Jake Paul is a sizeable underdog heading into his fight against Anthony Joshua on Friday but there have been more than a few contrarians in the combat sports community picking the YouTuber turned boxer to actually pull off the upset.
Former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury backed Paul even before the fight was made. Ex-UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson said Paul “can knock him out” and pointed at Joshua’s history of suffering knockout losses as further evidence why he might fall in this matchup.
Nate Diaz, who lost in his own boxing match against Paul, backed his former opponent and went as far as putting money down on him for the fight. But veteran UFC fighter Matt Brown scoffs at anyone seriously picking Paul to win because he just doesn’t see any logical reason for that prediction.
In fact, Brown believes any fighter picking Paul to win is just trying to look good if he somehow pulls off the illogical upset because anybody who understands boxing knows Joshua should win in dominant and perhaps devastating fashion.
“Here’s the thing when some of these people make these predictions like ‘Jake Paul’s going to beat him’ or whatever. I think it almost has to be a cop out,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “It’s kind of a win-win situation. If [Jake Paul] goes out and beats him, you f*cking called it! You predicted it, you’re the man. If he doesn’t beat him, [you say] ‘you really think I thought that?’ I think it’s kind of the same thing with Conor [McGregor when he fought Floyd Mayweather]. If you’re wrong about it, nobody remembers. ‘Oh what an idiot for thinking that shit.’ But if you make the prediction, everybody is going to remember it like ‘oh wow, you must be the fight expert!’
“You are not a fight expert for calling Jake Paul to win. You’re going against everything that a fight expert would ever take into account. There is zero reason whatsoever to believe Jake Paul has a chance against Anthony Joshua. Does that mean he can’t go out there and win? They’re throwing punches. Punches come fast and random things happen. Could Jake Paul go out there and wing a punch and Anthony Joshua be looking at some girl in the crowd or maybe Jake Paul put some f*cking ZzzQuil in his drink or something. We don’t know. Joshua could sleep on the wrong side of the bed or have a shitty night of sleep the night before.”
Unless there’s some kind of outside factor playing a part in Joshua’s performance on Friday, Brown just doesn’t see a path to victory for Paul in the fight.
While the 28-year-old Ohio native has worked tirelessly to prove his legitimacy since becoming a professional boxer, Paul has only faced a few opponents with real experience during his career. His lone loss came against Tommy Fury, which was an opponent with similar size and skill, and Brown says that’s a far cry from facing somebody with Joshua’s pedigree.
“I don’t like the idea of trying to call out some bold prediction because I feel like I know something everybody else doesn’t know,” Brown said. “No you don’t. What we know is what we have seen and what we have seen shows no indication that Jake Paul has a chance in a legitimate boxing match against a former, multiple time world champion Anthony Joshua.”
“Anthony Joshua’s fought some very good, maybe even great professional boxers and beat them. He’s lost a couple, he’s doesn’t have a perfect record but like [Wladimir] Klitschko. He beat f*cking Klitschko, motherf*cker. Jake Paul is not Klitschko, get that out of your head. Dillian Whyte, [Joseph] Parker, he’s beat some really good [boxers].”
Another factor to consider is how Joshua dispatched former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou with a brutal knockout when they met back in 2024.
In his professional boxing debut, Ngannou scored a knockdown on Tyson Fury and looked far better in that fight than just about anybody could have possibly expected. Of course many experts believe Fury didn’t take the fight seriously and that came back to haunt him when Ngannou came out gunning for the knockout.
Joshua made no such mistake, and he dismantled Ngannou before delivering the fight ending blow in the second round that folded “The Predator” in half.
That’s not even addressing Paul’s resume, which is a far cry from anything that Joshua has accomplished in his career.
“You talk about sample size, Francis [Ngannou] is one sample, but let’s look at Jake Paul’s sample,” Brown explained. “He hasn’t beat a single legitimate boxer ever. He’s only fought one. I would argue Anderson Silva is a legitimate boxer. He’s not a well-known, world champion boxer or anything, but I think he’s a legitimately good boxer. I think he’s like 49 at the time.
“Tommy Fury’s your true sample, and he’s not a heavyweight, by the way, or a world champion by any stretch of the imagination.”
That’s why Brown doesn’t buy anyone actually picking Paul to win outside of trying to look like a genius if he somehow pulls off one of the unlikeliest upsets in combat sports history.
Brown understands that’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to fight predictions, and he remembers similar picks when James Toney crossed over from boxing and made his debut against UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture.
“James Toney, when he comes to fight in the UFC and the boxers do the same shit ‘he f*cking hits him, [he could knock him out],” Brown said. “No, [Randy] Couture is going to shoot a John Smith low single, game’s over.
“It’s the same thing we’re dealing with here. Jake Paul’s going to throw some punches and Joshua is going to jab his brains out until he lands a big right and the game is going to be over. Maybe a hook, maybe an uppercut. Whatever he wants.”
The idea that anything can happen in a fight is really Paul’s only saving grace, but Brown doesn’t believe anybody who knows the sport of boxing would really back him to win.
“You have to respect the fact that he’s going in there and doing this with Anthony Joshua,” Brown said. “Does that mean he has a chance of winning? No. I have as good of a chance as going on a date with Scarlett Johansson tonight. Probably not going to happen.
“It’s a silly conversation. It’s part of the news, and we’ve got to talk about it. Every now and then in this sport, these things come up that become big topics of conversation and you just feel silly even entertaining it. I’m just like OK, you really think Jake Paul’s going to win? OK, you’re dumb. Either you don’t really think it or you’re dumb. There’s no logical reason to believe it.”
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