How can a case be made for a Jake Paul win over Anthony Joshua?

In the race for the shortest fight week preview piece, BoxingScene editor Matt Christie asked us to cover all angles and consider ways in which Jake Paul might win this event with Anthony Joshua in Miami on Friday.

And given that Paul is not allowed to take a weapon into the ring, and the chances of a lightning strike inside Miami’s Kaysea Arena (which is indoors) sweeping Joshua off his feet and allowing Paul to stand over him as the referee counts to 10, or a Christmas miracle, there is little you can say to start to make the case for Paul without straying too far into the realms of absolute fiction.

But in order to argue that Paul might have Friday’s lottery numbers, you have to look at the start of the bout and speculate how each fighter might shape up.

With that in mind, will Joshua start quickly and leap on his prey or will he be cautious about getting caught with anything early and then just take a look and see what Paul has got before he starts putting it on Paul?

And for Paul, will he believe his best chance is to come out swinging in the hope that something lands, much like Peter McNeeley did when he played the role as the first man to face Mike Tyson after Tyson was released from prison for the first time in 1995?

McNeeley, to his credit, came out clubbing. But he paid for his over-ambition and was dropped and stopped in about a minute in Las Vegas.

Does that mean Paul will circle the ring and run to the point that the crowd boos, knowing that every round he stays upright, out of trouble, and conscious he will win the crowd over round by round, even if he’s not actually winning rounds?

And it is unlikely he wins a round. It is unlikely he wins a minute of any round. It is unlikely that he lands a meaningful punch.

Joshua is too big, too athletic, too good. It is hard to see how Paul gets inside Joshua’s rangy bombs. 

Given someone like Andy Ruiz – a far superior boxer to Paul – failed to outbox Joshua at all in their rematch, despite having more experience, and faster hands, it is again hard to argue Paul does any better.

Then factor in what Joshua did to Francis Ngannou. When Paul was being linked with Ngannou after his event with Gervonta Davis was shelved, the common thought must have been that Ngannou wipes out Paul. Given Joshua’s emphatic beatdown and even more emphatic KO of the MMA star, that makes Joshua the man who beat the man who would probably have beaten the man. By that not always accurate analogy Paul gets squashed and squashed quickly.

So will Paul play for time? Will they be boxing in a larger ring, for Paul to stay out of trouble for as long as possible and leave it to Joshua to set traps, cut the ring off and then flatten him?

By the way, the tone of this is in no way to disrespect Paul. It is merely to acknowledge the discrepancy in levels. Paul, if we’re using flattery, is the WBA’s No. 14 at cruiserweight. Joshua is a two-time world heavyweight champion who one fight ago was in the midst of a supposed career resurgence after impressing against Ngannou and Otto Wallin.

And I suppose that leads us to another reason why you can lean into the Jake Paul-has-a-prayer argument.

Joshua has just had his longest period of inactivity as a pro. It was September 2024 when he was stopped in five one-sided rounds by Daniel Dubois. Inactivity, or rather activity, matters. So, too, does momentum, of which Joshua has none thanks to the double whammy of a loss and 15 months or so out of the ring. Then there was the elbow injury that he had to get fixed after Dubois, too. And while Joshua has not had the longest career, he’s eaten a lot of big shots. The Ruiz KO was big. The Dubois KO was bigger. He was drilled and dropped in a war with Wladimir Klitschko. Oleksandr Usyk clearly rattled him in their fights. We’ve heard of hard spars. He had some close, hard (and controversial) fights in the amateurs against big punchers. He’s taken big shots from Dillian Whyte, Kubrat Pulev, and Alexander Povetkin.

But it is one thing crumbling when Dubois hits you and drops you four times in five rounds. It’s another thing entirely when it’s Jake Paul. The only way Joshua crumbles is if he’s already taken too many shots and another causes him to unravel neurologically.

But this is all a reach. A significant reach.

When this fight was first announced, optimistically over eight rounds and with both boxers allowed to wear 10-ounce gloves, it reminded me of Johnny Knoxville and the kind of thing he traded on in the early 2000s in “Jackass,” having painful things happen to him for views.

Knoxville actually did a sketch in which he tried to fight Butterbean in a store, and Butterbean blitzed him in seconds. 

Of course, Paul is not Knoxville. But, alas, Joshua is not ‘Bean.

There seems a crushing inevitability about what happens and how complicit the Florida commission has been in seeing a man get annihilated by someone who is so much bigger and so much better.

The question then is, has Jake Paul actually won? In defeat, with his viral moment being shown around the world millions and millions of times, has Jake Paul got the biggest amount of attention he has ever received, and could ever receive, by being sent into a parallel universe, even if it is just for 10 seconds? Will it even make him a sympathetic figure? And, let’s not forget with his laughable WBA ranking, he will be able to go back to 200lbs, fight another opponent of his choosing and likely parlay that into a title fight. That is, of course, if he ever fights again. Best case scenario, really, is he’s not hurt and he comes round OK.

But if this is all about fame and celebrity and – of course – cold, hard cash, Jake Paul wins again, even with a devastating defeat.

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.