Boxing purists may say these bouts cheapen the sport, but in a world where content is king, they will only become more common
When I saw that the YouTuber turned celebrity boxer Jake Paul is going to fight Mike Tyson on 20 July, broadcast live on Netflix, my first thought was: is this a joke? But I quickly realised that, like much of contemporary life, it was too stupid to be a joke, and so must be real. My second thought was: wouldn’t it be great to see Tyson – a former heavyweight champion – tenderise Paul’s body with some hooks, duck, then unleash the most savage-looking uppercut you’ve seen on his jaw? Maybe Iron Mike could even bite his ear off as well, just for old times’ sake.
Unfortunately for me and other misty-eyed boxing fans, Tyson will be 58 by the time the fight comes around, so that’s probably not going to happen. What is probably going to happen is that Paul will box at a range that’s too far for his opponent to reach until the old man he’s facing gets tired, then he’ll either knock him out or the match will be declared a draw.
You could look at this fight and see it as the canary in the coalmine for respectable, high-level boxing. If some annoying YouTuber fighting a retired boxer about 30 years his senior is going to be one of the most-watched fights of the year, doesn’t that show how far the real deal has fallen?
But since 2018, when Paul had his first fight, influencer boxing has also exploded in popularity. Followers of the sub-genre will be familiar with such colossal battles as Jake’s brother, Logan, v KSI, Salt Papi v Halal Ham, I Did a Thing v TheOdd1sOut and Uncle Pizza v YuddyGangTV. Tellingly, since his first fight, Jake Paul has more than doubled his net worth from $21m to $45m, mostly from returns from his boxing career.
There’s a huge amount of money riding on not just boxing, but this new, bastardised, influencer form of it. People watch traditional boxing for the skill, athleticism, gore and spectacle. Now there’s a version you can watch that takes away the skill, athleticism and gore, but has ramped up the spectacle to its most bombastic apex.
In the same way you might hate the Kardashians or Piers Morgan but are still hoovered irresistibly towards their content, there’s now a sporting version of that rage-bait. It doesn’t matter if it’s loud, annoying and lacking in skill; in fact, it seems to be better for engagement metrics if it’s exactly those things.
But is there any sporting merit to these fights, and Paul’s career, at all? Well, as the old saying goes: “You don’t play boxing.” And it’s true: having boxed for 15 years, I know first-hand that the amount of effort and determination required to compete at any level is staggering. These influencers, for all their clownery, would (or should) have been training twice a day, six days a week for at least two months to get into proper shape for a fight.
But that’s the beautiful contradiction of the sport. It’s physically brutal, but also simple enough to grasp that pretty much anyone can do it. And for all the technique and thought behind a professional fight, the basic premise of two people leathering each other as hard as they can is something anyone can understand and enjoy watching, if they’re into that sort of thing. That’s why there are so many “white-collar boxing” events up and down the country every other weekend, where City boys who have trained for six weeks can fight another novice in front of their drunk mates.
Many in the boxing world are angry at Paul because he represents something that’s been brewing for a while in wider society: the death of an implied meritocracy, replaced by a society that rewards whoever can make you look at a screen the longest, and ultimately, by whoever has the most clout.
The former super-middleweight world champion Carl Froch, speaking on his YouTube channel, said of Paul after the fight announcement: “You’re a performing clown.” Eddie Hearn, one of boxing’s biggest promoters, said the fight was “incredibly sad”. Frank Warren, another legendary British promoter, said “it shouldn’t be happening”. These are guys whose whole job is trying to make money out of the sport, and even they disagree with it.
But then that’s the problem with a cultural economy that rewards attention and engagement over artistry and genuine skill. Boxing, and sport generally, has, like nearly everything else expressive in humanity, been homogenised into one sole output: content. It doesn’t matter how competent these influencers are at fighting – as long as it’s “good content”, nobody cares.
As a fan, I will still get to watch great fights this year such as Artur Beterbiev v Dmitry Bivol and Tyson Fury v Oleksandr Usyk, pound-for-pound elites competing for all of the belts in their weight classes. Paul can put on as many wacky exhibitions as he likes, he won’t ever take away from that. The sport isn’t “ruined” by him taking part in it. But whenever I see people getting angry about his fights, I can’t help but think you’re giving him, and the omnipresent angry algorithm we’re now ruled by, exactly what they want.
