Such was the oddity of Anthony Joshua v Jake Paul even taking place, the fight landed on Netflix under a cloud of suspicion that boxing had surrendered itself to choreography.<\/p>\n
To be clear, this was a sanctioned professional contest, not a scripted event – and the storyline it produced was mundane and predictably one-sided.<\/p>\n
No scriptwriter would have come up with something like this.<\/p>\n
The plot played out in the ring was lifeless – a slow, joyless watch that would have struggled to earn even a charitable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.<\/p>\n
And the ultimate irony is that this spectacle has provided one of Joshua’s biggest paydays and, in all likelihood, his largest television audience.<\/p>\n
With seconds remaining in the fourth round, referee Christopher Young perhaps spoke for viewers around the world when he pulled the fighters together and urged them to engage.<\/p>\n
Directing his comments at Paul, he said: “Fans didn’t pay to see this crap.”<\/p>\n
“Amen,” replied Netflix commentator Mauro Ranallo. “Christopher Young with the call of the night.”<\/p>\n
All week Joshua spoke about “carrying boxing on his back”. On Friday night in Miami, he dumped the load, but only after an awkward and laboured process.<\/p>\n
Paul was there to survive.<\/p>\n
The man who spent fight week promising the greatest upset in sporting history instead avoided engagement.<\/p>\n
He circled endlessly – making the most of the space afford by a ring two feet wider than normal – and attempted to run down the clock.<\/p>\n
When he did make contact, it was with echoes of his schoolboy past as a wrestler, constantly going low and grabbing Joshua’s leg.<\/p>\n
There was an embarrassing lack of punches by Paul and a litany of wild swings from Joshua that even a novice like his opponent was able to easily evade.<\/p>\n
“It’s a win but it’s not a success,” Joshua said afterwards. “I’ve got a lot of improving I’ve got to do. I’m not happy.”<\/p>\n
Joshua earned his share of a reported \u00a3210m purse, but from a boxing perspective – and for those in the UK who stayed up into the early hours to watch – the contest was meaningless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Such was the oddity of Anthony Joshua v Jake Paul even taking place, the fight landed on Netflix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-357809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357809","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=357809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}