Jake Paul suffered a brutal knockout in his fight against Anthony Joshua, but there’s no celebrating the performance as some kind of moral victory.
That’s according to UFC legend Matt Brown, who predicted that Joshua would end Paul’s night in violent fashion and that’s exactly what happened. While Paul made it all the way to the sixth round, he never seriously threatened Joshua much less hurt the former heavyweight champion with any of his punches.
“There’s nothing respectable about what he did in the fight itself,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “It’s not like he went out on his shield. He didn’t go out swinging or anything like that. He ran until he could run anymore … and then what happened is exactly what we expected to happen.
“That’s kind of the whole moral of the story of what we’re saying. Guys, people listening, just see through it. Look through all this bullshit. Jake Paul was in over his head.He was there to survive, he was not there to win. But he made the bag so good for him and we watched it. So good for him. We’re talking about him now. Good for him.”
While Brown argues against Paul receiving some sort of credit for his performance in the ring, he commends the former YouTube star and social media influencer for putting himself in a position where he could book a fight against somebody like Joshua and get paid a lot of money to do it.
Exact financials for the event aren’t public, but it’s expected that both Paul and Joshua made multi-millions for the fight, which aired on Netflix.
Brown acknowledges that just about anybody would probably accept a huge payday to take a knockout punch from Joshua, but it was Paul who actually made it happen.
“Everybody has said that at some point ‘I would do it for that amount of money,’” Brown said. “He’s actually been able to make that happen. I actually respect that and respect that hustle. He’s able to make a big fight like that, able to get it done. He did do a real fight. It wasn’t rigged obviously. So there are things to respect in that regard. To respect his performance, or to respect just the simple fact that he got in there, I’m not on that page so much. There’s nothing respectable about what he did that night.
“I respect the business hustle. I respect that he was able to get this fight done. Because we can sit here and say I would go in there for $90 million but we can’t. We don’t have that opportunity. He is able to create that opportunity for himself. Good for him being able to do that. But the fact that he simply walked in there, there’s nothing to respect about that.”
For the vast majority of the fight, Paul resigned himself to circling away on the outside to avoid Joshua’s power punches while producing very little offensive fire power of his own. Across six rounds, Paul threw just 56 punches and landed only 16 (per CompuBox), but he spent far more time avoiding Joshua than actually engaging with him.
Brown understand that logic as far as avoiding a potential knockout but that also doesn’t mean Paul was actually in there with a strategy or the skills to win.
“What I respect is someone who puts in the work, puts in the grind, goes through the hours of training in the gym and then goes in and puts on a respectable fight,” Brown said. “What Jake did here was he clearly didn’t put the hours in the gym. I think we see his skills getting better, but he’s gassed in so many fights now so he’s not doing that dirty, grimy work. He’s not doing the road work at 5 a.m., and he’s not doing the extra reps at the end of practice. I don’t believe all that.
“I believe his skills are getting better because he is in the gym more. It’s a time thing. If you do this stuff long enough then you simply get better. He’s doing that. I respect the guys that put in the real, true hard work. The fact is he should have been able to run for all eight rounds.”
If anything, Brown believes that Joshua probably deserves some criticism for not putting on a better performance against an opponent who really posed no threat to him.
“I’m not going to give [Anthony Joshua] a ton of props for what he did because he wasn’t cutting off the ring very well,” Brown said. “He wasn’t adapting to Jake Paul’s game plan very well. From the indications I saw in the fight, Jake could have ran for eight rounds and probably survived the whole thing. He didn’t even put in the work to be able to do that. He got gassed from just freaking running.
“Now he’s running from Anthony Joshua so let’s not act like this isn’t a big feat to just survive rounds with Anthony Joshua when you’re 100 pounds outsized and you’re an amateur boxing. I’m not going to act like that’s not a feat in itself but the fact is, just simply walking into a ring and fighting another man, is not what should earn a person’s respect.”
The idea that Paul can hang his hat on the fact that he made it to the sixth round against Joshua really doesn’t add much to the result.
Brown knows from personal experience after spending 15 years in the UFC that nobody really looks back and celebrates those kinds of achievements. In the moment, Paul can tout that he survived longer against Joshua than far more experienced boxers or even a person like former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, who suffered a brutal second-round knockout when he took on the one-time Olympic gold medalist.
“In the end when people look back on it 50 years, they see ‘L’ or ‘W.’ No one gives a f*ck how many rounds,” Brown said. “No one cares how. No one cares all these nuances and details. They see ‘L’ and they see ‘W.’
“I could say the same thing about my own personal experience in my own career. I’ve got ‘L’s that should not be f*cking be there. I’ve got some admittedly where everything was even, I was in great shape, and the guy was better than me. Some should absolutely f*cking not be there. Does it matter? Does anyone want to hear I survived this long with that guy? Does anyone want to hear I had a torn ACL or f*cking f*cked up hand? No one gives a f*ck. It’s ‘L’ or ‘W.’”
That said, Paul may have lost the fight, but he definitely won the war when it came to his financial windfall for the fight after Netflix promoted yet another event with his name attached to it.
As much as Paul loves to talk about his legitimacy in the sport of boxing, Brown doesn’t buy that he’s actually trying to become some world-class fighter. Instead, Paul is arguably making more money than just about anybody in combat sports and that’s what he should be celebrating.
“Jake doesn’t give a f*ck about no legacy,” Brown said. “This is clear. He does not care about legacy or the history books. The motherf*cker wants to make money, and he is making money. If that is the goal post, he’s f*cking winning.”
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