YouTuber’s KO on boxing’s fallen heroes

THIS week a YouTuber – who has never fought a boxer but is richer than nearly every boxer on the professional circuit after just three pay-per-view exhibition fights – gave an insight into his business genius, while one of heavyweight boxing’s greatest champions stepped back into the ring at 58-years-old and got knocked out by a 44 year-old former UFC fighter.

This week we got a glimpse into the wealthy wonders of showbiz boxing and its treasures and a reminder of the brutal cruelty of boxing and its fallen warriors.

Evander Holyfield, who in his pomp, beat Mike Tyson twice, should never have been allowed back into a boxing ring, but he took a fight at 58-years-old, with one week’s training and despite not having fought for 10 years.

The fact that he wasn’t even fighting a boxer made his first-round capitulation as sad as it was humiliating.

Holyfield’s legacy as one of the finest heavyweight warriors took a beating against Victor Belfort. This is not how he should be remembered.

Belfort, who won 26 of his 41 MMA & UFC fights, had only once ever fought as a boxer, back in 2006 and he won by knockout in the first round.

Holyfield, the only boxer of the three-belt era to win the undisputed championship in two weight classes – has since been given a 30-day medical suspension. The reality is he should be suspended from ever being allowed to take another punch in an organised fight.

Holyfield’s disaster is not uncommon among boxers. We have seen so many come back or hang on too long and take a beating, and the riches have turned to rags.

The cycle is never ending in the sport, but along comes a YouTuber and modern-day social media influencer, a want to be boxer and incredible business brain in Jake Paul, who turns his online audience into paying customers in the name boxing.

Paul and his brother Logan Paul have both profited massively from a few exhibition fights, with the latter lasting eight rounds in an exhibition match with former undefeated world champion Floyd Mayweather.

Boxing, as a sport, is in trouble because of the lack of big fights and the ongoing inability of promoters

to get it together to, for example, get heavyweight champions Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua into a ring at the same time.

Along comes Jake Paul and within three fights he is making more money than Fury and Joshua combined and making even bigger headlines.

“It all starts with the numbers,” Paul said, when declaring he would actually want to fight “a real boxer”. He has identified Fury’s halfbrother Tommy Fury, who has had a handful of professional fights and is undefeated.

But the lure for Paul is not that Tommy Fury can actually box and that the two are around the same size, it is that Fury has a social media following of four million, which speaks favourably to Paul, whose following is

in excess of 20 million.

“Would this fight sell a lot? Would people actually care? Because I could go in right now and fight the infamous jiu-jitsu guy (Dillon Danis) who doesn’t shut the f*** up on social media, but it is a hard sell,” said Paul.

“It is like I just beat a UFC Hall of Fame legendary striker. We’re not going to put me up against a jiu-jitsu guy in a boxing match. So now, after each fight, we go back to the drawing board, and we’re like, who makes the most sense? Can they actually sell payper-views? And can we actually sell this fight as, like, ‘This is a tough fight for Jake’ because that is what I want.”

Paul, in an interview on the Full Send Podcast, said Tommy Fury’s combination of social media following and influence and boxing family pedigree made it the obvious fight to promote.

“He has a skill set and legendary boxing bloodline. He has fans from the relationship show Love Island and he is about the same height and age as me, and he is undefeated.”

Paul knows that people would definitely pay to view that fight, which is where the YouTuber is showing up the world of boxing.

“Selling pay-per-views is a monumental factor,” said Paul, but what he meant was that it was the only factor in a changing world where showbiz and exhibition boxing is financially bigger than boxing.

Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder’s second World Heavyweight Title fight, which Fury won with a brutal TKO of Wilder, didn’t match the pay-per-view numbers of Paul’s early fights against a retired basketball player and two retired UFC veterans.

Which could explain why Holyfield climbed into a ring, with a week’s notice, to take a one-round beating in an exhibition fight in which he didn’t even land a punch.

But Holyfield and his management would have been better advised to have thrown his legacy away against Paul because he could have at least spent the next decade cashing in instead of crashing out.

In a world of social media influence, it is all about pay-per-view, and people want to pay to see Paul, even if the majority do so in the hope of him losing.

But the reality is that every time someone pays to watch Jake Paul fight, he wins, unlike Holyfield who was never going to be a winner when he got back into the ring at 58-years-old.