Joshua and Paul's Much-Hyped Netflix Bout Was Kind of 'Crap'

Anthony Joshua's meeting with Jake Paul was billed as a Netflix-era boxing spectacle; it mostly felt like buffering. The sanctioned bout in Miami, hyped as a crossover event that might drag a new audience to the sport, instead produced six drab rounds in which Paul largely circled the ring, clinched, and survived until Joshua finally stopped him in the sixth. As CBS News puts it. "The fight was ugly from the jump, with Paul getting on the proverbial bicycle and moving laterally along the ropes, forcing Joshua to chase him around the ring." The action was so thin that, late in the fourth, referee Christopher Young pulled the fighters together and told Paul, "Fans didn't pay to see this crap," a line the Netflix broadcast immediately seized on.

Joshua, a 36-year-old Olympic champion and former two-time heavyweight titleholder, later called it "a win but not a success," admitting he was unhappy with his performance despite pocketing a piece of a reported $280 million purse. As the BBC notes, "There was an embarrassing lack of punches by Paul and a litany of wild swings from Joshua that even a novice like his opponent was able to easily evade." That Joshua would beat the 28-year-old YouTuber-turned-cruiserweight, who'd never faced elite opposition, was always expected, and needing multiple rounds to do it is unlikely to boost a legacy already dented by a knockout loss to Daniel Dubois in September 2024, in what had been his last fight until now.

It did, however, underline where he's now operating, per the BBC: two of his last three bouts have come against boxing novices (UFC fighter Francis Ngannou and Paul), and promoter Eddie Hearn is openly entertaining another "event" fight, this time with kickboxer Rico Verhoeven. If Joshua's career is drifting toward big-money curiosities, Paul's is built on them. Backed by more than 55 million social followers, a high-end Puerto Rico training base, and a stated net worth of about $50 million, Paul parlayed influence into a big payday. After the defeat, he vowed again to become a world champion—and said his jaw was broken in two spots, reports the AP.