Reality Hits Hard

 

Whatever you think of Jake Paul, you have to give him credit for making boxing interesting again. The YouTube influencer turned boxing professional who uses the moniker “Problem Child” has made himself the guy that everyone wants to see get punched, which in turn gets them to tune in.

You could say that Mr. Paul is a “disruptor,” the type of person that revives his or her chosen field by doing things differently. In the field of sports, the disruptor is inevitably not the greatest player but the greatest showman. The showman stirs emotions and watching him or her in action brings out something within us. The showman is inevitably bigger than the sport. Think of the apparent bitch exchange between Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova, when Ms Hingis said “I beat you so easily,” and Ms. Kournikova replied “But I’m so much more marketable.” Ms. Hingis could win grand slams. Most of us preferred to watch Ms. Kournikova.

Mr. Paul is a showman and for all that has been said about him, he has made boxing very interesting. He’s the living example of the saying that the it’s never the best person who gets the job but the person who sells him or herself best.

However, whilst being able to sell yourself is a vastly overlooked skill, it should never erase from the fact that there needs to be a foundation of competence somewhere beneath the hype. I think of advertising legend Bill Burnbach (the B is DDB) who said “"A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad".

His point was simple; you cannot make people believe a bad product is good – you can only enhance the virtues of a good product. Back when I worked in marketing, I always believed that marketing didn’t begin in marketing but in product development. When they talk about the person who sells him or herself best rather than being the best person, they’re not saying that he or she is “crap” at the job. Yes, Pete Sampras was on record the better player than Andre Agassi, even Agassi was the showman who drew us in to watch tennis. That doesn’t mean that Andre Agassi was a bad tennis player. His record shows that he was up there with the greats.

That’s where Mr. Paul fell short. He is annoying. He compels us to watch boxing but here’s the truth – he’s more of a YouTuber than a boxer. Yes, he did win fights but they were never against people in his age range. Many were retired MMA fighters. Yes, he did beat Mike Tyson in an eight-round split decision but let’s be clear, Mr. Tyson had long retired and close to 60 and not the force that he was in his 20s. Even then, Mr. Paul could only win by split decision (as much as he claims he decided to “go easy.”)

The problem for Mr. Paul was he never really invested in making sure he was ready to be challenged and when he faced Anthony Joshua, things took a painful turn. Yes, there are those who said he finally faced a “real” boxer and a “real” champion and should be respected for that. You can say that he’s made a criminal amount of money. Yet, one has to ask, was he delusional.

Let’s face it, Mr. Joshua is everything his previous opponents was not. He is physically larger (weight classes exists for a reason) and more importantly, he is in the top leagues. He’s a former Olympic Gold Medalist and two times heavy weight champion. You could say that the result was inevitable. Then, when you talk about show Mr. Paul should be credited for lasting six-rounds, one should note that Mr. Paul was constantly on his knees – not exactly the place one expects of a person bravely taking a pounding:

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/20/sport/boxing-jake-paul-anthony-joshua

 

 One would say that Mr. Paul had started to believe his own hype. One has to look at his training videos, where he made his beer belly rather obvious. Ironically, he was like another of his opponents – Mike Tyson, who made the point that he lost to Buster Douglas because he was partying but Douglas was training. The difference is, Tyson had earned his championship and beaten credible opponents like Michael Spinx and Frank Bruno. His “hubris” was based on something. Mr. Douglas was at the time a 42-1 underdog fighting to prove people wrong. As the underdog, Mr. Paul wasn’t even trying to prove a point. By contrast, Mr. Joshua took the fight seriously enough to train.

Let’s look at Mr. Paul’s broken jaw as a reminder that although salesmanship gets you the job, you need to be prepared. You actually need to do the job and have some level of competence. Hype, without the foundation of competence has a way of knocking you down even if it takes a while to hit back and hit hard.