruiz Jr. as a late-notice replacement.<\/p>\n
Joshua floored Ruiz early, but Ruiz roared back with four knockdowns of his own, stopped “AJ” in the seventh, and sent him home with the most humiliating loss of his career.<\/p>\n
A fight with Paul, sanctioned or exhibition, gives Joshua his American redemption story.<\/p>\n
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If he does to Paul what he did to Ngannou, then he becomes the one dealing out humiliation on the biggest platform of his career: Netflix.<\/p>\n
Paul gets credibility, though, especially if he can outlast Ngannou\u2019s two-round fate. But Joshua gets his first-ever win in the United States, advances his record here to 1-1, and possibly reopens America as a viable market for the twilight of his career.<\/p>\n
If a Tyson Fury fight never materialized in Britain, Joshua can suddenly turn to America and replay his knockout footage of Paul, Ngannou and of Klitschko, to push forward with a Las Vegas headline fight against this country’s last heavyweight king; Deontay Wilder.<\/p>\n
Considering the narrative stakes, commercial upside and global spotlight at play, Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua might just be the smartest dumb bout that boxing can make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oh, boy. You know it says a lot about boxing when we go from Jake Paul scrapping an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[8075,64,63,802,29825,9225,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-281061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-anthony-joshua","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-boxing","12":"tag-francis-ngannou","13":"tag-jake-paul","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}