There were more than a few reactions of shock and awe when Jake Paul announced he was no longer fighting Gervonta \u201cTank\u201d Davis and instead booked a showdown against former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on Dec. 19 in Miami.<\/p>\n
Paul went from having a huge size and power advantage over Davis, who typically competes around 135 pounds, to a legit heavyweight with devastating knockout power in Joshua. The odds reflect the one-sided nature of this fight with Joshua opening at around a 12-to-1 favorite to beat Paul.<\/p>\n
UFC legend Matt Brown argues this is likely just a way for Joshua to make a huge paycheck at minimal risk by going up against an opponent in Paul, who has only faced five opponents with real boxing experience including in his lone loss to Tommy Fury in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Anthony Joshua is above it,\u201d Brown said about the matchup on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cAnthony Joshua, I don\u2019t want to say he sold out, maybe he bought in but he\u2019s doing this solely for money. If this is not somehow rigged, Anthony Joshua murders Jake Paul. The only person to respect in this whole thing is Jake Paul. He\u2019s taking on a real boxer, which we\u2019ve been saying [he needed to do] for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still going to surprise me all to hell if they actually make this walk because when I first saw the news of it, I was like this is not going to happen. This is PR. This is bullshit. I still, in the back of my head, I\u2019m like this isn\u2019t going to happen. Somebody\u2019s going to pull out. Somebody\u2019s going to get hurt. The card\u2019s going to fall apart. Something\u2019s going to happen. But if it happens, you\u2019ve to respect Jake Paul for having the balls to do that. Anthony Joshua\u2019s no joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul has gone as far as proudly declaring his own delusion<\/a> that he believes he can win this fight despite the obvious disadvantages he faces going up against Joshua.<\/p>\n The fight is happening 15 months after Joshua suffered only the second knockout loss of his career when he was finished by Daniel Dubois in September 2024. Now 36 years old and likely out of title contention for the time being, Joshua might be nearing the end of his career.<\/p>\n That factor might boost Paul\u2019s confidence that he could potentially pull off this unlikely upset.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re a guy who\u2019s a heavyweight contender, you\u2019ve got 15 or 20 fights and you\u2019re on your way up in the heavyweight division, this is the time you would look at Joshua and say now\u2019s the time to attack,\u201d Brown said. \u201cNow\u2019s a good time to match up against the guy. He\u2019s probably on his way out. He\u2019s probably not got a ton of fights left. He\u2019s been knocked out recently. Now\u2019s the time to go in and make your name off him.<\/p>\n \u201cI just wonder if that\u2019s what Jake Paul is thinking. He\u2019s still in the limelight. He\u2019s still active. He still competes. Now is the time to go take advantage and exploit him. I just don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to be the case. That\u2019s the only thing that I can think that they\u2019re thinking. I\u2019m trying to build my name off of Anthony Joshua. Joshua\u2019s not there yet. He\u2019s not 58 years old. He\u2019s not Mike Tyson.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been plenty of shocking upsets in combat sports from Matt Serra dethroning Georges St-Pierre in the UFC to James \u201cBuster\u201d Douglas demolishing Mike Tyson in his prime. But Brown doesn\u2019t see that kind of stunning result coming for Paul versus Joshua.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t even give him a Hail Mary chance. It\u2019s boxing, not MMA,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIf it was an MMA fight, yeah Hail Mary chance. In boxing, this is just so few and far between. You don\u2019t see that stuff in boxing, especially against guys that are world champion level. I don\u2019t even give him a Hail Mary chance. The only chance that he has is surviving.<\/p>\n \u201cIf he survives all eight rounds, I\u2019m going to be conspiracy theorizing. Only if he survives. I think he may be coming into this thinking that\u2019s a notch in my cap that I survived eight rounds with a heavyweight champion. I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not sure what the thought process is behind this. No matter how you twist it and say it, I have respect Jake Paul for doing this fight\u2026 If they\u2019re going into a real fight, I respect Jake Paul for taking the chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the fight is viewed as such an astronomical mismatch, Brown knows there are going to be all sorts of questions and possibly even accusations alleging that the fight is fixed.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t help that the UFC is dealing with fight-fixing allegations stemming from suspicious circumstances that unfolded around a matchup that took place at UFC Vegas 110 in November.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest problem with this fight is unless Jake gets knocked out, we\u2019ll all be \u2014 including me \u2014 be conspiracy theorizing,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way we can\u2019t. We\u2019re all going to be like \u2018what the f*ck? How much did you pay Joshua for that?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s under an actual commission so it\u2019s going to be a little bit harder to rig anything. But I don\u2019t know how the back door deals work. I\u2019m speechless. If Jake Paul does not get knocked out, it\u2019s a conspiracy and I\u2019m on board with the conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Assuming there\u2019s no strange occurrences, and both fighters set foot in the ring at full health come Dec. 19, Brown doesn\u2019t see how this ends well for Paul.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have a chance if it\u2019s a real fight,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI can\u2019t help but go to conspiracy theories here. It\u2019s almost like it\u2019s playing right in your face. They\u2019re conspiracy theorizing right in your face. I just cannot find a way to not buy into some conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot help but think there has to be some ulterior motive here. There has to be something more than Jake Paul actually wanting to go have a real fight with Anthony Joshua. It doesn\u2019t make sense. It doesn\u2019t make sense that he thinks he could beat him. It doesn\u2019t make sense that he would want to take that beating and look like a fool on national television or Netflix, worldwide television. It doesn\u2019t add up in any way. If there\u2019s no conspiracy theories going on here, then f*cking mad respect to Jake Paul. We can all shut up and give him his respect now. He might get his ass kicked, but we can still show the respect to him.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were more than a few reactions of shock and awe when Jake Paul announced he was no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,701,37036,329,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-306228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-latest-news","13":"tag-mmaf-podcast-network","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}