{"id":44842,"date":"2025-08-05T05:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T05:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44842\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T05:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T05:08:08","slug":"anthony-joshua-jake-paul-has-50-50-chance-of-happening-after-positive-opening-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44842\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Joshua-Jake Paul has ’50\/50′ chance of happening after positive opening talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON, England \u2014 The “mental, crazy and dangerous” heavyweight fight between two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua<\/a> and 13-fight novice Jake Paul<\/a> has a “50\/50” chance of happening, according to promoter Eddie Hearn.<\/p>\n

The Matchroom boss, Joshua\u2019s promoter for his entire professional career, had exploratory talks with Nakisa Bidarian about the fight on Wednesday and is convinced Paul is serious about his desire to fight AJ.<\/p>\n

Ever since he kicked off his boxing career, the former You Tuber has always hit the headlines by calling out the sport\u2019s biggest names, promising to one day beat Canelo Alvarez<\/a> to become world champion.<\/p>\n

But Paul is now thinking even bigger than that and has recently set his sights on 6ft 6in Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs) former world champion and 2012 Olympic gold medalist, who boasts knockout victories over Wladimir Klitschko, Alexander Povetkin and Kubrat Pulev.<\/p>\n

However, with the Tyson Fury fight that Joshua so desperately craves<\/a> seemingly in danger of never happening, his team have been approached about a number of different potential fights. One of them is Paul and Hearn says the idea has legs following his call with Paul\u2019s business partner.
\u201cThis is very real,\u201d Hearn said when asked by The Ring<\/a> about Joshua-Paul.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a good chat for about an hour with Nakisa on [July 30] and now I believe they want the fight. I really do. <\/p>\n

\u201cNakisa was very honest and he\u2019s concerned about the fight, but Jake truly believes he can win the fight or at least be competitive in it. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now because of the size of the fight, it leads me to believe there\u2019s a very good chance it could happen. If I had to rate that chance I would say it\u2019s 50:50. It was a very positive conversation and we expect that conversation to extend over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they really want it, it will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul, 28, was last in action in June when he claimed a unanimous decision against former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez<\/a> Jr. after 10 rounds at Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Before that he had beaten 59-year-old Mike Tyson over eight-twos in November.
Joshua, meanwhile, has been out of action since he was knocked out by Daniel Dubois<\/a> at Wembley Stadium in September last year in his bid to become a three-time heavyweight champion. That night, he weighed just over 252lbs, while Paul was just under 200lbs for his fight with Chavez.<\/p>\n

But Hearn says Paul will look to pack on the pounds for what would be his first fight at heavyweight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wouldn\u2019t be such a huge difference,\u201d Hearn said. \u201cJake would be a heavyweight on the night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, look, I can\u2019t even necessarily justify it to you. It\u2019s a mismatch in my opinion, it\u2019s dangerous in my opinion but this is a guy, a cruiserweight who will be a heavyweight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Joshua is probably yet to get his head round it until he knows that it\u2019s a possibility. After my call this week I\u2019d say it\u2019s definitely a possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cAJ understands the commercial world and will look at this and see that it\u2019s huge. It would probably be the biggest fight that could ever happen anywhere. It would be right up there with his biggest purses ever. You can talk about the boxing world but this would be the outer world.”<\/p>\n

Hearn also believes that the nature of the potential beating that Paul is facing could “evaporate” him from the boxing world a little over five years into his fighting career.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI said to Nakisa the other day that this is about the fear factor. This is dangerous. This is like tuning in to watch David Blaine but much more dangerous and much more real. You\u2019re not trying to escape from a box in three minutes, you\u2019re in there with one of the biggest punchers of all time and it isn\u2019t a game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never I\u2019ve called for or told people we\u2019re targeting this, but I do also understand the colossal size of this fight commercially and probably the appetite from a lot of people to evaporate Jake Paul from the boxing world. That is probably what this does.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, England \u2014 The “mental, crazy and dangerous” heavyweight fight between two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6842,6836,6841,6840,6834,6102,6837,6838,6839,6835,6588,6847,6846,6830,6828,6829,6844,6831,6827,6848,6843,101,6845,6826,6833,56,54,55,6832],"class_list":["post-44842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-results","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44842","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=44842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}