A mega event or a money-making scheme with no sporting value? Anthony Joshua is facing criticism from various big names in the scene for agreeing to fight YouTube star Jake Paul.
Is it a mega event? An undignified spectacle? Both at the same time? Former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua is stepping into the ring against YouTube superstar Jake Paul – and is facing a lot of criticism from the boxing world for doing so. “The fact that he agreed to this fight shows that his career is over,” former super middleweight world champion Carl Froch said in The Sun about his English compatriot. And he’s not the only one who sees Joshua’s decision as distasteful.
Joshua vs. Paul: “Confirms that his career is over”
Froch’s comments reinforced an assessment he had already made after Joshua’s knockout defeat to Daniel Dubois in September 2024: “I said at the time that he was finished and could now only get in the ring to earn more money. This now confirms my opinion that his career is over.“ From Froch’s point of view, Joshua’s fight against Paul thwarts his ambitions to make a comeback with a fight against former champion Tyson Fury: Paul is ”not a real professional fighter, no one in their right mind takes him seriously as such.”
Froch is not even sure whether Paul will actually go through with the fight against Wladimir Klitschko’s former conqueror or whether he will cancel it under some pretext: “He won’t jump into the ring with Anthony Joshua and get knocked out in round 1 – because that’s what would happen.”
“If he doesn’t destroy him, it will look like a fix.”
Other big names in the boxing world are also raising the question of whether there is a fix between Paul and Joshua.
George Groves, another former super middleweight champion from England, is also wondering: “If he doesn’t destroy him in the first 30 seconds, it looks like a fix. It’s difficult.”
The longer Joshua takes to knock Paul out, “the more it looks like the best idea is for him to stop boxing.” In Groves’ opinion, Joshua should have challenged Fury immediately, “but if he’s still in the business to make easy money, he should of course fight Paul.”
Expert suspects a fixed game
A similar view is held by renowned boxing journalist and author Donald McRae, who also questions the sporting value of the fight in The Guardian.
“Joshua, like Fury, is well past his prime, but on the other hand, he is in top physical shape and has fought at the top of the heavyweight division for ten years,” McRae writes: “He can hit very hard, and if he wants to make a statement about the difference between real fighters and YouTube ‘disruptors,’ he could really hurt Paul.”
However, McRae speculates otherwise: “The suspicion remains that this is more of a controlled arrangement in which Joshua decides not to hurt the man who is bringing him tens of millions of dollars too much.”
The long-time industry observer’s prediction: Joshua and Paul would “make a ludicrous amount of money, Netflix would get huge ratings, and boxing would look a little more broken.”
The bout between Joshua and Paul is scheduled for December 19 at the Kaseya Center in Miami. It is limited to eight rounds.