As hard as it is to admit, it is true: Jake Paul is getting better. That is to say, he is looking better, better than before, and seeing him in a boxing ring is no longer either as unusual or awkward as it once was.
Like the girl who sings in front of her bedroom mirror with a hairbrush, Paul has now practised the moves and recited the words enough to offer a serviceable impersonation of a fighter on fight night. He shapes up better than in the past, he throws more than a jab and right cross, and he even throws punches with some thought, rather than with the nervous energy which fuels most neophytes and imposters.
It stands to reason, too, that he should be getting better, Paul. He is, after all, now 13 fights into a professional boxing career and claims to be taking it seriously and eyeing world titles in the future. Not only that, last night’s fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr continued the tradition of Paul trying out everything he has learned on a target either unwilling or unable to throw anything back. This we saw in November against a 58-year-old Mike Tyson and it was again evident last night with Chavez Jnr, a 39 year old whose best days either never happened or were long ago. We have, in fact, seen this dynamic at play nearly every time Jake Paul has boxed, with only Tommy Fury, limited but at least ambitious, prepared to make a fight of it in his company. That fight resulted in Paul’s only loss, of course, and he has since then refused to fight anybody within his age bracket or with any sort of ambition.
That, you might say, is just shrewd, a rare example of self-awareness. But it also goes some way to explaining why Paul now shapes up better than ever and sets his feet and picks his punches and can even go 10 rounds. Rehearse enough in an unchallenging environment and that is what tends to happen: you get better, if only superficially. This applies to shadowboxing for hours and hours in front of a mirror and it applies to whacking away at a heavy bag day in, day out. Do these things enough and your form will inevitably improve and so too will your confidence in that one particular action. Without opposition, we can all feel comfortable and find ourselves growing in self-belief. Without opposition, we are all the best in the world.
It is when opposed, however, that form comes apart and repetition of bad habits becomes dangerous. It is when opposed that a boxer suddenly discovers there is more to boxing than just shaping up correctly and throwing punches from an orthodox or southpaw stance.
In the case of Paul, there was no opposition last night from Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr. Instead, and as many predicted, Paul faced a man content to lose and get paid; a man whose two stoppage losses to date, against Daniel Jacobs and Andrzej Fonfara, were self-inflicted wounds – fights Chavez himself decided to stop. Because of this, their 10-rounder in Anaheim was fought at a pace best described as pedestrian and that allowed Paul to not only get comfortable early, but also establish his dominance with no chance of being derailed. He could punch and he could miss and there would be no repercussions. He could bide his time to think about what he would do next. He could even try things and take risks, as you would in, say, sparring, or on a bag.
Chavez let him, so why not? Through seven rounds, the Mexican had averaged just nine punches thrown per round – yes, thrown, not landed – and only made it a “fight” in the final two because the fight was about to end. By then Paul had already established an unassailable lead and Chavez Jnr had played punch bag and all that was left to do was leave an impression that he cared and had tried to win the fight late. He had a bit of a go in round nine, and landed a left hook in round 10, but ultimately, to what end? If anything, the illusion of Chavez Jnr trying served only to perpetuate the illusion that Jake Paul is a fighter. It gave him reason to believe he had won an actual fight and that he had weathered some sort of storm against the son of a Mexican legend. It allowed him to say, “I’m really him”, at the bout’s conclusion, followed by: “I run this shit.”
Of course, because everybody needs Jake Paul in boxing right now, he could say these things unchallenged, just as he can punch unchallenged and make callouts unchallenged. It is his world, this world he has built, and within the borders of this world everything makes sense and appears absurd only to those outside it. Within its four walls, Jake Paul is an actual boxer who impressively beats boxers and will later this year perhaps even fight a world champion. There is talk of Gilberto Ramirez, the WBA and WBO cruiserweight champion, for example. There is also talk of Badou Jack, who holds the WBC belt. Both men are seemingly on Jake Paul’s radar and both, based on the attention and money it would generate, would no doubt accommodate him and agree to a fight. The sanctioning bodies, they wouldn’t be a problem. They have already taken turns to twerk for Paul and with most of them run by sycophants or attention-seekers it wasn’t long before they revealed their desire to get Paul ranked and become involved in his ecosystem. Get Paul ranked, you see, and a world-title shot can actually happen; yes, even without him fighting a single ranked contender. Get Paul ranked and there is money for everybody.
So when he says, “I run this shit”, there is more than an element of truth to it. For years Paul has been indulged by the sport and gone unchallenged, both in the ring and outside it, and this in turn has allowed him to grow, both as a boxer in front of a mirror and as a promoter in front of a microphone. Which is why now, on account of his following and his power, Paul can argue that he is bigger than boxing. His fights and the publicity they generate would certainly point to that being true and the speed with which officials, promoters and journalists in the sport have raced to facilitate him also lend credence to that claim.
Only Turki Alalshikh, boxing’s most powerful man, has repudiated Paul and we can probably decipher why and what that means. It means Paul is the one boxer in the sport with the ability – or audacity – to stand on his own two feet and not hold Turki’s hand. Canelo Alvarez, he couldn’t do it. Nor could Terence Crawford. Most boxers, in fact, have succumbed to Turki’s touch because they know that refusing to could be detrimental to their career. They are boxers, after all, and Alalshikh now runs boxing.
Jake Paul, if he runs anything, runs the world according to Jake Paul. In this world he is the best fighter to have ever lived and in this world he deals only with like-minded individuals who feed his delusion. This pertains to opponents who refuse to throw punches as well as to associates who refuse to tell him the truth. By establishing the rules, he can forever maintain agency. He also appears freer and happier than all the boxers and promoters who have surrendered their agency to be controlled by other forces.
To thrive in this world, The World of Jake Paul, all Jake Paul must do is continue throwing punches at bags, whether leather or flesh, and ignoring the criticism of purists. Both are easy to do when unopposed and even criticism, when it comes, means nothing to Paul. It means nothing to him because it typically comes from outside, beyond the borders of his self-contained world. It means nothing to him because he always makes more – noise, money, etcetera.
Speaking of noise, in Britain it just so happens to be Glastonbury weekend and last night, the same night Paul beat Chavez Jnr, there was a “fight” of a different kind between two Saturday headliners. One was Neil Young, the 79-year-old folk-rock legend, and the other was Charli XCX, a 32-year-old teenager who declared last summer a “Brat Summer” and who captures the zeitgeist better than any other artist today.
Quite the battle, on one stage you had Neil Young and his band, The Chrome Hearts, performing the classics at a low volume, all huddled together with their guitars as though trying to start a fire, while on another you had Charli XCX gyrating in her underwear making lip-syncing to a backing track look like the hardest sport in the world.
The contrast could not have been any starker, nor could the audiences have been any more different. As expected, the audience for Neil Young consisted of mainly parents, grandparents, and old souls, whereas Charli XCX’s audience – her world, if you will – was dominated by youngsters wearing bright green T-shirts, the word BRAT across the chest, and dodging strobe lights like they were punches for fear of a seizure.
Not just two different stages, what Glastonbury heard last night were two different languages. Both artists were making music, yet not a single word, beat or look was shared and, aside from sound, common ground was non-existent. No fan of Neil Young, for example, would be able to find a single redeeming feature in Charli XCX’s performance and the same would be true of the reverse.
Even questioning the artistic merit of the performances, which should be easy, becomes muddled when one looks at the respective audiences – small for Neil Young, huge for Charli XCX – and how talent and success have had their definitions altered in a world of excess and vulgarity. Does Charli XCX, for instance, lack talent because she cannot sing, cannot dance, cannot play an instrument, and relies solely on vibes, decoration and a motif to express herself? Or is talent, her talent, the ability to sense cultural shifts and perfectly represent what the world, her world, wants from a performer in 2025? Does her success today simply reflect her audience the same way Neil Young’s success reflected his audience back in the seventies?
If these days an appreciation of authenticity requires too much patience on the part of the audience, perhaps performers like Charli XCX and Jake Paul are the real headliners; the real geniuses. Perhaps they really do “run this shit”. Both, after all, bring the biggest audience to the stage, both give the audience exactly what they want, and both have learned all the requisite moves and poses, hairbrush in hand, to leave an indelible impression. Besides, if the audience, their audience, has no idea how it is supposed to look, or sound, how would they ever know the difference? As far as they can see, the difference last night was Neil Young at 79. It was Julio Cesar Chavez’s half-arsed son. It was the past.
So, no, Jake Paul may not be particularly skilled, and he may never be a champion, but he is clearly one thing. He is clearly Brat.
