Anthony Joshua vs Jake Paul lived down to expectations

Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul woke up on Saturday morning $50million richer apiece. Yet such was the sorry excuse for a ‘boxing’ match that earned the pair this vast sum, both men will surely live to regret it – if they haven’t already.

Anthony Joshua is a former heavyweight world champion and Olympic gold medallist. Jake Paul is a former Disney child actor turned YouTube personality. The pair should never have shared a ring, but that is unfortunately what they did on Friday night, in front of 19,000 people in Miami. Predictably, Paul got pulverised. He was knocked out by Joshua in the sixth round. His jaw was broken in two places, and his post-fight surgery at the Miami University Hospital involved the removal of at least four teeth and the insertion of two titanium plates.

The fight was a pitiful spectacle. Paul, 28, looked small and slightly overweight compared with the 36-year-old Joshua. No sooner had the first bell sounded than the American ‘influencer’ fled to the ropes, using every inch of what looked to be a suspiciously large ring to get away from the onslaught. When the sheer effort of evading Joshua became too much, Paul began to lunge for his opponent’s knees in a desperate attempt to waste time. The crowd booed. The frustrated referee, Christopher Young, told the pair that ‘the fans hadn’t paid to see this crap’. He was half right: it was crap, but what else did the fans expect?

If anything, it could be argued that Joshua came out from Friday night even worse than Paul. Not physically, of course – Paul will be eating through a straw for the foreseeable future, while Joshua had barely a scratch on him. But it was nonetheless hugely humiliating for a former world champion, who still aspires to compete at the highest level, to lower himself to fighting a YouTuber.

Joshua looked terrible, too. He has never been known for his fast hands or feet. Yet on Friday night he moved at a truly prehistoric speed, plodding after Paul like a blind, uncoordinated giant. His knockout was emphatic but hardly a work of skill or precision: Paul stood in the corner of the ring, too exhausted to defend himself, offering his chin to Joshua ‘on a platter’, as one of the bemused commentators put it. Joshua’s throat-slitting gesture at the end of the fight was a moment of toe-curling cringeworthiness.

Joshua then humiliated himself further in the post-fight press conference. After admitting it wasn’t his ‘best performance’, he started speaking in arrogant, self-aggrandising boxerspeak that seemed especially ridiculous given the circumstances. ‘The end goal was to get Jake Paul, pin him down and hurt him’, he said. ‘It took a bit longer than expected, but that right hand finally found a destination.’

Joshua’s decline as an athlete was evident after his knockout loss to Daniel Dubois in London last year. Yet despite the defeat, it was hard to see how ‘AJ’ would not remain a loved figure in British sport. His good looks and manners, combined with his repetitive bromides about humility and family, had endeared him to the media in a way that few boxers ever manage to. The slovenly thrashing he administered to Paul, however, has now done significant damage to his brand – the one thing, perhaps the only thing, he still had going for him.

One familiar ring to Friday’s bout was that it ended with Joshua and Tyson Fury reiterating their desire to fight each other, as they have done after nearly every fight for the past decade. As it happens, credible sources suggest that this fight might finally happen – probably at Wembley Stadium in the summer. But it is years, years too late. Not only are both men significantly past their prime, both have also had their second-class status confirmed – twice – by Ukrainian champion Oleksandr Usyk.

Expectations were extremely low for Friday’s fight between a YouTuber and former world champion, and justifiably so. If there’s no end in sight to boxing’s willingness to debase itself, the same cannot be said for Anthony Joshua’s ambition to fight at the very top again. That appears to be well and truly over.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.