Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua Is the Fight the Fans (and Jake) Deserve

The beating that Anthony Joshua could put on Jake Paul is the stuff of sadistic fantasy, mine.

RING Magazine (owned by Turki Alashikh) reported Wednesday that Jake Paul would face Anthony Joshua in December on Netflix.

Paul (12-1, 28 years old, 6’1”, usually fights at 190-200lbs, weighed in at 227lbs most recently) is coming off a disgraceful but incredibly popular “win” over then-58-year-old Mike Tyson last November.

That bout did a reported 60 million live views on Netflix despite technical issues with the stream.

Joshua (28-4, 36 years old, 6’6”, usually fights at 240-255lbs) is coming off a 5th-round KO loss to Daniel Dubois in an IBF heavyweight title fight. In March 2024, Joshua KO’d UFC champ and boxing neophyte Francis Ngannou in the 2nd round.

Who Reported This and Why?

It’s very important to note that no one from Jake Paul’s camp (Paul himself, business manager Nakisa Bidarian, Most Valuable Promotions) or Joshua’s camp has confirmed the bout.

Instead, the reporting came from Turki Alashikh’s RING Magazine, which is *very* interesting.

Turki said this in July:

“I am not against what Jack (sic) Paul is doing in boxing. It’s good for boxing to have a young generation. I am against some kinds of fight he do. I want to tell you an example and surprise. I am thinking me and him to doing him against Joshua now. Joshua, if he just destroy him, it would be good for me. The headache of Jack Paul would go from my mind. If Jack Paul wins, I would know that Joshua is finished and Jack Paul deserved to be [ranked] and deserve to have a future in boxing, right?. In this situation, I want it 99/1. Jack Paul accepted. Next week, I will talk with Joshua about it.”

The fact that no one from the MVP camp has come out to confirm or deny this news is a huge tell.

Turki has all the power in this situation.

Jake and Nakisa are boxed in because Netflix wants another BIG fight. Paul and Nakisa booked Jake against Julio César Chávez, Jr. on DAZN PPV as a holding action, but if they want to remain players in the game, they need Netflix.

We covered the Paul vs JCCJR debacle in July and debacle is the only word for a bout that flopped on PPV and saw one of the principals busted by ICE only days after the bout.

Netflix is going to demand a high-profile opponent, and there aren’t any other Mike Tysons lying around. It’s not like anyone wants to see Jake beat up an aged Evander Holyfield, and George Foreman has passed on.

This is a huge flex from Turki Alalshikh. He seems to have Jake Paul where he wants him.

Jake’s choices are: book Anthony Joshua and likely take a career-ending beating, or blink and book another over-aged, under-sized b-side opponent and lose the relationship with Netflix and any semblance of public credibility.

On the 4th, Sports Illustrated reported:

Netflix, which hates bad press, is anxious about the fallout from this civil suit, leading MVP to scour the boxing landscape for marketable replacements. As SI reported, a formal offer was made to Ryan Garcia for a December date while undisputed super middleweight champion Terence Crawford has been approached. I’m also told that Logan Paul, Jake’s brother, was briefly discussed.

The most interesting name in the mix: Anthony Joshua, the former heavyweight champion. MVP and Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, discussed a fight between Paul and Joshua this summer, before eventually tabling the negotiations until 2026. Hearn told SI on Saturday that he has had conversations with MVP CEO Nakisa Bidarian about Paul-Joshua, and that there is mutual interest in the fight.

“We are available,” Hearn told SI. “If you’re asking me ‘do we take the fight,’ of course we take the fight. It would be a nice way to end this little journey. Does Jake Paul really want to fight Anthony Joshua? He’s a crazy guy. Maybe he thinks he can catch AJ on the fly. Hasn’t really been in training camp … should the opportunity present itself it would be a huge fight. Never say never.”

Hearn noted there are some complications. Joshua has an exclusive deal with DAZN, the subscription-based streaming service. There’s little incentive for DAZN to allow Joshua, its biggest star, to fight on another platform. DAZN also has a deal with MVP, meaning it could explore a Joshua-Paul fight on its own next year. Could Netflix offer enough money for DAZN to step aside? Maybe. But the clock is ticking.

Indeed, it is, and Turki just attached that ticking clock to a big charge of TNT.

Let’s review how we got here.

Plan A: Jake Paul vs Tank Davis

Paul had been set to face Geronta “Tank” Davis (30-0, WBA lightweight champ, 5’5”, has fought from 126 to 130lbs) in a November exhibition bout with a 195lb limit.

But then Tank tanked.

Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) announced the Paul-Davis bout on August 20, eight days after the most recent criminal charges against Davis were dropped.

The fight was cancelled after Tank’s “ex-girlfriend filed a civil lawsuit against him, accusing him of aggravated battery, false imprisonment, kidnapping, and intentional infliction of emotional distress,” according to USA Today.

Netflix and MVP put out statements after the cancellation. Here’s Netflix’:

Boxing fans need to wait just a little bit longer to see the sport’s biggest disrupter in the ring again. Most Valuable Promotions and Netflix are no longer moving forward with the Jake vs. Tank matchup – featuring international superstar Jake Paul and Gervonta “Tank” Davis – originally scheduled for Nov. 14 at Kaseya Center in Miami.

Plans remain for a Paul-headlined event on Netflix in 2025, with more information to come.

Plan B: Jake Paul vs Francis Ngannou

Last week, Jake Paul took another run at booking a match with former UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou (0-2, 39 years old, 6’4”, boxes around 270lbs), but Ngannou shot it down, insisting he wants Jon Jones in the UFC.

Paul has been challenging Ngannou since February 2023.

Ngannou’s decision not to face Jake Paul was a poor business decision.

Of course, Jake Paul isn’t a worthy foe for the fearsome Ngannou, who knocked down Tyson Fury in his pro boxing debut.

But the fight would have been enormously popular and would have dramatically increased Ngannou’s name ID and media profile.

Also, Francis could have demanded a very nice payday.

AND beating Jake Paul up in front of 45 to 75 million Netflix viewers could have put Ngannou in position to demand and get a UFC bout with Jon Jones.

But we’ll just have to file that under “woulda coulda shoulda” like most of Ngannou’s post-UFC career.

Primo Carera: A Parable

At this point, I must detour into fight sport history and briefly tell the tale of Primo Carnera, “the beneficiary of one of the most crooked title fights in heavyweight boxing history,” per VICE.

Carnero was a 6’6”, 270lb Italian peasant and sometime circus strong man who fell into the clutches of Owney “The Killer” Madden, a New York crime boss and owner of the legendary Cotton Club.

Madden brought in Abe Attell, a man remembered, if at all, for his key role in helping mastermind Arnold Rothstein fix the World Series in the 1919 Black Sox scandal rather than his nearly decade-long reign as the undisputed featherweight champion of the world.

Together, they put together an amazingly high-profile boxing career for Primo Carnera that became the stuff of legend.

The 1931 TIME cover story elegantly sums up Carnera’s early boxing career:

Since his arrival in the US, backed by a group of prosperous but shady entrepreneurs, Carnera’s career has been less glorious than fantastic. His first opponents—Big Boy Peterson, Elzear Rioux, Cowboy Owens—were known to be incompetent but their feeble opposition to Carnera suggested that they had been bribed to lose. Suspicion concerning the Monster’s abilities became almost universal when another adversary, Bombo Chevalier, stated that one of his own seconds had threatened to kill him unless he lost to Carnera. Against the huge, lazy, amiable George Godfrey (249 lb), he won on a foul. But only one of 33 US opponents has defeated Monster Carnera—fat, slovenly Jimmy Maloney, whom Sharkey beat five years ago. In a return fight, at Miami last March, Carnera managed to outpoint Maloney.

By 1933, Carnera’s management team had “worked” him to a 75-6 record and made him an enormous draw around the world.

That’s when he faced contender Ernie Schaaf in a heavyweight title elimination bout. The unfortunate Schaaf had been KO’d by the legendary Max Baer six months prior and came into the bout with Carnera suffering from “recovering from a severe case of influenza, which had briefly hospitalized him during his training camp,” and had a swollen brain from meningitis, a fact that was only discovered at Schaaf’s autopsy held four days after Carnera KO’d him in the 13th round.

Carnera then fought champ Jack Sharkey in a rematch of their October 1931 bout, which Sharkey had won by decision.

Carnera shocked the 40,000 fans in attendance (and maybe even Sharkey) when he landed “a terrific right-hand uppercut to the chin that almost decapitated Sharkey and brought Carnera the title,” according to Primo’s biographer Joseph Page.

After two successful title defenses (including one in his native Italy, where he gave the fascist salute to dictator Benito Mussolini and another against a man 84 pounds lighter), Carnera faced Max Baer — but not before they co-starred in a genuine A-list, Oscar-nominated Hollywood movie to build anticipation — in June 1934 in front of 56,000 fans.

The Jewish Baer wore the Star of David on his trunks and gave Carnera the beating fans had been waiting to see.

Baer put Carnera on his ass six times in the first two rounds and 11 times total in 11 rounds, and somehow broke Carnera’s ankle before the ref finally stepped in and stopped the fun.

Carnero recovered enough to pick up four decision wins before running smack into future champ Joe Louis, who felt he “had to beat (Carnera) for a cause” and did so en route to a 6th round KO.

Madden and company managed to keep milking Carnera until three straight losses and some severe ill health brought the Monster’s run to an end.

Fight Sports Are Stupid Spectacle, First, Last, and Always

The career of Primo Carnera has been immortalized in books and on film, always as a tragic cautionary tale of corruption, manipulation of an innocent and uneducated man, and a stain on boxing.

Me, I’ve always seen it as one of the triumphs of combat sports promotion, personally.

Look y’all, this shit is the hurt business.

It’s always been shady as fuck and always will be.

But sometimes shrewd promoters can make something out of nothing and turn a rube into a legend, give the fans years' worth of entertainment, and give the bards something to sing about til the end of the world.

This Could Be Jake Paul’s Primo Carnera Moment

YouTube influencer Jake Paul has exceeded expectations at every stage of his boxing career.

And unlike poor Primo, Jake (and his MVP partner Nakisa Bidarian) knows exactly what he’s doing.

But they’ve followed the same rules that guided Carnera’s career, as laid out by Co-Main Event in their excellent piece on Carnera’s career: “How do you create hype for a new prospect who generates a lot of interest but isn’t yet a seasoned fighter? You do it through careful matchmaking.”

And that’s just what Jake Paul has done, picking a succession of undersized, over-aged and/or underqualified opponents like NBA veteran Nate Robinson, UFC vets Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley (2x), Anderson Silva, Nate Diaz, and boxing relics Mike Tyson and Julio César Chávez, Jr.

Now it appears they’ve decided to put Jake in the ring with someone in Anthony Joshua, who “either agrees to carry him or Jake Paul drinks Christmas dinner through a straw,” as Ben Fowlkes put it.

I’m here for it, and I’m already subscribed to Netflix so I’ve got nothing to lose but my time.

After spending at least 16 hours watching Jake Paul "fight” and enjoying maybe 30 minutes of it, I am really looking forward to seeing him catch the ass beating he deserves.

My compliments to the chef.

Nate Wilcox founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024.