If Jake Paul is boxing's biggest draw, what does that say about the sport?

New York Times

3 days ago

Jake Paul has another boxing match on Saturday.
Thousands will scream they don't care. However, millions more will pay for the privilege to watch.
Love it or loathe it, Paul, who first entered the public eye by posting videos on social media of sophomoric pranks, has become the biggest draw in American boxing, and that's been great for him.
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This weekend's pay-per-view bout on DAZN against former world champion Julio César Chávez Jr. in Anaheim, Calif., will be his eighth headline fight since 2021. Paul has reportedly earned more than $60 million in his brief in-ring career.
What it says about the state of the sport is not so clear.
'I think Jake Paul is brilliant as a marketer and an influencer,' said Todd duBoef, the president of Top Rank, a boxing promotion company. 'And I think he's done an incredible job. But I don't really believe it has anything to do with boxing.'
The numbers don't lie, though. An estimated 108 million viewers caught at least a live glimpse of Paul dancing around a 58-year-old Mike Tyson on Netflix last year in a bout that arrived with maximum hype but quickly devolved into an unsatisfying spectacle. Paul won the fight by unanimous decision.
Many observers decried the event's very existence. However, it did little to dim Paul's drawing power.
'I've embraced the hate and done things consistently to push people's buttons, to build that hate even more,' Paul said in a recent interview.
It's an old-school formula he's leaned into with new-school annoyance, and Paul is well aware that people will tune in hoping to see him get knocked out.
'In this sport, monetizing that hate can be very lucrative,' he said. 'You look at all the big people — they were all villains, from Floyd (Mayweather) to Mike Tyson to Muhammad Ali. People forget Muhammad Ali was one of the most hated figures in the world. I see myself as a similar story.'
That Paul would be brazen enough to mention himself in the same breath as three of boxing's all-time greats is the type of antic that drives many to root against him.
Ali, after all, came to prominence during the Civil Rights era, when his unapologetic confidence upended the expectation that Black athletes would be quiet and humble. He unleashed some of the most poetic trash talk the sports world has ever heard, but his anti-war stance cost him his champion belts and years of his boxing prime.
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Paul faces nothing like that kind of pressure. His public career began with prank skits on Vine. He later skirted COVID-19 restrictions in California by throwing large parties and was sued by his neighbors for being a public nuisance. His résumé includes beating a retired NBA player and former MMA fighters years past their prime.
It doesn't take a trained eye to know that Paul's talk of eventual world titles is all talk; the imperfection in his 11-1 professional record was a loss to journeyman-turned-reality star Tommy Fury.
And yet the 28-year-old Paul believes he would be heralded as the next great American prospect if he weren't a YouTuber with Disney Channel roots. The sport's purists would scoff at that. Boxing's check-engine light may glow brighter with each of his ring walks, but he is undeniably a magnet for attention.
'I don't know why he set his sights on boxing,' said boxing historian and commentator Mark Kriegel, the author of Tyson's biography. 'But it was a pretty smart calculation.'
Paul has become the rare promoter who straps on gloves and turns himself into the product.
'I think he might be one of three people in my lifetime who understand the media better than the media understands itself,' Kriegel said. 'The other two being Al Sharpton and Donald Trump. He just has an intuitive sense of what people want.'
The greatest promoters have always built hype, provoked engagement and told stories. However, in a crowded media space where sports are competing with TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, HBO and Hulu for attention, the modern-day promoter needs a breakthrough.
Enter boxing, a sport in desperate need of an American disruptor.
'Content is king,' Paul said. 'And I think that's where I come into the picture — telling the stories, using my platform, promoting these events and promoting other fighters.'
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Top Rank's duBoef sees it and calls Paul wonderful for the industry, but he draws a hard line between Paul's spectacle and the sport itself.
When duBoef considers the health of boxing, he views it through a global prism. He starts in Japan, where there's a renaissance behind pound-for-pound king Naoya Inoue. In England, he points to Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium on July 19. In North America, he cites Canelo Álvarez and David Benavidez, who draw massive crowds. The biggest fight in the sport in 2025 is likely to be Álvarez facing Terence Crawford on Sept. 13 in Las Vegas.
For duBoef, Paul's fights live in a different bucket. An entertainment adjacent to boxing, in the same way that the PGA Tour shouldn't be concerned about Aaron Rodgers battling Tom Brady in 'The Match.'
Paul would have been just as successful playing three-on-three basketball, chess, tennis or pickleball, DuBoef believes.
In a moment of humble levity, Paul echoed duBoef, to a point.
'I think there are better boxers,' Paul said, acknowledging the Benavidezes and Inoues of the world. 'But outside of the ring, I'm one of the most important in boxing. Just because of the new eyeballs running to the sport.'
The eyeballs Paul is drawing into boxing aren't just for him. He's helping to make names out of others, too, cultivating an ecosystem of potential future stars within his Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) brand, in the same vein as Mayweather Promotions and Golden Boy Promotions.
The November rematch between Amanda Serrano, who is signed to a lifetime deal with MVP, and Katie Taylor thrived so mightily on the Paul-Tyson undercard in November that the women will headline their trilogy in Madison Square Garden on their own Netflix card this summer.
'It's too easy to dismiss him as just a provocateur,' Kriegel said. 'Promoters promote. There are too many promoters in this sport who just hang out a shingle and let someone with money pay for their promotion. You wouldn't have seen Serrano-Taylor 2 reach that audience if it weren't for that card.'
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Whether that's inspiring, infuriating, repulsive or innovative, Paul's persisting existence in boxing is certainly not neutral.
For those who believe boxing should be about skill, belts, rankings and legacies, Paul is a warning sign. For those who prize entertainment, reach and pop-culture relevance, then Paul is the adrenaline shot the sport needs.
Either way, feeling anything is infinitely more valuable than apathy.
'That Gen Z category all got aware of the sport,' duBoef said.
Yes, Paul has another boxing match scheduled for this month. Don't tune in for world-class footwork or heady feints. However, don't think ignoring it will make it go away.
A man many boxing purists despise just might be essential to the sport's health.
'It seems to me like there's this elaborate dance,' Kriegel said. 'And most of the time he gets what he wants.'
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic. Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)