{"id":329613,"date":"2025-12-22T10:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T10:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/329613\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T10:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T10:48:07","slug":"joshua-and-paul-provide-sorry-spectacle-and-the-worst-is-theres-more-to-come-boxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/329613\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua and Paul provide sorry spectacle and the worst is there\u2019s more to come | Boxing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jake Paul\u2019s mouth opened wide, and his eyes became huge glazed saucers, as he sank to the canvas in shock and awe after a pulverising right hand from Anthony Joshua finally ended the circus in Miami<\/a> late on Friday night. It looked as if Paul was trying to say \u201cWow!\u201d as the severity of impact registered in his scrambled brain.<\/p>\n

Pinned in a corner of the ring midway through the sixth round, Paul could no longer run or cling to Joshua\u2019s legs like a forlorn little boy as the gravity of boxing enveloped him. Instead, as he tried to absorb the punch that broke his jaw in two separate places, Paul was lost in his utterly stunned moment.<\/p>\n

So this is how it feels, and looks, to be hit hard by a real boxer, an Olympic gold medallist and former world heavyweight champion. Wow is the word.<\/p>\n

It was the fourth time that the former YouTuber had been knocked down but the consequences of a proper punch meant Paul would not be able to rise to his feet and waggle his tongue defiantly at Joshua before the referee waved the charade over. As blood began to leak from his mouth, and a numbing throb spread through his jawbone, Paul finally understood how hard, exhausting and dangerous boxing is at a decent level of professionalism.<\/p>\n

Joshua, it should be stressed, was not impressive amid the bedlam. After his hollow victory he made a throat-slitting gesture that hinted at a clinical and deadly execution when, in reality, Joshua had cut a frustrated figure for most of the contest. Rather than glowering with menace, or exhibiting an iron certainty, Joshua had seemed tentative and crude for nearly five rounds. He struggled to catch Paul and landed under a third of his blows \u2013 missing 98 of the 146 punches he threw.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s lack of conditioning, which is a basic essential in elite boxing, shaped the outcome. Without the gas to flee any longer, and reduced to slipping to the canvas as often as he could for a breather, Paul was rendered helpless by fatigue. Joshua applied the brutal finish but, until then, he had seemed a mournful shadow of the fighter he had been in 2017 when, in a great fight, he withstood the ferocity of Wladimir Klitschko<\/a> to force a memorable stoppage.<\/p>\n

Jake Paul goads Anthony Joshua during their bout. Photograph: JC Ruiz\/PA<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the best performance,\u201d Joshua admitted on Friday night. \u201cThe end goal was to get Jake Paul, pin him down and hurt him. That has been the request, and that\u2019s what was on my mind. It took a bit longer than expected, but the right hand finally found the destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joshua praised Paul\u2019s courage but he added an excuse for his own stilted showing. \u201cHe came up against a real fighter tonight that\u2019s had a 15-month layoff,\u201d Joshua said as he referenced how he had been crushed by Daniel Dubois<\/a> in his previous fight, in September 2024. \u201cWe shook off the cobwebs, and I can\u2019t wait to roll into 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the press conference afterwards a jovial Joshua tried out a woeful imitation of Tyson Fury<\/a> as he called for a scrap against his currently retired domestic rival. Joshua will get his wish and he and Fury will share the ring next year; but that bout comes far too late in their careers. Both Joshua and Fury are on the far side of the hill and, in contrast, the most interesting heavyweights in the world are Oleksandr Usyk and Moses Itauma.<\/p>\n

Usyk remains the undoubted king of the division<\/a>, having beaten both Joshua and Fury twice, while Itauma is a rising force<\/a>. The young British heavyweight, who turns 21 later this month, would probably have needed fewer than half the number of rounds that Joshua required to knock Paul into a suitably wowed stupor.<\/p>\n

The sorry spectacle was summed up far more effectively by the man closest to the farce. Christopher Young, the referee, brought Joshua and Paul together near the end of an abject fourth round. \u201cThe fans didn\u2019t pay to see this crap,\u201d Young snapped at both men.<\/p>\n

Anthony Joshua celebrates but his performance was far from impressive. Photograph: Leonardo Fernandez\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the public gets what the public wants and that certainly means more pitiful celebrity contests. Paul seemed genuinely proud and cocky to have had his jaw broken by a sledgehammer right. In the early hours of Saturday morning he posted an X-ray<\/a>, with the two fractures highlighted in red, and wrote: \u201cDouble broken jaw. Give me Canelo in 10 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

That jokey reference to Sa\u00fal \u201cCanelo\u201d \u00c1lvarez, a far greater fighter than Joshua but a similarly faded force, showed that Paul\u2019s comic chutzpah remains undented. It might not be Canelo but Paul will soon find someone else with whom he can make north of $50m, as he and Joshua both did in Miami.<\/p>\n

While he was being interviewed in the ring, before leaving for hospital, Paul spat a tracer of blood on to the canvas. It was another bleak summary of the night as Paul mangled blunt truth with blood-flecked bullshit and said: \u201cI think my jaw is broken. It\u2019s definitely broke. A nice little ass-whipping from one of the best to ever do it. I love this shit and I\u2019m going to come back and keep on winning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jake Paul\u2019s mouth opened wide, and his eyes became huge glazed saucers, as he sank to the canvas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-329613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}